In 2020, during the election campaign, after visiting Al Noor mosque Jacinda Ardern made a promise to change hate speech laws.
"We haven't been able to deliver that last term but my intention, if we were able to form a Government, is that we would," Ardern said.
"Religion hasn’t been included in that. My view is that it does need to change and that would be our plan if we were privileged enough to form government again."
However, the new Prime Minister Chris Hipkins has just pulled the hate speech bill, sending it to the Law Commission for another look over.
Speaking with Tova O'Brien on Thursday morning, Aliya Danzeisen from the Islamic Women’s Council said she is frustrated by this decision.
"They're taking a step back and making a really big pause on what had been progress forward," Danzeisen said.
"We've had two additional years of delay… and when it was very public and very clear that our community and the nation was suffering from a hate problem, we had already been talking about it four years prior to that with the government. So it's really been, for us, eight years.
"The politicians are not showing enough courage in doing the right thing… It shouldn't take two, four or eight years for this government to do something."
Danzeisen said New Zealand has been able to act in urgency when it relates to terrorist issues that are overseas and doesn't understand why they can't work on hate when it's facing their own people every day.
"A lot of countries have far more extensive laws that include religion already. So there are a lot of people in a lot of other countries that are far more protected than faith communities and other vulnerable communities in New Zealand," she said.
"And they actually don't suffer as much hate - New Zealand has the highest rate of online hate per capita in the world.
When asked about the frequent debate between hate and free speech, Danzeisen said the hate speech bill that has been pulled back doesn't apply to that discourse.
"This isn't a debate between hate speech and free speech. It's a debate between the safety of a community that's being harmed continually," Danzeisen said.
"And whose speech? Is it a Muslim women's right to appear as a Muslim woman and verbally or visually show her views? For some people, no - they want to quiet our speech, but then want to say that they are able to have free speech."
"There are particular vulnerable communities in this nation that are at huge risk and they [the government] won't step in to protect."
Listen to the full interview between Aliya Danzeisen and Tova above.
You can also download the full interview on the Tova podcast, and listen on the go.
