In New Zealand

New Zealand

New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...

, Section 123 of the Crimes Act 1961

Crimes Act 1961

The Crimes Act 1961 is an Act of the Parliament of New Zealand administered by the Ministry of Justice.-Amendments:The Homosexual Law Reform Act 1986 amended the Crimes Act, allowing for consensual homosexual relationships between men....

 allows for imprisonment up to one year for anyone who publishes any "blasphemous libel". Prosecution may proceed only with the leave of the Attorney-General

Attorney-General (New Zealand)

The Attorney-General is a political office in New Zealand. It is simultaneously a ministerial position and an administrative office, and has responsibility for supervising New Zealand law and advising the government on legal matters...

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To date the only prosecution for blasphemous libel in New Zealand has been the case of John Glover, publisher of the newspaper The Maoriland Worker in 1922. The Crown laid a charge of blasphemous libel over the 12 October 1921 issue of The Maoriland Worker which included two poems by British poet Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Sassoon

Siegfried Loraine Sassoon CBE MC was an English poet, author and soldier. Decorated for bravery on the Western Front, he became one of the leading poets of the First World War. His poetry both described the horrors of the trenches, and satirised the patriotic pretensions of those who, in Sassoon's...

. The alleged blasphemy was the closing lines of Sassoon's poem 'Stand-to: Good Friday Morning':

O Jesus, send me a wound to-day,

And I'll believe in Your bread and wine,

And get my bloody old sins washed white!

The case was tried in the Supreme Court in 1922. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty with a rider

Rider (legislation)

In legislative procedure, a rider is an additional provision added to a bill or other measure under the consideration by a legislature, having little connection with the subject matter of the bill. Riders are usually created as a tactic to pass a controversial provision that would not pass as its...

: "That similar publications of such literature be discouraged".

In 1998, the Crown decided not to prosecute Te Papa museum

Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa

The Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa is the national museum and art gallery of New Zealand, located in Wellington. It is branded and commonly known as Te Papa and Our Place; "Te Papa Tongarewa" is broadly translatable as "the place of treasures of this land".The museum's principles...

 for displaying Tania Kovats' Virgin in a Condom

Virgin in a Condom

Virgin in a Condom is a controversial sculpture created by Tania Kovat in 1994.It was stolen from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney, Australia within days of being exhibited. It attracted Christian protesters when it was on display in 1998 at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa....

. In 2006, the Crown decided not to pursue blasphemy charges against CanWest, a broadcaster, for airing an episode of South Park featuring a menstruating Virgin Mary statue

Bloody Mary (South Park)

"Bloody Mary" is the fourteenth episode of the ninth season of the series South Park. It originally aired on Comedy Central in the United States on December 7, 2005. In the episode, Randy drives drunk and loses his driver's license. He then forced to go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, where he...

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Rather than complaining of blasphemy, a New Zealander can complain of hate speech

Hate speech

Hate speech is, outside the law, any communication that disparages a person or a group on the basis of some characteristic such as race, color, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, or other characteristic....

. Hate speech in New Zealand is prohibited by the Human Rights Act 1993.