That said, it did not explicitly define the term "indecent" and the Hicklin Rule was often applied by courts evaluating censorship cases.
[2]: 11 In response to this concern, a committee led by Ian Gordon was established in 1953 to review and provide advice on whether a book should be censored.
[9][10] Eventually, the book was judged to be indecent on the basis that it "would have a tendency to corrupt or deprave a class of readers not negligible in number", despite its literary merit.
[2]: 24 Beginning in March 1964, the Tribunal was responsible for examining books and audio media and classifying them based on the criteria outlined in the act.
[2]: 26 This Act was notably criticized by the Society for Promotion of Community Standards (SPCS), which was founded by conservative Catholic pro-censorship activist Patricia Bartlett in 1971.
Later that same year, in Howley v Lawrence Publishing, the Court of Appeal found that censorship regulators should base their decisions on social scientific and medical research.
[15] During the 1980s and 1990s, an increasingly proactive LGBT New Zealand community fought several test cases that expanded Howley's precedent to encompass all government censorship regulatory bodies.
[citation needed] Today, most lesbian and gay erotic media that contains sexual imagery is labelled R18, available only to those eighteen years of age and over.
[18] The advent of film as a commonly consumed form of media brought with it a strong push for legislation that would be able to regulate it.
[2][3] This letter grade system was expanded upon by Chief Censor of Films Gordon Miriams, who introduced a set of restriction labels in 1950.
[20] Diplomats from China have twice called upon the Auckland University of Technology to suppress film screenings that were critical of the Chinese government.
AUT declined in both cases, although an event commemorating the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests was unable to proceed due to a conflict with the Queen's Official Birthday holiday.
[24] Book censorship has existed in New Zealand since at least 1858, when Customs regulations came into force that prohibited the importation of material that was considered indecent.
John Glover was brought to trial in 1922 for the inclusion of the poem "Stand To: Good Friday Morning" by Siegfried Sassoon in a 1921 issue of The Maoriland Worker.
John Glover was found not guilty by the jury, but it was noted in a rider that "similar publications of such literature be discouraged".
[31] The Censorship and Publicity Regulations were passed in 1939 and were used to prevent the dissemination of information deemed contrary to the national interest during World War II.
[34] The film Ulysses based on the novel by James Joyce was rated R21[35] in 1967 and only screened to segregated audiences because of its use of the word "fuck".
[38] Family First New Zealand have called for the banning of violent video games, most notably Grand Theft Auto IV.
[39] The film Baise-moi, which contained violence and unsimulated sex by the actors, was the subject of a number of complaints laid by the Society for the Promotion of Community Standards.
In 2007 a T-shirt that advertised an album for British extreme metal band Cradle of Filth was banned by Chief Censor Bill Hastings.
[42] In 2008 The Peaceful Pill Handbook, a book setting out information on assisted suicide and voluntary euthanasia, was banned by the Office.
Its authors Philip Nitschke and Fiona Stewart had removed content that might have directly assisted the suicide of others, which is an offence under New Zealand's Crimes Act 1961.
[45] Retired parliamentarian Rodney Hide taunted her in a newspaper column, urging her to use her parliamentary privilege to breach the name suppression order.
RNZ wrote that "those who have the publication for legitimate purposes, such as reporters, researchers and academics to analyse and educate can apply for an exception" but that "according to the Department of Internal Affairs, knowingly possessing or sharing objectionable material carries up to a 14 year jail term".
[49] In response to the shooting, Minister of Justice Andrew Little initiated a review of existing hate speech laws with the goal of making them broader.
[50] In October 2019, the Classification Office banned the downloading and distribution of the alleged German shooter Stephan Balliet's livestream of the Halle synagogue shooting.
Bill Hastings was the Chief Censor from 1999 through to 2010 when he stood down to become a District Court Judge and Chair of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal.
Deputy Chief Censor Nicola McCully filled the role[52] until Dr Andrew Jack was appointed to the position for a three-year term starting in March 2011.