Chief Censor Caroline Flora discusses the Classification Office's work and how it considers the line between freedom of expression and hateful and harmful content.
In October, the Films, Videos, and Publications Classifications Act will have been in place for 31 years. That's the legislation which gives the Chief Censor the powers to stop people reading or viewing publications, and effectively making it illegal to look at them.
Flora explained: "It was written at a time when you would go down to Blockbuster and rent your VHS, and parents could literally stop their child renting an R16 film, for instance.
"Since then, we've had the development of the internet and the world has changed, particularly for young people.
"The tests in the act about harm have stood the test of time, particularly that very, very high threshold for what we call is objectionable or banned content."
She was asked about work being carried out on hate speech and harmful speech.
"Firstly, I'd say that the act that we work under is not the only piece of legislation or law that curbs freedom of expression," the Chief Censor said.
"You've got to think about things like defamation or false advertising or court suppression orders. They're all things that can curb your right to say whatever you want. Hate speech is not within our remit.
"Hate speech is not banned, per se, in New Zealand. We also do not classify for anything that's just offensive and we can't ban anything just because it's misleading.
"Our act means that we can consider anything that covers the following topics — sex, crime, cruelty, horror and violence.
"Now often we are looking at publications that contain hate, but we're only really able to deal with them if they contain something else that is classifiable."
In her interview with Q+A, Flora considers whether current regulations around classifying content are fit for purpose in an increasingly digital world.
She said: "The public expects that we get it right. And I'm glad that you asked about freedom of expression and not freedom of speech.
"Freedom of speech is an American concept. Our bill of rights enshrines a right that everybody has the freedom of expression, which means you can impart information and opinions, but you also have the right to seek it out and receive it, and balancing that is a really important job that our office has.
"We take it extraordinarily seriously because our role is quasi-judicial, which means the determinations we make on publications are final.
"They can, of course, be appealed, but they don't go through a normal court process like other things do; and particularly for objectionable publications that we classify, the penalties for having them, making them, distributing them are very serious, so balancing that freedom of expression with protecting the public from harm is a job that we take extremely seriously, and if we're ever in doubt, freedom of expression trumps."
Watch the video above for the full interview
Q+A with Jack Tame is made with the support of New Zealand On Air
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