Logie Jan: Human Rights Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeLogie Jan: Human Rights Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 26 March 2015. Volume:704;Page:2695. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAN LOGIE (Green): As my colleague Catherine Delahunty has noted it is with notable sadness that we will be voting against this bill. As Catherine Delahunty mentioned she had a bill in the ballot that was responding to years of campaigning by disability communities asking for a disability commission. Catherine working with them liaising with them and realising the political environment realised that it might be possible through a member’s bill to get a disability commissioner if not a commission. After her bill was pulled from the ballot and was about to come into the House the Government came to her and said “Look we’re on to it. We’ll do it.” and it said that it would set up in effect a disability commissioner.That is the origin of this legislation. Yet we are unable to support it because that is not what it does. It does not mention a disability commissioner despite Catherine Delahunty agreeing to take her bill off the table. This legislation actually removes the possibility of that title and of the disability community being able to be assured that there is somebody there in whom they could see themselves and their experience reflected whom they could know understood their lived experience and whom they could connect with and make complaints and advance their rights through.We have seen the Government—which is even worse to me—use that as an opportunity to undermine our fundamental human rights framework: to remove the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner as a special specific delegation to remove the Race Relations Commissioner as a specific delegation and to remove the disability commissioner Catherine Delahunty had negotiated we thought. So it is very disturbing. We have heard from the member who spokepreviously Todd Barclay about how this provides more flexibility because the human rights context has become far more complex. How? How have human rights become more complex? Experience of intersectionality and people’s cross-connected experience of discrimination have always existed. Our environment has not changed in that sense but the need for communities to see themselves and their experience reflected within the commission remains the same. This legislation removes that. It potentially reduces the number of commissioners down to four—four full-time positions where we now have three full-time ones and four part-time ones. So that is a cut on top of what I have heard have been very significant cuts in staffing while this supposedly independent commission has been seeking to meet this Government’s targets of cost saving in an environment where human rights are under threat.I would like to specifically mention the submission on this bill that was provided by the CEDAW Coalition of New Zealand NGOs. That is a coalition of all the significant women’s organisations in this country—the organisations that are working with women and that have the concern of women’s human rights at the heart of their work. The coalition said that “The loss of the positions as statutory designations and the minimisation of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner functions has no evident public support and will attract international human rights treaty body condemnation and concern.” If you are thinking that maybe they do not really know the details of this and the intricacies of the Human Rights Commission then I will let you know that the primary presenter of that submission was the previous Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner herself Professor Judy McGregor. She knows what is needed she knows the environment and she is deeply concerned. This is specifically in an environment where they had particular concerns around equal employment opportunities and gender pay gaps because New Zealand has dropped in terms of our performance internationally on measures around women’s status. In the global gender gap report which is done by quite a conservative organisation the World Economic Forum New Zealand has dropped two places from fifth to seventh from 2012 to 2013 and this year it has dropped further back to 13th.We have removed the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner in this legislation—the designation—closed the pay and employment equity unit within the former Department of Labour abandoned two equal pay investigations and the list goes on. We need to be sure we can protect our human rights. Thank you.