Groser Tim: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Groser Tim: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6681] 
TIM GROSER (National) 
: 
 National supports the Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill. We played a very active part in listening to submitters who have themselves been very active in the process leading up to this amendment bill. The bill reflects the fact that multilateral disciplines on human rights have been a very important cross-party policy over decades. The issues dealt with in this amendment bill are very much in that tradition. 
The key point of this amendment bill relates to article 2 of schedule 1: “Each State Party shall take effective legislative administrative judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.” We can derive from that the key principles at stake there. The first is the issue of partnership. That is not just about international pressure but about the international community trying over time to work with governing States which is the only way we will get gradual progress on this issue in the areas of the world where it remains a serious problem. 
The second key feature that we can derive from article 2 is the focus on prevention; we have already heard a number of comments from Minister Mark Burton on that. The third feature is the very broad scope of the agreement. It covers any territory under the State’s jurisdiction. The optional protocol which we are addressing here obviously reflects the fact that after 20 years of experience with the core convention we have learnt that it needs to be beefed up in certain ways. Basically it needs to make the original provisions operationally effective and that is why there is such a strong focus on prevention. 
Coming from where we have come politically in New Zealand we have long forgotten these issues. But they were very much a part of the early political culture of the United Kingdom from where most New Zealanders of European ethnic descent come. Like many other New Zealand parents over generations I took my children to the Tower of London and of course they wanted to see the torture chambers. They are now a great tourist attraction. There are many other torture chambers in the great castles of the United Kingdom that equally are centrepieces for tourists. 
If one cares to reflect on that it is a reminder of a couple of things. First of all those torture chambers originally served a deadly political purpose; they were not conceived of as tourist assets when they were put together. Secondly—and this is the key point—I doubt that there is a single culture or a single country that has not had human rights abuses of the most extreme nature as part of its evolutionary political process. There would not be any culture that was immune to that. If we extend the analogy further one can just imagine for example in respect of the Tower of London how King James I might have reacted in 1605 to a visit of the UN subcommittee on the prevention of torture and other forms of degrading punishment. If members think that that is far-fetched I would argue that exactly that dynamic is in place in areas like Darfur or countries like Myanmar. We are dealing with exactly that dynamic in the early part of the 21st century and we must expect progress to be slow and evolutionary in the process. 
Obviously the definition that I read out shows a wide scope in terms of the areas where people can be subjected to risk of degrading or inhuman treatment if not of torture in its most extreme forms. It was natural during the process of putting this bill together and in the select committee process that all the focus was on the national preventive mechanisms—or NPMs as they are called—in the context of New Zealand society and the various institutions of the State of New Zealand. I have said before that although this was necessarily the case I think that a good job has been done on this bill in identifying by a right and flexible approach the different national preventive mechanisms that need to be established—and in some cases strengthened—in New Zealand to ensure that people in our places of detention are not subjected to improper treatment. 
But although the focus of the process was entirely “New Zealand - centric” for me and perhaps for other members of the select committee there was a certain air of unreality about this whole process. We were concerned frankly that this convention focuses on what I have called at various times colloquially the real bad guys. But given the way that the UN system works the nice per diems available for international travel and the way things are done in the reality of international diplomacy I am sure that at some stage New Zealand will be visited by the subcommittee. I do not want that to happen but I am very sure the subcommittee will come here and when it does it will essentially be wasting its time. 
 I do not quite know what it is that they will be investigating. Somebody in a prison might have been given a cold hamburger which some civil liberties lawyer has thought perhaps to be inhuman treatment or perhaps the underfloor heating in one of our prisons has gone on the blink in the middle of July and in spite of 2 weeks’ efforts to the contrary it is claimed that nothing has been done about it. So we will probably hear extreme stories of this nature— 
Christopher Finlayson 
: Being exposed to “Mini Mike” for 5 minutes. That’s torture. 
TIM GROSER 
: That would indeed be a form of inhuman treatment We will probably get a visit of the subcommittee in due course which will have something—“mother and apple pie”—to tell us about our own conditions. But the key thing is that we should have a process in place—and I am confident this amendment bill will provide it—that allows New Zealand to be able to defend its position in the United Nations process. 
It is really important I think that the subcommittee does not focus its real attention on minor problems. We will have problems in our places of detention from time to time. No matter how effective the filter process of authorities is some people who should not be given the power of control over other people will find their way into the system. But we do not need the United Nations to help us sort that out. We as a society are perfectly capable of handling those issues by ourselves. 
In concluding my comments on this bill which National supports I tell members I really hope that the next focus of New Zealand officials in New York will be to encourage very strongly a programme of visits that actually addresses the real problem because there is a very substantial issue out there in many countries of the world. It is not just with the most obvious of places that major human rights abuses are concerned. There are countries which many of us would—quite accurately—describe as democratic where in jails police cells and other places of detention there is unquestionably totally unacceptable behaviour taking place. That is where the United Nations should focus its attention and not here in New Zealand.