After incidents with Stephen Fry (opens new window) and Jakarta's mayor (opens new window), blasphemy made the news and there has finally been a push in government to repeal our archaic blasphemy law (opens new window). Bill English expressed his surprise (opens new window) that we have a blasphemy law (which is funny, given that he's Catholic and the Catholic church have unsuccessfully tried to use the law in this country in the past), and David Seymour attempted to introduce a private member's bill to parliament to repeal the law (section 123 of the Crimes Act).

The decision was made that the repeal would be better completed as part of the Statutes Repeal Bill, and was added as a Supplementary Order Paper (opens new window).

I can't tell whether this Supplementary Order has been accepted or not, but hopefully this will happen. It would be good to see other archaic religious based laws being added to the bill, such as the Nelson Clause of the Education Act, but I suspect it's too late now.