Ardern Jacinda: Human Rights Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeArdern Jacinda: Human Rights Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11166. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JACINDA ARDERN (Labour): It is pleasing to be able to have an opportunity to speak again on the Human Rights Amendment Bill which was originally brought to this House by Judith Collins. I think it is interesting that—perhaps as we have seen with other transitions that portfolios have made between Judith Collins and the now Minister Amy Adams—there have been a few tweaks to this bill. I would say it has actually made a rather substantive change to the Human Rights Amendment Bill for the better and it does not actually surprise me that Amy Adams has reversed a decision that was made by her colleague Judith Collins when it was brought before the House.To quickly traverse the substantial parts of the Human Rights Amendment Bill—and the most substantive parts are contained in Part 1—currently the Human Rights Act 1993 does set out that there is room for the statutory appointment of two specialised commissioners outside the role of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. They are the Race Relations Commissioner—and obviously I doubt anyone in this House would dispute the need to maintain that role—and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner which is also a role that I think this Committee would probably agree there is certainly still an important place for and a role that I think has been fulfilled very well by an ex-colleague from this House Jackie Blue.The Act as it originally stood also allowed some flexibility in additional commissioners that could be appointed. We had a situation where you could have three full-time and then up to five part-time commissioners. That allowed a certain flexibility to appoint commissioners based on what needs were identified by the Human Rights Commission and also flexibility in the employment arrangement—which seems fitting for the Human Rights Commission given the fact that there were part-time roles available dependent obviously on the priority of those commissioner roles.What this bill does however is substantially change that flexibility. It provides different designations. Well actually it removes designations in its original form and reduces down the number of commissioners who can be available. So where we had a situation where there were three full-time and up to five part-time we moved to the situation that we have according to clause 6 of the bill which sets out the membership of the commission. Clause 6(1) states: “The Commission consists of the following Human Rights Commissioners: (a) the Chief Commissioner; and (b) not less than 3 and not more than 4 other Commissioners.” So there is a substantive change in the amount of flexibility going from three full-time and up to five part-time—a total of eight different designations that could be held.I think something important here as well is that removing part-time options does remove the flexibility that existed for the commission. It may well be that you might have a portfolio that did not require a full-time post. For instance what if down the track we see that we have substantial issues for our seniors and the Human Rights Commission determines it would be useful to have a role—Australia has done the same—to actually have someone identifiable who holds that role singly but maybe it was a part-time role. We are now removing that ability—it would be full time or nothing—and you might have a situation where the human rights commissioners are holding multiple designations. I think that really muddies the waters and muddies the distinction that we want between those different commissioners. So we have lost a bit of flexibility there.There has been quite a substantive change though since the time that the bill was introduced between what the original Minister was suggesting and what we now have via a Supplementary Order Paper that Amy Adams has produced. I would say this side of the Chamber supports that Supplementary Order Paper. We still have substantial problems with the bill and do not intend to support the bill but Supplementary Order Paper 175 is an improvement and something that we think we should support.Let me cover what that Supplementary Order Paper does. Originally under clause 6(1A) of the Human Rights Amendment Bill which sets out how the designation needs to work amongst those new three or four commissioners it states: “There must be a Commissioner other than the Chief Commissioner appointed to lead the work of the Commission in each of the following priority areas:”. Originally the bill set out “(a) disability rights” which actually is one part of the bill we absolutely support as did roughly half of the submissions at the select committee—they supported the establishment of a disability rights role within a Human Rights Commission; not before time I have to say. It is fantastic that that has been included and we absolutely support that. But we supported the idea of a disability rights commissioner.What the bill originally did was just set out that there must be a priority area of disability rights. There was not a specific commissioner. It was not clear necessarily how that portfolio would be managed and so on. Clause 6(1A) then set out (b) “equal employment opportunities (including pay equity)” as if pay equity were a side thought and “(c) race relations”. So those three designations were now just set out as portfolios rather than as specific designations for each of the commissioners.Then we had the Minister enter into it. On Tuesday 10 May Supplementary Order Paper 175 was tabled. This has been described as a minor amendment—a technical amendment to the bill. I often find that these “technical” and “minor”changes are wolves in sheep’s clothing because actually I would not consider this to be minor at all. The explanatory note notes that “This Supplementary Order Paper makes minor amendments to new section 8(1A) of the Human Rights Act 1993 as inserted by clause 6 of the Bill. The amendments give the designations of Disability Rights Commissioner Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and Race Relations Commissioner to the commissioners appointed to lead the work of the Human Rights Commission in the priority areas …”. So that was what we used to have. That was what we had as the status quo apart from the Disability Rights Commissioner that we accept is the new amendment. In this bill that was brought before the House by Judith Collins we did not have those commissioner roles before. She was getting rid of them. They were just titles bits of lead work that needed to be done by someone. Now we have Amy Adams bringing them back—bringing them back as specific commissioner designations. All I would say is—Clare Curran: Whew.JACINDA ARDERN: —good. It is—and perhaps “whew”. Clare Curran you are absolutely right: “whew” is a good description. Perhaps we actually had some role in persuading the Minister—who would know? But it did seem a waste of energy to us to say on the one hand that there is a need now to have a Disability Rights Commissioner but in the other breath we are going to get rid of the commissioners in the other areas. So I thank the Minister for her Supplementary Order Paper. I think it is the right thing to do.The comment I have though is that this Supplementary Order Paper does not change the total number of commissioners that can be appointed. We have not got a change to the total number. Remember that in clauses 6(1A) and 6(1B) it sets out that there will be a chief commissioner and “not less than three and not more than four other commissioners”. Well we have got disability rights we have got equal employment opportunities and we have got race relations. So basically we have our buffer of one now.We used to have more discretion before this bill came to the House. The commissioner had more discretion to appoint other commissioners and that has not been reinstated by that Supplementary Order Paper. So we are still disappointed. We do not see the rationale for that in terms of the make-up of the commission—and I will come back to this later on in the discussion. That discretion—much to our disappointment—actually now lies to a certain degree with ministerial discretion as well and we disagree with that. Priority areas now are in consultation. We do not think that is right. We think that there should be that absolute independence of the commission. So it is good on the one hand but does not go quite far enough in our thinking.The other question I would pose to the Minister is does the addition of the word “commissioner” as her Supplementary Order Paper 175 sets out—does a separate delegation of commissioner mean that you cannot hold multiple portfolios? So you could not be the Disability Rights Commissioner and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and/or the Race Relations Commissioner? If you can hold multiple portfolios I guess that means that there would be greater flexibility. I am not clear in my own mind as to whether or not the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper precludes one designation from holding multiple roles and it would be useful to know that. Of course it sets out in the rest of clause 6(1B) that the “Commissioner must lead the work of the Commission in any other priority area that is designated by the Chief Commissioner and the Chief Commissioner may designate an area of work priority area only in accordance …”—and this was an amendment by the select committee—