Don Brash says people have a right to air racist views in New Zealand

Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Former National Party and ACT leader Dr Don Brash says it's important to protect free speech - so he's taking Auckland Council to court over a decision barring two right-wing speakers from using its venues.

Brash is part of a group of lawyers, academics and former politicians called the Free Speech Coalition. It announced on Tuesday it had raised $50,000 for a judicial review of a decision by council agency Auckland Live.

Auckland Live director Robbie Macrae last week said security concerns around 'the health and safety of the presenters, staff and patrons' led to the cancellation of a planned speech by Canadian duo Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux.

The Canadian pair were due to speak at Takapuna's Bruce Mason Theatre in August as part of an Australasian tour.

**READ MORE:

* Free speech group raises $50k to challenge Auckland Council over far-Right speaker ban

* Cancellation of controversial talk 'brutal censorship'**

Auckland Mayor Phil Goff backed that decision, tweeting: 'Views that divide rather than unite are repugnant and I have made my views on this very clear.'

The right to free speech did not mean the right to be provided with an Auckland Council platform.

Brash said he hoped Goff recognised he was in breach of the Bill of Rights Act, and potentially of the Human Rights Act, although the latter did have a contradiction.

'The Bill of Rights Act makes it absolutely unambiguous that you can express any views you like provided you're not threatening somebody,' Brash said in an interview on RNZ's Morning Report.

 'A mayor simply cannot make a judgment of someone else's political views when he decides who can use the council's facilitie.

 'I think it's important that the council facilities, which are paid for by all ratepayers, are available to people with a wide range of political views.'

Brash also referred to a decision by the Nelson City Council in April to cancel a speech at Nelson Library by retired physicist Bruce Moon, who was to talk about what Moon called the 'fake history' of New Zealand, focusing on the Treaty of Waitangi.

On that occasion, a council official said threats had been made which would potentially put the speaker and library staff at risk. The council said the reason the talk was cancelled was because a balanced discussion couldn't be held at the venue, and that the information initially provided to them was incorrect.

Brash told Morning Report he had not researched the views of Southern or Molyneaux - and added he was not defending their views, but defending their right to express them.

When host Guyon Espiner told Brash that Molyneaux was reported to have said some races were more intelligent than others, Brash agreed those views were racist. 

'There are some people who think that. I don't think that. I've never argued that for one single moment,' he said.

'We're talking here not about his particular views. I'm not defending those views. I'm defending the right of free speech. That's the important issue.'

But when Espiner asked Brash whether he was supporting the right to make racist views in New Zealand, Brash replied: 'Yes.'

Brash was asked about his move in 2006 to use an injunction to stop the publication of the Nicky Hager book The Hollow Men.

'That was not on free speech grounds. It was on the grounds that we thought that the book involved disclosing a lot of private emails from members of the public to me as leader of the opposition, and I thought it was important that members of the public were able to communicate with me without fear of being disclosed,' Brash said.

'Private correspondence is quite different from speaking in public. As soon as I discovered it was about the National Party, I lifted that injunction.'