| Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Act 2007 | |
|---|---|
 | |
| New Zealand Parliament | |
| Royal assent | 30 October 2007 |
| Commenced | 1 January 2008 |
| Introduced by | Mark Burton |
| Status: Current legislation | |
The Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Act 2007 is an Act of Parliament passed in New Zealand in 2007. It removed the crime of sedition from the New Zealand statute book.
While outlawed by the Crimes Act 1961, the crime of sedition had fallen into disuse in New Zealand, with the last prosecutions having occurred in the 1930s. The law was revived in 2004, after political activist Tim Selwyn threw an axe through the window of Prime Minister Helen Clark's electorate office. [1] Selwyn was subsequently charged with seditious conspiracy, [2] and convicted in July, 2006. [3] The case, and the police's subsequent use of the sedition law to punish trivial offences, [4] [5] caused widespread concern and prompted calls for the law to be repealed. The government had already asked the Law Commission to review the law in late 2006, and on 5 April 2007 it released its report formally recommending that the law be repealed. [6] A coalition of four minor parties - ACT New Zealand, the Greens, the Māori Party and United Future - who collectively held a balance of power in Parliament, jointly called for repeal. [7] On 7 May 2007 the government responded, announcing its intention to repeal the law. [8]
The Crimes (Repeal of Seditious Offences) Amendment Bill was introduced to Parliament on 8 June 2007. [9] It was given its first reading on 14 and 19 June, and passed unanimously. [10] [11] On 24 August, the Justice and Electoral Select Committee recommended it proceed without amendment. [12] Despite unanimous support during its early stages, the bill was opposed during its second and third readings by the New Zealand First Party, who believed that some version of the law was necessary to fight terrorism. [13] The bill passed its third reading 114 - 7 on 24 October 2007, [14] and sedition ceased to be a crime in New Zealand on 1 January 2008.
Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, established authority. Sedition may include any commotion, though not aimed at direct and open violence against the laws. Seditious words in writing are seditious libel. A seditionist is one who engages in or promotes the interest of sedition.
Blasphemous libel was originally an offence under the common law of England. Today, it is an offence under the common law of Northern Ireland, but has been abolished in England and Wales, and repealed in Canada and New Zealand. It consists of the publication of material which exposes the Christian religion to scurrility, vilification, ridicule, and contempt, with material that must have the tendency to shock and outrage the feelings of Christians. It is a form of criminal libel.
Sir David Cunningham Carter is a New Zealand National Party politician who served as the 29th Speaker of the New Zealand House of Representatives from 2013 to 2017 and as a Cabinet Minister in the Fourth and Fifth National Governments. He represented the Selwyn electorate in the 44th Parliament and the Banks Peninsula electorate in the 45th Parliament. He served as a list MP from 1999 until he retired at the 2020 election.
Sedition and seditious libel were criminal offences under English common law, and are still criminal offences in Canada. Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order: if the statement is in writing or some other permanent form it is seditious libel. Libel denotes a printed form of communication such as writing or drawing.
The Sedition Act 1948 was a Singaporean statute law which prohibited seditious acts and speech; and the printing, publication, sale, distribution, reproduction and importation of seditious publications. The essential ingredient of any offence under the Act was the finding of a "seditious tendency", and the intention of the offender is irrelevant. The Act also listed several examples of what is not a seditious tendency, and provides defences for accused persons in a limited number of situations.
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Australian sedition law was an area of the criminal law of Australia relating to the crime of sedition.
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Tim Selwyn is a New Zealand political activist who was found guilty of sedition on 8 June 2006, the first person charged with sedition in New Zealand for more than 30 years. He is also editor of Tumeke! magazine, and has a blog with the same name.
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The Sedition Act 1948 in Malaysia is a law prohibiting discourse deemed as seditious. The act was originally enacted by the colonial authorities of British Malaya in 1948 to contain the local communist insurgence. The act criminalises speech with "seditious tendency", including that which would "bring into hatred or contempt or to excite disaffection against" the government or engender "feelings of ill-will and hostility between different races". The meaning of "seditious tendency" is defined in section 3 of the Sedition Act 1948 and in substance it is similar to the English common law definition of sedition, with modifications to suit local circumstances. The Malaysian definition includes the questioning of certain portions of the Constitution of Malaysia, namely those pertaining to the Malaysian social contract, such as Article 153, which deals with special rights for the bumiputra.
The Crimes Amendment Act 2007 is an amendment to New Zealand's Crimes Act 1961 which removed the legal defence of "reasonable force" for parents prosecuted for assault on their children.
The Electoral Finance Act 2007 was a controversial act in New Zealand. The Fifth Labour Government introduced the Electoral Finance Bill partly in response to the 2005 New Zealand election funding controversy, in particular to "third-party" campaigns.
The Crimes Act 1961 is an act of New Zealand Parliament that forms a leading part of the criminal law in New Zealand. It repeals the Crimes Act 1908, itself a successor of the Criminal Code Act 1893. Most crimes in New Zealand are created by the Crimes Act, but some are created elsewhere. All common law offences are abolished by section 9, as are all offences against acts of the British Parliaments, but section 20 saves the old common law defences where they are not specifically altered.
The 2009 New Zealand Referendum on Child Discipline was held from 31 July to 21 August, and was a citizens-initiated referendum on parental corporal punishment. It asked:
Should a smack as part of good parental correction be a criminal offence in New Zealand?
The Coroners and Justice Act 2009 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It changed the law on coroners and criminal justice in England and Wales.
The publishing of any "blasphemous libel" was a crime in New Zealand under Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961 which allowed for imprisonment for up to one year. However, Section 123 protected all publications and opinions on any religious subject expressed in good faith and decent language against prosecution and specified that prosecution may proceed only with the leave of the attorney-general.
The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom that provides both for repeal of the European Communities Act 1972, and for parliamentary approval to be required for any withdrawal agreement negotiated between the Government of the United Kingdom and the European Union. The bill's passage through both Houses of Parliament was completed on 20 June 2018 and it became law by Royal Assent on 26 June.
The Sentencing and Parole Reform Act 2010, now repealed, was an Act of Parliament in New Zealand that denied parole to repeat violent offenders, and imposed maximum terms of imprisonment on repeat offenders who commit three serious violent offences - unless it would be manifestly unjust. The law was known informally in New Zealand public, media and government circles as the "three-strikes law".
The Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution is an amendment to the constitution of Ireland which removed the constitution's requirement to criminalise "publication or utterance of blasphemous matter". The amendment was effected by an act of the Oireachtas — the Thirty-seventh Amendment of the Constitution Act 2018, which was introduced in Dáil Éireann, passed by the Dáil and Seanad, approved by the people in a referendum, and signed into law by the president.
