Show Notes
The laws have changed, but has the culture? National rolled back Labour's hate speech proposals and forced universities to protect free speech. On paper, that looks like a win for democracy.
But freedom on paper doesn't mean much if people are still scared to speak out. Most of us learned to keep quiet during the Ardern era, not because of what was illegal, but because of what felt dangerous to say.
The real question isn't whether you trust this government with speech laws. It's whether you trust any government to decide what's true. And while politicians debate, algorithms still decide who gets heard.
Bad ideas don't disappear when you ban them, they grow in the dark. The only real cure for bad speech is better speech.
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