The Free Speech Union-sponsored event traversed everything from Covid-19 vaccination mandates to transgender issues, via philosophers John Stuart Mill and Voltaire.
Event organiser and Free Speech Union chief executive Jonathan Ayling apologised at the start of the meeting that the panel — Dunedin councillor Lee Vandervis, National list MP Michael Woodhouse and Act New Zealand list MP James McDowell — lacked diversity.
"For over six weeks I and my team have been reaching out to and dialoguing with members of the Green caucus and each of the four members of Parliament that are part of the Labour caucus here in Dunedin ... Their voices would have been beneficial to our discussion and our debate tonight, and we are impoverished by their absence."
In response to a question on transgender issues, Mr Vandervis, who stressed he was speaking in a personal rather than professional capacity, said he hoped the issues "would just go away".
"I haven’t heard one.
"I have heard a lot of emotional claptrap that is basically trying to push extremely minority oriented sexuality into the public domain and demand all kinds of recognition that I don’t feel inclined to give, and I don’t think that most of the people that I represent feel inclined to give recognition to this extreme minority who want to play their own sexual angst out in public."
Otherwise, Mr Vandervis mounted a committed defence of his right to free speech, and cautioned that while New Zealand was regarded as a free country now by international standards, proposed law changes could seriously affect personal freedoms.
In what was almost entirely a polite and respectful event, Mr Woodhouse was the sole politician to be heckled, after he said he had spoken to several of the protesters who set up camp outside Parliament earlier this year.
"There were hundreds of very good and decent people there who had a legitimate gripe, and there were people there who were set to cause mayhem."
When told he was lying, Mr Woodhouse replied "I was there, you might have been there, too, but let me give you my lived reality: I watched as a lot of good people left and a lot of bad people arrived."
Mr Woodhouse, who has frequently in the past said that if he was to cross the House floor and vote against his party, a free speech issue would be the likely cause, said he could vote for his party’s proposed ban on gang patches with good conscience.
"The insignia is not being banned, the places where people are able to wear it is being banned and they are government spaces," he said.
"Secondly, I believe that is a justified restriction on freedom of speech, particularly a restriction on the freedom to intimidate and harass and threaten and create mayhem: I don’t believe that is inconsistent with my position."
