Henare Peeni: Human Rights Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHenare Peeni: Human Rights Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 11 March 2015. Volume:703;Page:2195. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PEENI HENARE (Labour—Tāmaki Makaurau): Ā tēnā koe e Te Māngai o Te Whare tēnā tātau katoa. Ki roto i te pō ka noho ruru tātau.[I thank you Mr Assistant Speaker of the House and greetings to us all as we sit owl-like in the darkness.]Sadly I was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee which dealt with the Human Rights Amendment Bill and I was unable to sit through obviously all of the submissions. But I wanted to take this opportunity to tell the House that recently I attended the United Nations Human Rights Council conference in Manila and I would like at this time to acknowledge the member Mr Jono Naylor for his excellent presentation. In his presentation he trumpeted the excellent work of the Human Rights Commission as it stands today not the proposed changes that are in this amendment bill.The other delegates in attendance were in awe of our Human Rights Commission. They were in awe of the recent work over the past 3 to 4 decades on human rights in this country. They saw New Zealand as leading this field. I cannot help but wonder whether they would have applauded that particular presentation by Mr Naylor if he had included the proposed amendments to the Human Rights Act here in New Zealand. I quote from one of the speakers at that conference: “While there has been progress towards a common understanding and commitment to a universal set of human rights and fundamental freedoms the challenge of translating these into realities remains.” I do not think that the amendments being proposed in this bill are translating human rights issues into actual realities for our people. In fact I think they are taking them away. I think they are taking away the rights of our people and the right of the Human Rights Commission itself to conduct its onerous task of ensuring that the rights of our citizens are upheld.That delegate went on to say: “To us who are elected representatives of our people this challenge is personal.” On that point most of the delegates at that particular conference still recite and recollect the strong words expressed by the former member for Tāmaki Makaurau the Hon Dr Pita Sharples. In fact they saw him and rightfully so as the face of human rights in this country. We all know he was the first human rights commissioner appointed so I want to acknowledge that point. As elected representatives our respective parliaments are instruments of democracy and they stand at the forefront in the promotion and protection of human rights. Once again I would argue that the amendments proposed in this bill do not do that.One of the proposed changes disestablishes the part-time roles and puts them into full-time roles. One of the beauties about Dr Sharples’ time as a commissioner—I found this out after a discussion I had with—was that although he may have been full-time the actual strength of his role was the ability to be involved in his community not just in his official capacity as a commissioner but as a member of the community. If we put an onerous task on these commissioners and make them full time in the hard task of carrying out the roles of the Human Rights Commission I fear they will become disconnected from the people they purport to represent as human rights commissioners. With that as has been mentioned comes added responsibility to a minimised group. What I mean by that is that by taking away those part-time positions and establishing the full-time ones as proposed you are essentially putting more responsibility on a smaller group with a smaller resource. I do not think that that is a good thing for our country. Perhaps it was the foresight of this Government knowing full well that a lot of the legislation it is rushing through this House is a breach of human rights.I just want to quickly mention the Employment Relations Amendment Act which took away the right to breaks and the disestablishing of the role of Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner. There is also the Government Communications Security Bureau but I digress. These emerging rights issues show just how important the Human Rights Commission is and I do not think that the amendments in the bill empower the Human Rights Commission enough to ensure that it still does the fantastic job that it has done to date.I am also concerned about the lines of reporting. One of the beauties of the Human Rights Commission is that it has been able in the past to speak out about breaches of human rights in this country without fear of reprisal or having to front up to a Minister the following day or week or whenever it is summoned down here to Pōneke Wellington to explain itself. The beauty of our Human Rights Commission is it can speak out on behalf of the people of New Zealand without fear of reprisal.We oppose this bill because of of course the reasons I have already mentioned but we also think that the rationale for abolishing these roles is actually rather weak. We have already heard that half of those who made a submission on this particular bill do not agree with the amendments that are being proposed.Paul Foster-Bell: The other half do.PEENI HENARE: I am sure we can all count. Half is a pretty significant number in such an important issue.Brett Hudson: It is very significant—all the ones that agree.PEENI HENARE: I can hear the members across the House there talking about being able to count and half—well you know plenty of people did not vote for that Government and that is a significant number too. So the rationale behind abolishing these roles is pretty flimsy and the official explanation is that it will ensure that they are members of the commission and will operate at all times on behalf of the commission. But it is hard to think of a time when they did not or would not in the future.In conclusion I want to point out something from the past that is an example of how these proposed amendments do not work. They do not work for the Human Rights Commission and they will not work for this country. Mr Prebble a former member of this House thought that to strengthen the Serious Fraud Office the Government would incorporate it into the police. I will read that again—to strengthen the Serious Fraud Office the Government would incorporate it into the police. Well are we not glad that they did not do that? We saw what happened over the past decade with white-collar crime and the role of the Serious Fraud Office is as an independent body to carry out the heavy responsibility the big task before it. Its strength is in the fact that it is independent and separate from the police.So in my mind and certainly in our party’s mind the proposed amendments in the Human Rights Amendment Bill will not work. I think they are poorly thought through. The commissioner will lose independence and the disestablishment of the roles of Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and Race Relations Commissioner is a step in the wrong direction for human rights in this country. We oppose this bill. Kia ora tātou.