Rudman's city: Stepping on the flowers becomes a risky move

By BRIAN RUDMAN

What a bunch of delicate flowers our Labour Party masters are. Not content with our already draconian defamation laws, they now want to restore the archaic right to lock their critics up.

What is next on the list of Helen Clark and her Associate Justice Minister, Margaret Wilson? The dipping stool and cat-o'-nine-tails? ?

For a party with a proud liberal tradition, reviving the offence of criminal libel, which emerged from English common law as a tool of repression against free speech and, in particular, against attacks on government, is a hard move to fathom.

It was abolished nine years ago after years of almost total disuse.

Interestingly, the last person to invoke criminal libel proceedings was the present Prime Minister, Helen Clark. Her complaint to the police resulted in the chairman of the General Practitioners' Society, Dr Roger Ridley-Smith, appearing in court in October 1991 for comments he made about her in a leaflet circulated in her electorate before the previous year's election.

Dr Ridley-Smith was found guilty of two of five alleged defamations and fined $750.

He was lucky. In 1951, during the waterfront troubles, union champion Jock Barnes was jailed for criminal libel for slagging off a policeman in Queen St.

I had a brief encounter with the law of criminal libel back in the mists of time when I was combining university studies with the editing of an Auckland Labour Party giveaway grandly called the New Zealand Statesman.

In Parliament, the florid National MP for Rotorua, Harry Lapwood, had heckled Northern Maori MP Matiu Rata mid-speech to, "Go back to your pipis". Uproar ensued, but the Speaker, Roy Jack, refused to call for an apology or withdrawal on the grounds that he had not heard the remark.

This, despite the comment being clearly heard in the press gallery, which was directly above and behind Mr Speaker's throne.

I criticised Mr Jack's tacit support for this use of racist stereotypes, giving him the out that perhaps the full wig had made him sleepy at the time. His local newspaper quoted these remarks over its front page and all hell broke loose.

First, Mr Jack's lawyers threatened criminal libel proceedings, then, when that died down, I was dragged before Parliament's privileges committee for the sin of diminishing the dignity of the Speaker.

I could have been locked up or fined - the last time that had happened was in 1903 when Dick Seddon was Prime Minister. In the end a grovelling apology for what the House was told was a "gratuitous attack" on the Speaker got me off.

It was an eye-opening introduction to the values and beliefs of parliamentarians. The sinned against was forgotten, the guilty person got off, free speech was gagged, and the only thing people seemed worried about was Mr Speaker's honour.

Ms Wilson now wants to return to that era, making it a criminal offence to publish anything defamatory of a candidate between writ day and the close of polling (about a month) that is calculated to influence the vote of any elector.

Anyone convicted of such an offence would be fined up to $5000 or jailed for up to three months.

For some baffling reason it will apply only to material appearing in print form, not comments made on the web or electronic media.

Ms Wilson's defence is that in the period before an election it is difficult to undo the damages done by untruths. But nothing in her proposal will speed that process.

Ms Wilson also argues that those seeking public office have few protections. That's not true. They have exactly the same civil remedies as are open to everybody.

And the aggrieved can use the freedom of speech that we all enjoy to instantly rebut the wrong.

Legislation is usually introduced to deal with a present or expected problem, but in this case there is none.

As National's justice spokesman, Dr Wayne Mapp, points out, "It's solving a non-problem. The press do not go around deliberately publishing false information that they know to be false".

My bet is that we'll soon see an embarrassing backdown by the Government. But don't expect it to be because it has seen the errors of its way. The reverse will be for much more pragmatic reasons.

It will be the result of letters the Advertising Standards Authority, after consulting the newspaper industry, has written to political parties. In them, it says that if the proposed law is passed, a political advertising vetting system will be set up to check all election advertising. Vetting will take from 10 to 14 days.

With the instant nature of campaign advertising, the threat of such a delay should concentrate Labour Party minds to the folly of the legislation. It knows you can't run an election campaign with two-week-old advertisements. And that's what it faces if this legislation goes through.