Hayes John: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Hayes John: Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:635;Page:6270] 
JOHN HAYES (National—Wairarapa) 
: 
 Mr Deputy Speaker— 
Hon Member 
: He’s nimble that John! 
JOHN HAYES 
: Yes he is nimble. He is nimble just like those glib phrases that came from Dianne Yates the chair of the Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade Committee whom all those people out in New Zealand have just been listening to—one would have thought that this House had been doing something really important. I stand here tonight in support of the Crimes of Torture Amendment Bill because along with my colleagues in the National Party I have a total abhorrence of acts of torture and other cruel inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. We also have an abhorrence of people who talk a load of nonsense. 
As we were thinking about whether to support this legislation we decided it was really important for New Zealand to support international mechanisms such as the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in proscribing violations of human rights. 
Very early on in the life of our Parliament and early in the experience of people like myself and my colleague Tim Groser the select committee looked at those issues. Looking back I feel that the Government should have encouraged our select committee to look rather more deeply at the issues that were being considered under this legislation. Among them we should have looked at the adequacy of existing mechanisms here in New Zealand in relation to the prohibition of torture. We should have looked to the experience of other parts of the world for example the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture. We should have considered whether the United Nations actually had the capacity to examine and look at the sort of programme that is being recommended under this legislation. We should have looked at our own leadership role in relation to human rights. None of these areas were traversed under the leadership of the Labour Government. 
We really have to recognise that there are now 134 State parties signed up to this treaty. It is worth also making the point that New Zealand complies with all of the obligations under the convention. So in that sense we as a country smaller than Sydney need to be much more focused in what we do on what is actually relevant in our community and we should be standing here legislating only where there is a need for New Zealand to legislate. This was not addressed in any way by our Labour-led select committee. 
I also draw to the attention of the House and the public of New Zealand the fact that Amnesty International has not in any way reported systemic torture being perpetrated here in New Zealand. So one really wonders why we are engaging the time of the House and the select committee process essentially to sign up to something that should not be in the first level of the concerns of this Parliament. We need to think about New Zealanders offshore. We have New Zealanders in a number of overseas prisons. Some of those will be European prisons and they will be beneficiaries of high levels of protection not available to other New Zealand prisoners overseas for example in a range of countries that have not signed up to this arrangement or that have questionable practices for people under State care. 
We should have looked also at the issue of the cost of establishing in the United Nations’ framework what we are doing here. We are talking well over $2 million a year to implement this programme. That probably represents less than 0.1 percent of the United Nations’ regular budget but I think we should have been concerned at the select committee level that significant United Nations resources would be expended in the operation of this legislation that we are about to pass. Has the select committee or the Labour Government looked at increasing our contribution to the United Nations to cover this extra activity? No. So in a situation now where there are 134 State parties belonging to this convention we have to think about the cost of travel to each of those 134 countries by international bureaucrats. 
We have to look at the effectiveness of those visits and we have to work out where people are being deprived of their liberty. And although there are some people who I can see deserve to be deprived of their liberty it is not actually happening in New Zealand. In a situation where United Nations human rights committees are already overburdened with work including investigating quite serious allegations about human rights for example in Burma China or Iran one really has to wonder a little about the resource aspect of setting up a body that can go and look at any institution it likes in any country regardless of whether there is any serious concern. That is what the Labour Government is signing us up to. It does not have to be a serious concern. These international bureaucrats are on a great travel gravy train at our collective expense. 
 I think the Government really has to focus on the matter that United Nations treaty bodies are generally considered to be under-resourced and I would be interested to hear from the Minister what plans he has to increase New Zealand’s financial contributions to these committees so that we can see they properly do the work that we are now in the process of signing them up to. I think that if we do not do that—if we as a country do not make significantly more and greater contributions to the United Nations—we will divert funds away from other UN human rights programmes and that would be a huge disadvantage to the global community. 
I think that in this process it is also very difficult to think about how one expects the inspection regime to operate in a thorough detailed and able way in each State party at the same time. It cannot be done so we will have then to have more subcommittees doing the work more people employed and more bureaucrats. I think we— 
Hon Georgina te Heuheu 
: It’s a bureaucratic world. 
JOHN HAYES 
: It is a very bureaucratic world but international bureaucrats cost about five times more than our local bureaucrats—and they are already very very expensive. 
Although some submitters came and said that they thought it was important that New Zealand signed up to this so that we send a clear message to the international community that New Zealand remains a leading nation in the advancement of human rights it is also worth thinking about what exactly New Zealand wants to do and what sorts of positive messages it wants to send. One thing that a small country like our own of a little over 4 million people—as I say smaller than Sydney—should do is to send positive messages by doing and by focusing our energy and limited resources on only productive exercises. I think we need to adopt this as an overall approach to engagement with the UN treaty body system and I look to leadership from the Minister on ways of helping to make UN reform far more productive than has been the case hitherto. 
This is an issue that I think goes right to the relationship between the United Nations and New Zealand and it does not go to the underlying principle of this convention. I think we also have to keep in mind that the people who will be doing this inspection are not from democratically elected Governments as our own people are; they are international civil servants. I think no scope was considered by the Labour administration to ensure that members of that international group worked within their mandate and I do not think the Labour-led Government has made any effort to ensure that the UN system is reducing its duplication and improving coordination between its various elements that are engaged in this human rights area. I hope that we will see the Government committing far greater resources to the UN so that these issues can be sorted out. If we are going to decide that this is an area in which our country has to work then we have to be seen globally to be paying for it. 
I personally after some reflection have some reservations then about signing up to this arrangement but I think that because New Zealand would want to demonstrate its commitment to proscribing and preventing torture we should go ahead and do it. But we should be doing it in a way that is far more supportive of the United Nations and I expect to see this Government contributing a greater amount of money to the UN to enable this committee to do its job thoroughly. Thank you.