Hayes John: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Hayes John: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6687] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 I would like to share the hope expressed by my colleague from the Maori Party but I have some bad news for him. In the two books that I am holding up one of 596 pages and the other of 471 pages we have the  
New Zealand Consolidated Treaty List 
. The first list was compiled in 1948 and the second in December 1996. There has been no record of treaties since then and I bet the member a dollar that he would not know the name of one treaty in these books. As for the people on the Government benches opposite me I do not think they would know the names of very many of them either. The fact is we do not know as a country what we have signed up to. It is not just a question of signing up to treaties; we have to take each treaty and turn it into domestic law in order to do something with it. That is what we are engaged in doing here tonight with this Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill. 
But I say to my colleague that this legislation is simply a make-work scheme for New Zealand bureaucrats and international bureaucrats. It will not make an iota of difference to any New Zealander and I regret that. I have been sitting here reflecting on what people have been saying and thinking about my transition to this debate from having spent a couple of days in my electorate with real people who have real problems such as underfunded schools police stations that are not working and hospital waiting lists that are not running properly. There is problem after problem. Then I find this House engaged in dealing with this issue tonight and essentially wasting its time. 
However I have lived in countries like Iran and Saudi Arabia and I have seen what Governments do to their people. In that sense I was thinking about the chameleon in the New Zealand First Party who came into this House wearing a pink tie. I think he supports the Labour Government tonight. He sounds eloquent because he has spent a lot of time on the back bench making speeches in this House. He has never moved past the back bench. But then we would not really expect that from a former sergeant in the service of the Sultan of Oman—a man who is a dictator. We learn about all the problems in New Zealand but the former sergeant who was in the service of the Sultan of Oman worked for a dictator who practised torture in the form of whacking off someone’s right hand perhaps for theft without an anaesthetic. Worse still on a Friday afternoon if someone had transgressed—a man might have had a relationship with a member of the opposite sex that he should not have had—boy it was off with his head. Or in the case of a woman she would probably be stoned to death in a pit. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Is that in Oman? 
JOHN HAYES 
: In Oman under the sultan who was protected by our very own member of Parliament the list member for Waimakariri. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: No not Waimakariri. 
JOHN HAYES 
: I am very sorry; it is not the Waimakariri electorate. He is certainly a list member of Parliament. 
But let us come back to the issue we are dealing with because I do not want to waste all evening on the former sergeant in the service of the Sultan of Oman—he does not merit much attention at all. [ 
Interruption 
] Mr Deputy Speaker would you like to call for some order please. It is very difficult to speak amongst the total disarray in this Chamber. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: I think that is sufficient. 
JOHN HAYES 
: Did you call for order? 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: They will quieten down. 
JOHN HAYES 
: I am supportive of this bill because I have seen people strung up in a capital city in which I used to live and have a heated barbecue grill applied to their back. I have seen young women put into prison and I have seen parents have to watch as their son had his face forced into a boulder wall by members of a security establishment simply for holding hands with a member of the opposite sex. So I am strongly supportive of any measures that will stop torture and I share the views of my colleague in the Maori Party on that. 
Unfortunately this bill will not do that; it will make no difference at all. That is why the Australian Government decided I think with some good sense not to proceed down the same road that this Labour Government has led this House. It did that for two reasons. Firstly it had procedural concerns. The draft protocol first saw light in 1980. Can any Labour member opposite tell me which country proposed it to the Human Rights Committee at its 47th session in 1980? They would not have a clue would they? It was Costa Rica but they would not know that. But then from 1980 until 2002 many many squadrons of bureaucrats travelled the world debating these issues. The draft text was eventually adopted by the Human Rights Committee. Do members opposite know how many people voted for it? Do they know how many countries out of 198 countries in the world voted for this legislation to go through the UN? Fifty-three countries got to vote on this issue. Of the 198 countries 29 voted for it 10 voted against it and there were 14 abstentions. Only 53 of the world’s 198 countries were engaged in manufacturing this draft so it does not exactly have huge international support. 
Secondly the Australian Government which conducted a very serious inquiry into the issue felt that the United Nations treaty bodies were not operating effectively and needed significant reform. It was opposed to the legislation that we are signing up to because people were not focusing on the areas of greatest concern in human rights violations around the world. But as my colleague Mr Groser said they will focus on the countries that do not matter and we can expect a UN team to be down here pretty soon because this is a comfortable place to visit. 
I think that the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee needs to look much more closely at New Zealand’s interaction with the UN treaty committee system and that we need to develop a much more robust and strategic approach to the functioning and effectiveness of the treaty committee system because it is expensive and it is not delivering an iota of value to the people whom I represent in the Wairarapa. We need to ensure adequate recognition in these processes for the primary role of a democratically elected Government because it is Governments that take on human rights obligations and are responsible for fulfilling them and the role of non-governmental organisations is subordinate in that respect. Of course as the former sergeant in the New Zealand First Party who protected the Sultan of Oman would understand when there is a one-man Government there is no human rights protection. Clearly he would have been protecting that man’s sole power and supporting the use of torture through the exercise of that power. 
 I think it is also important that we ensure committees and individual members work within their mandates in these international groups—and we now have no control over that. We have no way of reducing duplication of or improving coordination between the agencies that are to be out visiting in order to work in this area. The other thing that we have to really think about because it is not addressed in this legislation is that the committee officials who are to come here will never have enough money or finances to do their work. 
I draw attention to one further issue that I believe is really important in this treaty area: the Public Records Act of 2005. The Act requires public offices to fulfil two key obligations: first a requirement to create and maintain public records and secondly in accordance with normal business practice a requirement to include the records of any matter that is contracted out to an independent contractor—and the information needs to be kept in an accessible form and one is not allowed to get rid of the records. I raise this Act of 2005 because we have a real problem with regard to our whole treaty process. As I come back to the books that I have laid on the Table I draw the attention of the House to the fact that the first lot of treaties was assembled in 1948. The second time the job was done was in 1996 and nothing has happened since then. But we do have an Act of 2005 that requires us to keep a proper consolidated treaty list. Again we should take an example from Australia’s book because the Australians have a very good web-based treaty system and I think we need to go there. 
So with those few words I say I certainly support this bill but that we need to improve our record-keeping. 
Bill read a third time.