SpeechPart 2 Amendments to Human Rights Act 1993CHAIRPERSON (Ian McKelvie): Members we now come to Part 2. This is the debate on clauses 5 to 7 Amendments to Human Rights Act 1993". The question is that Part 2 stand part. Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Chair. Part 2 is a bit of a mirror of Part 1 but I think one of the significant differences is that while the human rights tribunal—or the Human Rights Review Tribunal I think it's known as—is a judicial body it's not a court as such. It's certainly not a senior court. It seems to me that Part 2 of this bill is giving kind of an equivalency between the tribunal and the senior courts to make a declaration of inconsistency. So my questions are around the appropriateness of that. Is there a precedent for a tribunal issuing effectively a court judgment in that regard? Does this extend the tribunal's powers? Was thought given to having tribunal decisions referred to this House only on appeal or referral to senior courts so that we can maintain the very high threshold? I'm not aware that the committee actually looked at the degree to which the threshold for a declaration might be lower or different from the courts if it was made by the tribunals. I certainly wouldn't want to indicate that that might be the case—but that might be the case quite frankly.I go back to the Minister's comments about a question of fact which she I think very helpfully clarified. She said "Well it's not really judge-made law in that sense because it would be inconsistent with section 4 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act." But we're now talking about the Human Rights Act. So are we extending the tribunal's powers and is that extension appropriate in the circumstances or should we as a committee consider amending this part to say "OK if the tribunal finds a problem of an inconsistency with the Human Rights Act it's only the courts that can make such a formal declaration back to the House?"Hon KIRITAPU ALLAN (Minister of Justice): Thank you to the member and again an important question I think for the House to hear the deliberations and discussions that were had in the Privileges Committee. The House should be aware that the Human Rights Review Tribunal already currently can make declarations of inconsistency under the Human Rights Act. I think it's important just to respond to that question though about whether or not there is kind of any parity between the Human Rights Review Tribunal and the senior courts. No is the short answer there obviously. There is a clear delineation and distinction. However this is I guess you could say a procedural fix to a potential anomaly so that the House doesn't have to respond to two different types of declarations of inconsistencies in two separate ways. Currently under the process for when a Human Rights Review Tribunal makes a declaration of inconsistency there is a positive requirement on the Government to present the declaration to the House of Representatives along with a Government response within a period of 120 days. What this amendment here does is it just aligns the two processes for I guess procedural ease. It has no positive or negative impact on the weight of these declarations. It really is just a procedural fix to ensure that there's one process for both."