The Law Commission has delivered its final report on hate crime laws in Aotearoa New Zealand, finding the existing framework is not working well in practice and should be improved rather than replaced with new offences.

The report, published on 22 July 2026, makes 12 recommendations. It follows a review launched in early 2024 after the coalition government ordered a halt to a separate review of hate speech. The Commission published its Terms of Reference on 30 September 2024 and a Consultation Paper (Issues Paper NZLC-IP55) on 4 February 2025.

The Commission's central conclusion is that giving longer sentences for crimes motivated by hate remains the most appropriate model. It did not recommend creating new standalone hate crime offences, because it considered that offenders would be unlikely to be consistently charged with or convicted of them. RNZ

Hate speech was explicitly out of scope. So too was making behaviour that is not already an offence illegal. The review was confined to how the criminal justice system handles crimes where hostility or prejudice toward a group is a motivating factor.

The headline legislative change proposed is amending the Sentencing Act and the Criminal Procedure Act so that charging documents state when hostility or prejudice should be considered an aggravating factor under section 9(1)(h) of the Sentencing Act. That provision already allows judges to treat hostility toward a group with a shared characteristic as an aggravating factor at sentencing. The Commission wants that flagged earlier, at the charging stage, so the issue is visible to the court throughout proceedings.

The Commission also recommended repealing section 9(1)(h)(ii) of the Sentencing Act, which currently requires the offender to believe the victim had the relevant characteristic. Removing that element would simplify the threshold for the aggravating factor to apply.

Another recommendation is adding "sex" to the list of example characteristics in the legislation, to make clear that targeting someone based on their sex should be treated as a hate crime.

On transparency, the Commission recommended that police publish annual data on hate crimes and that the Ministry of Justice publish annual court data on hate crime cases. It also recommended that judges receive training and guidance on the law changes through the Institute of Judicial Studies.

The Commission recommended that courts be required to state publicly when a crime was motivated by hate towards a group with a specific characteristic. And it did not recommend using the terms "hate" or "hate crime" in legislation, preferring the formulation "hostility to groups of people."

The political backdrop is worth noting. The previous Labour government had planned to bring in hate speech laws in response to the Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Christchurch terrorist attacks. The coalition government halted that work and instead asked the Law Commission to look at hate crime, the narrower question of how the system treats crimes already on the books when hostility is a factor.

Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith's response has been sought by RNZ. RNZ

For practitioners, the most consequential recommendations are operational rather than ideological. Flagging the section 9(1)(h) aggravating factor on the charging document would change how Police and Crown prosecutors frame these cases from the outset. Repealing the section 9(1)(h)(ii) requirement removes a legal element that has been a point of friction in applying the provision. And the data recommendations, if adopted, would give the first systematic picture of how often hate-motivated aggravation is raised and upheld in New Zealand courts.

The Commission's preference for "hostility to groups of people" over "hate crime" in legislation is a deliberate framing choice. It keeps the law anchored to an established sentencing principle rather than importing a label that carries contested meanings in public debate. That may reduce the political temperature around implementation, but it also means the legislation will read differently from how advocates and the media describe these offences in practice.