Therefore, when a call had to be made about whether to push through divisive and poorly-designed hate speech laws, there really was no decision for Justice Minister Kiri Allan to make - the reforms had to be severely watered down.

On Saturday, Allan announced that the Government had decided to ditch the majority of its hate speech reforms.

Of six proposed changes to the law, only one will proceed - adding the category of "religion" to groups currently protected under the Human Rights Act.

Labour lost the debate and capitulated

The Government had previously been keen to go much further than this.

There is an argument that the current definition of hate speech in the law makes prosecutions too difficult because the threshold for the courts to convict is far too high. The Royal Commission on the Christchurch Mosque Shootings argued that the current law "does not provide a credible foundation for prosecution".

The Labour Government, therefore, proposed last year a thorough reform of hate speech laws. But what they came up with was full of serious problems, provoking a backlash.

This was most vividly exposed when both the Prime Minister and Minister of Justice were unable to explain the reforms to the public.

Labour politicians couldn't promise that the reforms wouldn't lead to prosecutions, for example such as young people blaming the "Boomer" generation for monopolising housing wealth.

Unsurprisingly the public was not won over by Labour's proposed reforms.

The only authoritative public survey that has been carried out on the hate speech proposals - commissioned last year by the Free Speech Union, and carried out by Curia Research - showed 43 per cent surveyed either strongly or somewhat opposed, 31 per cent somewhat or strongly in favour, and 15 per cent neutral.

Notably, the survey showed that lower socio-economic voters were much less supportive of the reforms.

And historically and globally, this is also the case - groups with less power in society are most keen to retain political freedoms such as free speech.

The left is divided on free speech

Labour's reform efforts were dealt a further blow when so many leftwing voices came out in opposition to their plans.

The Government had probably assumed that only the political right would oppose the clampdowns on speech.

But when left-wing voices like Matt McCarten and Chris Trotter came out strongly opposed, this seriously undermined the moral authority of the reforms.

They pointed to the importance of free political speech for the advance of progressive causes and the fight against oppression.

The victims of state clampdowns on speech and politics have historically been the poor, trade unions, the left, and those fighting for change.

Nonetheless, the left was split on speech issues.

The more middle-class or "woke" parts of the left were much keener on speech clampdowns.

Green Party voters were the most supportive - with polling showing that 55 per cent of Greens wanted the reforms implemented.

Labour's decision to capitulate has disappointed liberals

Labour was therefore heading into a divisive election-year culture war that it couldn't win, and there was no appetite for such a fight.

Instead, the Government wanted to get the issue off the agenda as quickly and quietly as possible.

Hence Allan made the announcement on Saturday morning, and the Government has tried to quieten the debate ever since.

Even the Green Party has been relatively restrained in its reaction - they put out a press release noting the party's disappointment, but have generally helped Labour reduce public debate over the capitulation by not protesting too loudly.

Others have been extremely disappointed. The exclusion of gender or gender-diverse groups from being afforded the same protection as religious groups is very disappointing for journalists like Newsroom's Marc Daalder. Continue reading

She lashed out in a tweet against "tokenistic" use of te reo by employees of DOC "as an attempt to show govt depts are culturally competent". She told Stuff she encouraged the use of the Maori language, but wanted it used "with integrity".

"You want to use te reo, you use it with integrity and use it responsibly," Stuff quoted Allan as saying. "This isn't a ‘everybody go out and use mahi and kaupapa' and say you have a deep and enduring relationship with te ao Maori."

Of course this shouldn't apply only to DOC, where Allan was in charge before this week's cabinet reshuffle resulted in her elevation to the justice portfolio. The same message could be directed at all government agencies where middle-class Pakeha public servants, eager to demonstrate their solidarity with the tangata whenua, indulge in an ostentatious display of virtue-signalling by using token Maori words and phrases. I wonder whether Radio New Zealand also got the memo.

Being Maori, Allan could get away with this rebuke. No Pakeha could; the cries of racism would be deafening. But to me it has always seemed patronising that many Pakeha liberals flaunt their cultural sensitivity with expressions such as "morena", "nga mihi" and "doing the mahi" (the latter a term practically unknown in the Pakeha world until a couple of years ago).

If they were truly committed to the use of te reo, they would take the trouble to learn the language. I think that's the point Allan was trying to make.

Many people do make the effort, of course, and good for them. The rest of us should stick to English, since it's our lingua franca - the language everyone knows and understands. And the primary purpose of language, as Joe Bennett reminded us in a recent column for which he predictably got caned, is to communicate, not to signal cultural empathy or indulge in a form of verbal snobbery.

I like what I've seen of Allan. She's Maori and lesbian, but she doesn't appear to play the woke card and deserves better than to be dismissed as someone who got where she is simply by ticking fashionable diversity boxes.

She's a former KFC employee who got a law degree - big ups for that, as they say - and who represents a real electorate (East Coast), so earned her seat in Parliament in the honest, old-fashioned way. She also impressed a lot of people with the gutsy, no-nonsense way in which she confronted a life-threatening cancer. And though I know we're not supposed to judge books by their covers, she has an open, honest face. We now know she's blunt too, a refreshing quality lacking in the majority of politicians on both sides of the House who prefer to play it safe.

I tested my opinion of Allan on Clive Bibby, a politically alert resident of her electorate. He largely confirmed my impression, saying that Allan had served the electorate well and National would have a hard job finding someone to stand against her (this from a retired Tolaga Bay farmer whose political inclinations are firmly to the centre-right).

Another good friend and long-term East Coast voter - again, not a natural Labour supporter - agreed that Allan was well-liked in the electorate. The fact that Gisborne's population is 50 percent Maori probably helps, although her tribal roots (Ngati Ranginui and Tuwharetoa) lie outside the district.

Clive noted that Allan had resisted any temptation to serve as a flagbearer for the radical rainbow movement, which he thought was a smart tactic in conservative Gisborne. But he wasn't sure that her impressive performance would be enough to save her in the event of the expected anti-Labour backlash in 2023, and he hoped she would secure a good position on the Labour list.

He thinks Allan is marked for higher office - a view shared by political commentator Tim Watkin, who speculated this week that she and Michael Wood, who were both promoted in the "minor" (ha!) reshuffle, might be a Labour leadership team of the future.

Wood strikes me as a bit too polished and smiley for comfort (I'm reminded of a politician from a former era of whom it was said, "Behind the thin veneer there's a thin veneer"), but Allan has an aura of authenticity - an impression reinforced by her obvious exasperation with the virtue-signallers. If we must have Labour governments - and history suggests they're the yin to National's yang - then we could probably do worse.

Then again, maybe I'm so desperate for something to feel positive about that I'm reduced to searching for promising omens on the Left. Certainly the picture is pretty bleak everywhere else.

• Karl du Fresne has been in journalism for more than 50 years. He is now a freelance journalist and blogger living in the Wairarapa region of New Zealand.
• First published by Karl du Fresne. Republished with permission.