Street Maryan: Human Rights Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStreet Maryan: Human Rights Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 October 2013. Volume:694;Page:14124. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon MARYAN STREET (Labour): It gives me great pleasure actually to rise to speak to the first reading of the Human Rights Amendment Bill. I think that this bill is to be welcomed despite the fact that we have some concerns about it but one would hope that the process of the Justice and Electoral Committee would see many of those concerns addressed and removed. But my reason for supporting it in particular is that it gives this House an opportunity to have a look again at those processes of developing confirming ratifying implementing and monitoring human rights both domestically and internationally and I do not think we have paid enough attention to that in the past.First of all I would hope that this legislation would generate a better understanding of human rights in Parliament and thereafter a better understanding of human rights out amongst civil society. Here in New Zealand we do have a creditable history of contributing to the international human rights framework and acknowledging many of our own human rights challenges. My party was instrumental in advancing the UN human rights agenda during and after World War II. The National Government ratified the international covenants on human rights in 1978 giving us as a country international legal obligations to respect protect and fulfil human rights. This has in the past been a bipartisan commitment between the two major parties and I hope that it will become a multipartisan commitment across this MMP Parliament.We need to assist the public I think in understanding that we are legally bound to respect protect and fulfil rights to an adequate standard of living for health and well-being education work under decent conditions—all of those things that relate to the everyday life of New Zealanders. But beyond that we are legally bound also to observe and implement those conventions on human rights that we have seen fit to sign up to but may not yet have ratified. I welcome this bill for the opportunities that it gives us to explore these things and I hope that in the course of debating this bill we will be able to strengthen executive and parliamentary human rights mechanisms.In addition to that I hope that in the context of this bill we will be able to argue for human rights education. I hope that as part of civics education within the school curricula human rights education as envisaged in the World Programme for Human Rights Education be included in our school curricula in the education system and in the professional development of public servants. So to start with those are my general comments about the opportunities that this bill actually provides us.I want to come to some of the concerns that we have about it. Our major concern on this side of the House is that the amendment bill removes the three designated specialist commissioners already in place and their functions in preference for the ability of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner to delegate all or part of these functions to one or more commissioners. In the regulatory impact statement prepared by the Ministry of Justice it is clear that it has recommended this position. It recommends replacing the current three full-time commissioners and five part-time commissioners with no fewer than four and no more than five full-time commissioners and for the roles to be changed around. But one of the things that is going to be important in the consideration by the select committee is what we lose in the course of that if we do not have a designated Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner a designated Disability Rights Commissioner or a designated Race Relations Commissioner. What is to be lost in the course of removing these tagged and designated roles and subsuming them intothe role of a commissioner who is responsible for these things—amongst others? There are risks in that and the Labour Party is concerned about those risks.I want to highlight one other point that my colleague Andrew Little made very well but that bears repetition and that is in new section 8(1B) inserted by clause 6 which says that “A 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 as a priority area only after consultation with the Minister and the other Commissioners.” One of the purposes of the Human Rights Commission is to uphold standards and human rights both domestic and international standards of human rights and to hold the Government to those standards. It has to be independent. Its determination of what is a priority work area should not be determined by a Minister.I understand the phrase “after consultation with” but it says “only after consultation with the Minister …”. I understand that the Minister might want to be consulted when priority areas of disability equal employment opportunities and race relations are set down in the legislation as priority areas even though we no longer have a tagged commissioner with that designated responsibility. But I am concerned that we have already seen one example from the Prime Minister no less who has threatened the Human Rights Commission with a loss of funding for speaking out against the Government’s position on the Government Communications Security Bureau.The Prime Minister thought it was OK to do that because he thinks he is running a company not a country. He thinks that if he is running a company he can instruct employees on what to do. This is a more complex exercise being the Prime Minister than being the chief executive officer of a company. I would have thought that 5 years in the job would teach him that. So the first moment when the Human Rights Commission exercises its legislated right to report directly to the Government—to report directly as it is allowed to do under legislation—the Prime Minister takes a swipe at the commission and says “Watch out for your funding guys. If you’re going to turn up with reports like that you’ll have to watch out for your funding.” That completely demonstrates the Prime Minister’s—and I suspect the National Party’s—lack of understanding about the importance of the independence of the Human Rights Commission.The Human Rights Commission is there to defend the human rights of New Zealand citizens especially when the Government does not observe them. It is absolutely beholden on the Human Rights Commission to tell the Government when it is not observing its own citizens’ human rights. In addition to that it is the Human Rights Commission’s job to promote international human rights and to promote the understanding of those in New Zealand. So I am pleased that there are a couple of clauses in the bill that make the independence of the Human Rights Commission more explicit but please would somebody show the Prime Minister those clauses.