Shearer David: Human Rights Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShearer David: Human Rights Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 24 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11171. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): This bill is opposed by Labour because actually it is trying to fix something that is in fact not broken. We actually have a very effective system of being able to protect the rights of people in New Zealand who obviously and very frequently do not get a voice and for many of those people that voice is either going to be taken away or downgraded to the point where it is not going to be able to be effective.We do agree with the idea of having a commissioner who would protect the rights of people with a disability. That is something that is long overdue. We signed that convention in the UN in I think 2008 and this gives it weight and it gives it a means of being able to be carried through and supported. But what we do not and cannot accept is that with this legislation—as I say really not fixing anything because I do not believe anything is broken and I really question the underlying motives of why this legislation has come into being—why we do need to take away the specific roles of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner which is currently held by Jackie Blue and the Race Relations Commissioner which is currently held by Susan Devoy.Just simply by looking at the number of times that those people appear in the media—and I know that is not a particularly good measure—you can see they are the people who are standing up for many of the issues that are facing us today. So if we look at equal employment—do we have equal employment opportunities in New Zealand? Of course we do not. We have looked at the number of times that for example women are not represented well; their salaries in comparable jobs are not equal. There is a very real need for ensuring that that particular commissioner stays there if only for that simple reason: to provide the focus of work and attention on those issues. They are real issues in New Zealand that are certainly not being addressed. In fact in many of the statistics we are actually going backwards and not forwards.Likewise in race relations—why would we want to disestablish this particular role in New Zealand at a time when for example the city that I come from Auckland is the second-most diverse city in the world? There is a need for looking at the opportunities the rights the way that people are treated in our society with regard to what kind of ethnicity they have what background they hold and to make sure that somebody is specifically standing up for them and protecting their rights and making sure that they get a fair go. This has been longstanding in New Zealand. We have had a Race Relations Commissioner for a very long time and this Government wants to disestablish the position. This is a lessening and a weakening of our system of rights in New Zealand and it is for that reason that we are opposing this legislation. That is the first reason.The second issue is the independence and the operations of this office as well. I unfortunately happened to be on the select committee that was looking into the operations of the Government Communications Security Bureau in 2013 and I heard John Key when the Chief Human Rights Commissioner came before our select committee—John Key clearly did not agree with the findings of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner. He said that the Human Rights Commission needed to pull its socks up implying that it was going to lose its money the $9.3 million that it is given every year in order to do its job effectively. That is the really scary frightening aspect of putting an office like that too closely in sync with the Government and what this bill will do is ensure that the office itself will have to pass its work programmes in front of the Minister.The Minister might be a very honourable person but I do not believe that it is healthy for our Parliament for our society to have a situation where the commissioners need to pass their work past a Minister. There should be a complete separation and there should be no threats being able to be levelled at one of those commissioners by the Prime Minister or whoever. We might have good Ministers now but Ministers like all people come under enormous amounts of stress their situation is criticised and perhaps one of their first reactions is to attack back at the independence and the ability of these people to do their jobs.The third issue is that this move threatens what we believe are international minimum standards. It has been criticised by the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination with particular emphasis on the abolition of the Race Relations Commissioner. The move down this track does nothing for the reputation of New Zealand internationally—it does a lot of harm. It is not just a re-juggling a change that is supposed to make this more effective; it is actually in some ways going to bring some discredit to New Zealand in terms of the way it is going.These are I think three very powerful reasons why we do not need to change this piece of legislation. I have yet to see and have yet to hear a rational strong argument by the Minister and those who are in support of this bill for why this bill needs to go through. It has taken a year for it to get from when it was last read to now so it is not exactly urgent anyway but irrespective of that I do not see the reason why we are spending valuable parliamentary time on a bill that does not purport to do anything that is going to be remotely positive. In fact it is going to take away as I say the focus on critical areas and critically weakened areas within our society that need to be stood up for and supported.We agree with the introduction of a Disability Rights Commissioner and support that inclusion but taking away the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner in the form of the current holder of that role Jackie Blue—actually a former National MP who to her credit has come out and criticised this Government. She has not stood back and withheld her criticism. She has been I believe a very effective commissioner.The Race Relations Commissioner again appointed by this Government in the person of Susan Devoy was actually highly criticised when she got the job. People said: “Why has she got the job?”. I think she has done a very credible job. She has actually stood up for and done what we expected her to do. Sometimes I did not always agree with her but I have to say she has tried to act as independently as possible.But the fact that those two people can do that speaks volumes about why we need to have those people in our society and as part of the structure of our institutions. Take those away and we lose something—those people who might be supported by those very institutions lose an advocate and that is an important point.Secondly as I said before the independence of these groups is being threatened by the fact that their work programme and the ministerial oversight is so strong that it will influence the way that they are able to operate independently. I think that is such a backward step. This Government used to call the former Labour Government nanny State; this is actually more than that. This is about a steel grip around our independent organisations pushing them in the direction that the Government wants to go. Thirdly I do not believe that it actually helps our international standing in the world when we sign up to these agreements.