Standing in for Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, James Meager said the bill would be a welcome relief to many MPs, officials, and other individuals who had been targeted. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Legislation to make protesting outside someone's home an offence has passed its first reading at Parliament.
The bill would apply to demonstrations directed at a specific person outside their private residence, considering factors like how 'unreasonable' the protest is.
Labour, the Greens, and Te Pāti Māori opposed the bill, expressing concerns it could override the right to freedom of protest, and there were existing tools police could use.
Standing in for Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith, James Meager said the bill would be a welcome relief to many MPs, officials, and other individuals who had been targeted.
He said the bill was a balance of rights and freedoms.
"The protection of New Zealanders' privacy is fundamentally important in our society, as is the ability to protest. The government upholds both of these values," he said.
Meager said the public's right to protest was protected by the Bill of Rights Act, but demonstrations outside homes could impede on someone's right to privacy.
"Unreasonable, disruptive intrusions into people's private spaces are simply unacceptable," Meager said.
The government believed existing legislation did not clearly reflect the importance of privacy in the context of demonstrations, meaning police had difficulty in applying offences like disorderly behaviour.
The offence would only apply if the protest was targeted at a specific person outside their private residence, meaning marches that passed by someone's house would not be covered.
Time of day, duration, the demonstrators' actions, noise levels, and distance to the premises would also be factors in determining the offence.
Despite Labour leader Chris Hipkins earlier expressing his concerns that protest had become personalised, Labour did not support the bill.
Labour's Duncan Webb. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone
Its justice spokesperson Duncan Webb said the bill "chips away" at free speech rights, and New Zealand could not call itself a liberal democracy while passing legislation that prohibited demonstration.
"The point of political action is to disrupt. It is not to be nice, it's not to be convenient. Protest is disruptive, that's what a protest is."
Webb acknowledged other MPs have experienced people acting inappropriately outside their residences, but the legislation was targeted to suppress political action.
"If that's your problem, the easy fix is actually to fix the offence of disorderly behaviour, and make it clear that disorder that flows into a private premise can in fact still amount to that offence."
The Green Party also opposed the bill.
MP Celia Wade-Brown said threats to people's safety or their families' safety were unacceptable, but the new offence had a disproportionate punishment.
"Three months in prison, $2000 fine, this is not a parking ticket."
Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi. Photo: VNP / Phil Smith
Te Pāti Māori MP Mariameno Kapa-Kingi said if police felt they could not apply existing legislation to remove someone behaving unreasonably outside another's home, then police should "check their practice."
Speaking in support of the bill, ACT's Todd Stephenson accepted there were two competing rights in the legislation, but the Select Committee phase would be a chance for a discussion about how the balance could be struck.
"It's worthwhile at least going through the Select Committee process and uncovering what powers the police do or don't have currently, but they're saying they don't have sufficient powers."
Casey Costello from New Zealand First said it was a "sad, sad indictment on our democracy" that the legislation was even needed.
"We know we have politically motivated groups who will purposely release private residential addresses of elected officials, of businesspeople, in order to invoke an intimidatory approach to dealing with decisions."
Costello disagreed it was a limitation on protesting, but a protection for people's privacy.
"It is absolutely reasonable to say that we will ensure that voices can be heard, but my children, my mother, my family will not have to bear the price of the decisions or the public position that I hold," she said.
The Justice Committee will now consider the bill, and will report back within four months.
