Barnett Tim: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Barnett Tim: Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:638;Page:8687] 
TIM BARNETT (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I would like to pursue and follow on from some of the comments made by my colleagues Lianne Dalziel and Russell Fairbrother and to look at the Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill in its human rights context.  
With New Zealand being one of the three nations in the world without a written constitution one could argue that we were born of a human rights document—a brief and very blunt document—dating back to 1840 the Treaty of Waitangi and that a lot of the development of the law in this nation has drawn from that experience. 
We can then flick forward to 1945 when the world started to develop its own human rights standards. As my colleague Russell Fairbrother mentioned it was in 1972 that race relations legislation was actually put into domestic law. It took nearly 30 years from New Zealand acceding to international human rights norms to its actually developing its own domestic law.  
The Human Rights Commission Act followed the race relations legislation in 1977 whereby gender equality first became an issue in New Zealand law. So it will actually have taken 30 years from when this Parliament voted that women should essentially enjoy equal rights in our nation until we finally complete that process. As we heard from the Minister of Women’s Affairs this evening we can now fully accede to the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women. The Minister will be going to the United Nations later this year in order to give effect to that.  
If we go forward from the Human Rights Commission Act the next focus of debate was on the groups that were left out. Throughout the 1980s there was one significant attempt to add sexual orientation as a ground in the Act. That attempt failed at the same time as homosexual activity was decriminalised in 1986. The legislation to add a number of grounds to the Human Rights Commission Act including disability then came in in 1990. It is of no little symbolism that only last weekend the Minister for Disability Issues Ruth Dyson was in New York celebrating both the fact that the world has now developed treaty standards in relation to disability discrimination and that New Zealand is an extraordinary leader in that field.  
It was not until 1993—which is only 14 years ago—with the passing of the Human Rights Act again by this Parliament that we actually guaranteed that people with disabilities should not face discrimination because of that disability. I want to mention one point in terms of that debate. At that time I was doing some research work for the New Zealand AIDS Foundation. There was a real fear at that stage that both the armed forces and the police would be given an exemption from the legislation. It is not unusual in other countries for human rights standards to be brought in stage by stage. I remember researching and producing in some detail arguments that became part of the AIDS Foundation’s submission at the time of that legislation. Former members Warren Kyd and John Banks did not inspire great confidence in the wider community that there would not be an attempt to build discrimination into law. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Doug Kidd rather than Warren Kyd. 
TIM BARNETT 
: It was Doug Kidd. He is equally frightening in that respect. There was a real danger that uniformed forces would be able to continue to discriminate in the way they were allowed to before by the law.  
Through the 1990s the private sector and the voluntary sector worked to implement human rights standards but in terms of the Government there was a limited term exemption. Towards the end of the 1990s that became the real focus of the argument. In fact in those dying dull dreadful days of that National Government between 1996 and 1999 I remember that Tony Ryall who was then the Minister of Justice attempted in a rather shady deal to try to give the Government a permanent exemption from the Human Rights Act so that the armed forces and the police would have been able to discriminate permanently.  
It was thanks to Alamein Kopu I think who finally told some of her National mates that she would not go along with the deal that the bill was withdrawn at the last minute. So we went into the election in 1999 with a bit of an awkward compromise. Labour had a commitment to apply human rights standards to the law and that commitment resulted in the Human Rights Amendment Act 2001. The fundamental effect was that not only did Government departments have to deliver services in accordance with our human rights principles but also that all legislation had to be in accordance with those principles.  
Since 2001 we have turned to looking at New Zealand law to identify where discrimination still lies. I think that broadly speaking it has been in three areas. One area of discrimination has been against people with disabilities. Only 2 or 3 weeks ago in this Chamber we removed discrimination relating to employment standards for people with disabilities. The second area relates to women. As we have heard today from the Minister of Women’s Affairs this legislation really completes that path. If I dare do a tiny bit of special pleading the third area relates to lesbian and gay people in our society. The Civil Union Act 2004 effectively delivered equal rights in terms of relationship status but we still have some work to do in areas such as adoption and in some parts of parenting. But we are pretty near the end of the road there.  
What I am describing is a process of creating and implementing principles that really by the end of it will have taken 35 to 40 years in Parliament. Tonight at the third reading of this bill we are actually seeing the completion of that process in relation to women. Although the Human Rights (Women in Armed Forces) Amendment Bill is a tiny piece of legislation—a short report—and is unanimously supported in the House I suggest that it is of quite tremendous symbolic importance. So I am very happy to stand here and support the legislation.  
Part 1 agreed to.