Barrister and former Free Speech Union council member Douglas Brown discusses the prosecution of Bishop Brian Tamaki, who faces court over inflammatory podcast comments suggesting New Zealand retaliate against mosques and temples in response to Christian persecution in India. Andrew Urquhart and Brown examine the charge under Section 131 of the Human Rights Act, a provision covering incitement of hostility on grounds of race or ethnicity.

Brown argues the charge is effectively a "backdoor blasphemy law", since Tamaki referred to religious buildings, not any ethnic or national group, and Parliament had previously rejected adding religion to this section after the 2019 mosque shootings. He warns this sets a troubling precedent of "two-tier policing", pointing to unprosecuted anti-Semitic rhetoric in recent years, and urges the public to keep pushing back against hate speech measures entering law through the back door, as the Free Speech Union (FSU NZ) has successfully done before.

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