Groser Tim: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Groser Tim: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6278] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 I rise to support the Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill. The debate has taken quite an interesting turn in the last couple of speeches and I will come back to the question of my own views on abuses that have occurred in the past and I am sure will unfortunately occur in the future. But first of all I will look at the ultimate purpose of this bill which starts with some type of consideration of its international origins. The international community learnt 60 years ago that the older concept of inhuman practices and human rights abuses being something that were outside the responsibility of the international community led to grave international problems in due course. This has created the bedrock of sentiment from which this optional protocol and a range of other international covenants protocols and agreements related to human rights come. 
I personally have been a great supporter of multilateral approaches rather than relying on bilateral diplomacy because I believe that basically they are far more effective in the long term. I am not sure whether Mr Ron Mark might have been a member of a parliamentary team that when I was ambassador to Indonesia went to Dili but I went to Dili many years ago to represent New Zealand when East Timor was still under Indonesian control. Pursuant to my instructions from the Minister—and it was a National Government of the day—after 3 days I think looking around the place in Dili I remember going to see one of the senior military people. I said to him quite bluntly that I thought what was going on there was just outrageous. He said to me “Setuju” in Indonesian meaning basically “I agree”. 
I ask what better response one could have had about how completely hopeless it was in the sense that all that would be recorded was a note in a file without any real consequential action. I think that the whole concept of concerted international pressure through multilateral diplomacy which is what we are discussing tonight is in the long term by far the best way to achieve what is really a work in progress because this is a long-term process. Societies such as ours—and I note that we have just listened to the very interesting speaker from the Maori Party—did not arrive at the same standards of human rights observance overnight. It has taken us a long passage of time to get to where we are and it will take many years for many countries to achieve what we would regard as even halfway reasonable standards. So I believe that there is a huge role here for international diplomacy. 
I see that this optional protocol derives very directly from the original Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. Article 2 which is set out in schedule 1 of the bill puts the focus firmly on a cooperative relationship if you like between the international process on the one hand and the State that is a party to the convention on the other. That is the only way it can be. One cannot go from one extreme of saying that what happens within one’s borders is entirely one’s internal affairs then lurch towards the other extreme of believing that the international community can simply ignore the governing authority. So there is a balance to be achieved between the two processes and that is the foundation of the original political logic behind the convention. 
Clearly after 20 years of experience members of the international community that are very active in the human rights arena such as New Zealand have reached a conclusion that further measures are required to make this convention more operationally effective—hence this optional protocol. The basic concepts of the protocol are very consistent with the original 1984 convention. It is first of all an issue of partnership—that issue of the international community working in conjunction with the State authorities. The protocol has an emphasis on prevention and that is what the whole debate the House has had tonight over the incomprehensible term “national preventive mechanisms” is really all about. There is a very strong focus on the scope of this legislation being anything that is part of the territory of the party signing the optional protocol. So there is a strong level of consistency between the original convention and the optional protocol. 
The committee has worked very hard on the over 20 submissions it received from a very active part of our community—and a very essential part of our democracy that exists here—just on the domestic implications. It was always going to be thus; after all the purpose of the protocol is to establish within each of the parties that wish to take up the obligations of the protocol preventive mechanisms—in our case within New Zealand—specific to the various places at which the possibility at least of cruel or inhuman treatment might arise. I accept that purpose but I expressed several times during the select committee process and I will repeat tonight a certain air of unreality at times during the discussion. I was sitting there during the debate and these very well-intentioned people—I would include the parliamentarians from all the parties on the committee—were looking in minute-detail terms at the national preventive mechanisms that would apply in different situations in New Zealand. I thought to myself: I just hope the good folk in Myanmar and Sudan are attaching the same degree of care to their analysis. I accept the logic of it but that is the thought that keeps going through my mind. Of course I have particularly in my head the  
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms of Indigenous People Rudolfo Stavenhagen on His Mission to New Zealand 
. Members will recall that amongst the spectacular idiocies of that report which was certainly condemned by the National Party and Labour at the time was the recommendation after a mere 10 days of study in New Zealand that we should introduce MMP at the local government level. There were also a series of extremely loosely informed opinions in the report. 
At the end of the day although the focus is necessarily domestic rather than international I say that frankly this is not the main game. The main game is to enable us to sign this optional protocol in order to put us in a respectable position which this amendment most certainly will but to focus the real work of the committee yet to be established—whose terms of reference criteria and visiting cards have yet to be published—on the really bad guys. That is not to deny that in the past there have certainly been abuses of power by officials in this country over people who have been deprived of their liberty for whatever good—one hopes—reason and we have just heard a very vigorous discussion between two members on this point. I regret to say that I am sure such abuses will continue in some form in the future—I hope they are few and far between. My point is very simple: I do not think we need the United Nations to help us sort this out. The normal democratic process and freedom of the press that we have in this country will eventually correct these most unfortunate lapses from what is otherwise a highly respectable record in this country. 
My basic message tonight would be the same as it was during the select committee process. I fully support the bill. It is a sensible approach. We have the requisite level of independence attached to each future national preventive mechanism—whichever one is chosen by the Government of the day—and there is flexibility in that procedure. But the real focus of New Zealand should in fact be on the really bad guys. There are appalling human rights abuses. There is torture of the most incredible type taking place in country after country not just in the two spectacular examples I mentioned of Darfur and Myanmar but in some other countries that for reasons of diplomatic protocol I do not care to mention in our Parliament. That is where the focus of our officials in New York should be. So yes people should make the usual speeches in the plenary about how the New Zealand authorities have discharged their responsibilities in a very effective way. But I ask the New Zealand officials who will be in practice at the sharp end of New Zealand’s efforts whether they could focus on the real problem facing the world on this issue.