Free To Speak

Free Speech Union
  • 3.7 (3)
  • Politics
  • Updated Biweekly

Free to Speak is the New Zealand podcast that goes beyond headlines to explore the principles behind our most contentious debates.Produced by the New Zealand Free Speech Union, it examines freedom of expression and why it matters to a free and democratic society.Expect interviews with guests from New Zealand and around the world, plus deep dives with our Council into the cases and policy work shaping free speech today. Any questions, queries or feedback? Email: podcast@fsu.nz  www.fsu.nz

  1. 5d ago

    Paul Moon: Killing Te Reo Māori | Free to Speak

    In 2018, historian Paul Moon published a book arguing that te reo Māori is on course to disappear as a living language, and that almost everything being done to revive it is failing. The reaction was immediate and hostile. Moon's position is that he is a friend of the language, and that a good friend does not offer false comfort. He argues that compulsory language teaching has failed in Wales, Ireland, Luxembourg and Singapore, that fluency figures are self-reported and unverifiable, that no indigenous second language anywhere has been successfully revived, and that te reo risks surviving only in ceremony, the way Latin and Old Slavonic did. Dane Giraud pushes back throughout: on Israel's revival of Hebrew, on the punishment of Māori children for speaking their language at school, and on whether hostility towards non-Māori learners is part of the problem. Moon's conclusions are disputed by many te reo scholars and revitalisation practitioners. We publish the conversation because an argument about the survival of a language is worth testing in the open. CHAPTERS 00:00 Intro 00:40 The book, and the reaction to it 02:15 Why he wrote it 03:10 Kōhanga Reo, and the smell of an oily rag 05:20 Do the politicians actually mean it? 07:45 Does compulsion work? Wales, Ireland, Luxembourg 10:50 How languages pass between generations 13:00 Language as an ecosystem 14:00 No indigenous second language has ever been revived 14:50 213,000 speakers, so where do you hear it? 16:20 The trouble with self-reported fluency 17:25 The risk of becoming a ceremonial language 19:00 Israel, Hebrew, and why it does not transfer 21:00 The 1820s, when most Pākehā spoke te reo 21:50 Solutions, and why there is no magic pill 25:05 Should non-Māori learn te reo? 27:00 The pronunciation argument 29:20 English: muscular, arrogant, invasive 34:00 Was te reo beaten out of schoolchildren? 35:55 TikTok, and the content problem 37:55 The burning marae ABOUT FREE TO SPEAK Free to Speak is the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union: uncensored conversations on free speech, civil liberties, and the people defending them. Hosted by Dane Giraud. SUPPORT THE WORK Join: https://www.fsu.nz/join Donate: https://www.fsu.nz/donate Newsletter: https://www.fsu.nz/subscribe FOLLOW THE FREE SPEECH UNION NZ Website: https://www.fsu.nz X: https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/freespeechunion Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/freespeechunionnz TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz Got feedback or a guest suggestion? podcast@fsu.nz Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  2. Jul 20

    Elliot Ikilei: Can a Conservative Truly Support Free Speech? | Free to Speak

    Elliot Ikilei, former New Conservative leader, key figure in Hobson's Pledge, and now New Zealand First's 2026 candidate for Takanini, joins Dane Giraud for a conversation that moves from common ground to open clash. The two grew up streets apart in Auckland's lower socio-economic suburbs, and they begin by comparing notes: absent fathers, imported gang culture, rage, and the long road back. Elliot recounts going off the rails as a young man, finding faith at 25, and how frontline youth work convinced him that family breakdown, not colonisation, was driving the alienation of our young people.  A card-carrying lefty became one of the country's most prominent social conservatives. From there, it is conservatism versus progressivism head-on. Dane and Elliot debate whether Drag Queen Story Time is a free speech issue or a child protection issue, whether the trans community is helped or ultimately hurt by censorship, why Elliot's Free Speech Union membership lasted only days, and whether a traditionalist can defend speech he finds abhorrent. They finish on Elliot's campaign to take one of New Zealand's most diverse and unpredictable swing seats off National. Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  3. Jul 13

    Douglas Brown - VPN Bans, a Banned Film and 'Trusted News'

    Erica Stanford says a VPN ban was never on the table. Barrister and Free Speech Union Council Member Douglas Brown isn't convinced. Douglas joins host Dane Giraud for a freewheeling episode on three stories that end in the same place: someone else deciding what you can see online.  The Post reported the Government had been looking at VPN restrictions as part of its under-16 social media ban. Within hours, ACT and NZ First ruled it out and the Education Minister denied it was ever considered. But the select committee report on online harm mentions VPNs 19 times and recommends them as an area for the regulator to explore.  Douglas explains what a VPN actually is, who relies on them, and why an under-16 ban cannot be enforced without imposing age verification on every New Zealander. Then Citizen Vigilante, the Uwe Boll film starring Armie Hammer that was refused classification in Germany. Elon Musk shared it, it topped the charts, and the Streisand effect did the rest. From Thomas Paine's Rights of Man to Life of Brian to Spycatcher, suppressing a work has always been the surest way to promote it.  Finally, the UK's plan to force social media platforms to give prominence to approved 'trusted news' providers, including the BBC. Who decides what counts as shared and accurate facts? Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  4. Jul 6

    Brian Boyd — Nabokov, Lolita, and a History of Censorship | Free to Speak

    New Zealand banned it. So did France, Australia and South Africa, and every American publisher who saw the manuscript in 1954 turned it down. Brian Boyd, Emeritus Distinguished Professor of English at the University of Auckland and the world's leading Nabokov scholar, joins Dane Giraud to trace the censorship history of the twentieth century's most contested masterpiece.  They cover Nabokov's extraordinary life in exile, why he wrote a confession narrated by a predator, the Paris press that finally published it, Graham Greene's satirical John Gordon Society, the French ban traded over Suez, the 1958 American release that outsold everything since Gone With the Wind, the Kubrick and Lyne adaptations, and what seventy years of banning Lolita teaches us: suppression sells, and the impulse to censor never learns.  https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  5. Jun 29

    Ani O'Brien: Why NZ Needs Good Faith Yarns, Not Shouting Matches | Free to Speak

    This winter, Ani O'Brien is taking the Good Faith Yarns Tour around the country: honest, good faith conversations with locals in towns and cities across New Zealand, on the topics we usually just shout about.  She sits down with Dane Giraud to walk through the full lineup, stop by stop, and explain why she wanted conversations rather than combat. No debates, no point scoring. Just a willingness to disagree well, listen properly, and stay in the room afterwards for a drink and a yarn.  Tickets are $10. All dates, venues and booking:  https://www.fsu.nz/events  TOUR DATES  Queenstown, Tue 21 July: Mayor John Glover and Mike Casey (Rewiring Aotearoa) on growth, infrastructure and energy.  Christchurch, Wed 22 July: Professor Te Maire Tau (Ngāi Tahu) on the Treaty and partnership after the Treaty Principles Bill.  Dunedin, Thu 23 July: Sir Ian Taylor on technology, AI, ethics and identity.  Whangārei, Mon 27 July: Far North councillor Davina Smolders on co-governance and local democracy.  Hamilton, Tue 28 July: Duncan Garner on the press gallery and the state of the media.  Auckland, Wed 29 July: Rob Campbell on public service neutrality and where the line sits.  Tauranga, Thu 30 July: Dr Alistair Reese and Professor Paul Moon on faith, spirituality and the Treaty in history.  Palmerston North, Tue 4 August: Liam Hehir on politics and media beyond the Wellington bubble.  Wellington, Wed 5 August: Todd Stephenson and Simon O'Connor debate assisted dying.  More stops to be announced.  ABOUT FREE TO SPEAK  Free to Speak is the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union, uncensored conversations on free speech, civil liberties, and the people defending them. Hosted by Dane Giraud.  Join: https://www.fsu.nz/join  Donate: https://www.fsu.nz/donate  Newsletter: https://www.fsu.nz/subscribe  More from the FSU:  https://www.fsu.nz  All campaigns and links: https://t.mtrbio.com/FreeSpeechUnion  Feedback or a guest suggestion? podcast@fsu.nz Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  6. Jun 22

    Laura McClure: The Deepfake Bill, Free Speech, and Where the Law Draws the Line | Free to Speak

    ACT MP Laura McClure joins Dane Giraud to talk about her Deepfake Digital Harm and Exploitation Bill, which passed its first reading unanimously and is now before select committee. The bill amends the Crimes Act 1961 and the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015 so that AI-generated sexual images are treated the same in law as non-consensual intimate recordings. McClure explains why she made a deepfake of herself, why she held the blurred image up in Parliament, and the gap in the law the bill is designed to close. She and Dane work through the questions that matter most for free expression: where satire and parody end and abuse begins, how you define what is sexually explicit without capturing comedy or art, and why she targets the behaviour of creating and sharing this content rather than the technology itself. Along the way they get into charter schools, the limits of AI, and why so few people are honest about how much they already use it. Free to Speak is the podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union. Hosted by Dane Giraud. Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  7. Jun 15

    Arrested for a Facebook Post: Ben Jones on Britain's Free Speech Collapse

    Dr Ben Jones, Director of Case Management at the UK Free Speech Union, joins host Dane Giraud to discuss his new book, Island of Strangers, and a question that should trouble anyone who values open debate: how did Britain - the country that gave the world so much of its free-speech tradition - become a place where the police knock on your door over a Facebook post? Jones has spent five years on the front line of Britain's free-speech wars, and his union now fields around fifty requests for help every week. Since the election of Keir Starmer's Labour government in 2024, he argues, the problem has shifted from cancellation to criminalisation - ordinary people arrested, interviewed and in some cases jailed for things they have said online. Taking Starmer's own "island of strangers" line as its starting point, the book argues that mass migration and the decline of Christianity have left Britain without the shared identity and common rituals that once held it together - and that a state trying to manage this "hyper-diversity" increasingly does so by suppressing speech, through two-tier policing and the quiet return of blasphemy law.  Jones and Dane test the thesis hard: is the fault really with migration, or with the politicians who built the system? Does America's First Amendment prove a diverse society can stay free? And why does free speech look like a fragile, culturally specific inheritance rather than a universal default? The conversation ranges across the Roman Empire and the limits of assimilation, Aristotle and Durkheim on what actually makes a society, cancel culture and the "no debate" tactic, positive versus negative identity politics, the class dimension of censorship from the Lady Chatterley trial to today, and what all of this means for New Zealand and Australia - including NSW Premier Chris Minns' striking admission that free speech and multiculturalism may not mix.  Island of Strangers is available now on Amazon in hardback, Kindle and audiobook. Free to Speak is the official podcast of the New Zealand Free Speech Union - uncensored conversations on free speech, civil liberties, and the people defending them.  Hosted by Dane Giraud.  Join the Free Speech Union: https://www.fsu.nz/join  Support our work: https://www.fsu.nz/donate  Newsletter: https://www.fsu.nz/subscribe  Website: https://www.fsu.nz  Got feedback or a guest suggestion? podcast@fsu.nz Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

  8. Jun 9

    Corina Shields: "Te Pāti Māori Doesn't Speak For All Of Us" | Free to Speak

    "I have always been the big-mouth Māori that says things we're not supposed to say." Corina Shields — better known online as Aunty Heihei (@AuntyHeihei) — returns to Free to Speak to talk with host Dane Giroud about her move from social-media commentary into the producer's chair at Radio Aotearoa, where she now produces "Shubz Says So" with Shubz Live. ABOUT THIS EPISODE Corina is a wāhine Māori who built a following by saying the things she believes mainstream and Māori media won't. In this wide-ranging conversation, she and Dane dig into why so many New Zealanders no longer trust the legacy press — and why a wave of citizen journalists and independent broadcasters has risen to fill the gap. They cover her conviction that Te Pāti Māori does not speak for all Māori, the gulf between iwi leadership and the ahikā keeping the home fires burning, and why she argues "racism" has become a lazy label used to shut conversations down rather than have them. Dane brings his own perspective as a Jewish New Zealander on how hate-speech laws can end up silencing the very minorities they claim to protect — by letting the government decide which voices within a community are legitimate. The conversation also turns to a three-week hīkoi across the North Island to communities that rarely get a microphone, the difference between funded and unfunded media, the role of academics versus the people doing the work on the ground, and why Corina decided her voice is more powerful outside Parliament than inside it. A frank conversation about media plurality, hard conversations, and the freedom to disagree. Support the show https://www.fsu.nz/ https://x.com/NZFreeSpeech https://www.instagram.com/freespeechnz/ https://www.tiktok.com/@freespeechunionnz

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Ratings & Reviews

3.7
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Free to Speak is the New Zealand podcast that goes beyond headlines to explore the principles behind our most contentious debates.Produced by the New Zealand Free Speech Union, it examines freedom of expression and why it matters to a free and democratic society.Expect interviews with guests from New Zealand and around the world, plus deep dives with our Council into the cases and policy work shaping free speech today. Any questions, queries or feedback? Email: podcast@fsu.nz  www.fsu.nz

Information

  • Creator
    Free Speech Union
  • Years Active
    2019 - 2026
  • Episodes
    201
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Free To Speak
  • Show Website
    Free To Speak

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