Human Rights Amendment Bill

I move, That the Human Rights Amendment Bill be now read a second time. Can I begin by thanking the members of the Justice and Electoral Committee for their thorough consideration of the bill. The committee has recommended that it proceed with amendments. The Human Rights Amendment Bill is about strengthening the performance of the Human Rights Commission by giving it greater flexibility to respond to emerging human rights issues. The bill clarifies the commission’s functions and powers, and enhances New Zealand’s ability to comply with our international and domestic human rights obligations.

Currently the Human Rights Act requires there to be commissioners for race relations and for equal employment opportunities. However, it does not allow for the creation of new formal leadership positions in other areas of human rights, such as disability rights. To address this inflexibility, the bill provides for the appointment of a chief commissioner and up to four other human rights commissioners. Commissioners will be allocated portfolio responsibilities that must include race relations, equal employment opportunities, and disability rights.

Having a commissioner who is formally responsible for disability rights is a new move and will enable the commission to exercise more effectively its role of promoting and monitoring the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The Minister will continue to appoint commissioners in the three areas specified in the Act, but the bill will enable the chief commissioner to designate commissioners to lead work in other areas. This important change will allow the commission to establish, without further amendments to the Act, other formal portfolio responsibilities in the areas that it considers to be most important.

I note that submitters to the committee generally supported the objectives of the bill and the addition of disability rights as a formal portfolio responsibility. I am aware that some submitters were concerned that the changes would dilute the commission’s role in leading and promoting race relations and equal employment opportunities. I can assure the House that this is not the case. In fact, the changes will enhance the commission’s leadership role in protecting and promoting human rights. There will still be a statutory focus on these, and an identified commissioner leading the work in race relations and equal employment opportunities. Added to these areas will be disability issues and any other areas that the commission identifies as a priority.

Specialist criteria linked to each priority area must be considered before a commissioner is appointed. This ensures that a commissioner appointed to lead work in a priority area holds the relevant specialist skills. This further enhances the commission’s leadership role in these areas. The bill moves some functions of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner to the general functions of the commission, giving the commission a clear focus on equal employment issues. The bill also clarifies the functions of the commission. It states explicitly that the commission’s functions include promoting racial equality and cultural diversity, equal employment opportunities, and the rights of persons with disabilities.

Submitters were concerned that requiring the commission to consult with the Minister about its priorities would compromise its independence. The requirement to consult with the Minister about strategic priorities is not new. Clause 11 carries over the exact same requirements to consult the Minister as already exist in the Human Rights Act. The independence of the commission has continued to be recognised internationally, as demonstrated by its receiving the highest level of accreditation from the International Coordinating Committee of National Human Rights Institutions, and this bill does nothing to diminish that.

This continuing requirement to consult with the Minister does not mean that the Minister may direct the commission. The commission will remain independent, and its strategic direction will continue to be set by the commissioners acting together, as currently set out in the Act. The bill also revives the commission’s functions to ensure that commissioners are able to express freely their views on relevant matters, including commenting on State sector practices, bills before the House, and Acts passed by this Parliament. The bill also revises the commission’s functions to ensure that commissioners continue to be able to express freely their views on relevant matters, including commenting on State sector practices, and the like.

I would now like to touch briefly on some of the changes to the bill that the Justice and Electoral Committee has recommended. The committee has recommended changes to the bill to clarify that the chief commissioner can now designate new priority areas only in accordance with the commission’s strategic direction as determined by the commissioners collectively. This was always the intention of the bill, and I support changes that will make this clear. This change addresses, I think, submitters’ concerns that the chief commissioner is being elevated above the other commissioners.

After considering concerns raised by the Regulations Review Committee, the committee has also recommended amendments to the commencement and transitional provisions of the bill. The bill as introduced was to come in to force by Order in Council. This was so that if the existing number of commissioners exceeded the maximum allowed in the bill, commencement could be delayed until the term of one or more of the commissioners expired. The committee has recommended, however, that the bill be amended so that it comes into force on the day after it receives the Royal assent. To make this possible, the transitional provisions have been amended to allow the number of commissioners to exceed the maximum set in the bill initially. This will allow existing commissioners to finish their term and will ensure that the three priority areas are always covered.

I am pleased to support the committee’s changes to the bill, which I believe are sensible and well considered. I would like to thank them once more for their work, and also thank the Human Rights Commission for engaging constructively with the committee throughout its consideration of the bill. The changes made by the Human Rights Amendment Bill will lead to a stronger-performing Human Rights Commission. It will give the commission a clearer focus and will enhance its leadership role in protecting and promoting all our of fundamental human rights. I commend the bill to the House.

It is my pleasure to take a call on the Human Rights Amendment Bill. I thank the Minister of Justice for her contribution, but I do think it is important to really question, when making these changes to, fundamentally, the way the Human Rights Commission works, what has changed to lead us to the point where we are making such significant amendments to the way that the commission operates and to the way that the commissioners operate.

I know that over the last 15 years there have been significant changes in the world of race relations, for instance. I do not often begin a speech with anecdotes but in September 2001, which was 14 years ago now, I was living in Arizona. I was on an exchange programme with Arizona State University. I was a student taking a foreign policy class at that university when September 11 happened, and through all of the subsequent debate that followed in the days after. I was on a campus that was quite diverse, and there were significant racial attacks on that campus in the days that followed September 11. I remember distinctly the day when I went to one of my classes and the lecturer at that class—it was a communications class—instigated a discussion with the students, where he asked us to talk about our views on what had happened and our response to it. I remember feeling quite sheepish, as a foreign student—even though I was from New Zealand—about taking part in those discussions, because I remember being told on the day of September 11 that I was a foreigner and my view was not welcome in the United States at that time. So I did not say much in that class until one student said, quite vocally and without much reaction, that he could not now walk by an Arab student on campus without wondering about them. I remember that was the point when something inside me exploded a little and I started to question everything I was hearing around me.

The point I want to make is that in the past several decades the world has changed. Our wars are not along single borders. They are not between single nations, pitted for and against each other. They are not just simply about land and power. They are complex. With that level of complexity we run the risk of oversimplifying conflicts and of distilling them down into dangerously easy categories like race and religion. We have seen, I think, in very recent times—even in New Zealand, in our response to terror attacks instigated by organisations like the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria—the consequences that this has had on members of, for instance, the Muslim community, and how unjustified that is. Now more than ever, we should be entrenching the roles of those who protect our human rights, of those who guard our human rights, and of those who protect us against discrimination based on race or religion. To have before this House at this time a bill that has the ability to dilute the role of those individuals is very sad indeed.

I want to come back to the statements that were made by my colleagues in their first reading speeches, where they said wholeheartedly that of course we support the establishment of a disabilities commissioner—absolutely—to support those who are in the community living with a disability, and who absolutely represent a significant number in the community and who deserve to have that representation. But it should not come at the price of losing, potentially, commissioners for equal employment opportunities and race relations. Indeed, our minority report stipulates this very concisely: “Labour completely supports the establishment, in this legislation, of a Disabilities Commissioner, as did 22 out of the 42 submitters on this bill. We support the establishment of a Disabilities Commissioner for exactly the same reasons that we support the retention of the other two designated roles of Equal Employment Opportunities and Race Relations Commissioners. People with disabilities suffer discrimination … and we are pleased that there will be a commissioner with specific responsibility for receiving and addressing complaints on behalf of those New Zealanders. However … ”—of course, we said—“we cannot see the logic in disestablishing two specific commissioners in one breath and establishing another in the next.”

As I said in the beginning of my speech, what has changed in our environment, in our society, and in our communities to lead us to the view that we no longer need that specific designation? A little bit, but not nearly enough. Even if we pluck out the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner—just looking at the facts will tell us that there is still a need for that role within the Human Rights Commission. Putting aside issues of gender representation in Parliament, because we have the luxury of debating that reasonably often; what about, simply, gender diversity in governance?

Someone by the name of Dianne McAteer has done a piece of work on this, studying 10 years, I believe, of women’s roles in governance. It has been published on the Ministry of Women’s Affairs website. She points out this argument that there is just no room at the top of these positions because there is not enough turnover—she points out that where there has been 10 percent turnover of directorships, women have replaced men in those roles only 7 percent of the time. And that of the 73 new board roles that have been created—not directorships, but board roles—only 23 percent have been filled by females. Putting aside just simply the roles of those who are at the top of the governance tree, there is simply the fact that we still have a 10 percent gender wage gap in New Zealand and that we seem to be depleting more and more the specific individual roles, even of policy makers within the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, to look at that issue. It was disestablished by this Government. And now we have this happening to the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner.

So what has changed that has made the Government feel so comfortable that we can disestablish that formal role in legislation? What, really, has changed? The evidence suggests quite simply that not enough has been achieved. The Minister, however, went on to argue in her address that, essentially, the way that the legislation has set out these new roles, they can still be effective, and their role has not been diluted. But there have been other areas where we have seen this kind of consolidation, and it has, really, undermined the work that has been done. When the Alcohol Advisory Council was merged into the Health Promotion Agency, that was an example of that. What the bill actually does is it gives just too much discretion now to the Human Rights Commission to prioritise what work is done.

If the Human Rights Commission had the kind of independence from Government that you would hope an entity like that would have, maybe that might be something that could provide comfort to members on this side of the House. But the fact is that clause 6 inserts new subsection (1B), which states: “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 in accordance with the strategic direction and the general nature of activities determined by the Commission under section 7(1) and after consultation with the Minister … ”—after consultation with the Minister.

Of course, our concern with this is that the Human Rights Commission has the role of, for instance, ensuring that we abide by UN conventions. There are cases where consecutive Governments, from time to time, have needed to be held to account on that. The more you tie your commission into consultation with a Minister and agreement around priorities, the more you lessen that advocacy role. Indeed, that is why Labour has supported the Children’s Commissioner in particular having their role strengthened. We heard only today that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner has come before the select committee and has said that there are several things that it is going to have to water down its work on because, actually, it is having to move resources from advocacy—which is one of its roles—to monitoring. It has the role of monitoring Child, Youth and Family residences as one of its jobs, and it does not have the resources to do that job properly, so it is having to move resources from one area to another. So it is critically important that we give it that level of independence.

Just to conclude, I do not believe that we have made enough progress that we can say that New Zealand now no longer needs these designated roles, and I would wager that the two National appointees in both of those roles would probably say the same thing. If any member on that side of the House would like to argue that we have reached the peak of equal employment opportunities and racial harmony, I would welcome that contribution.

Well, the House will not be hearing from me the argument that we have reached the peak in terms of equal opportunities or race relations, nor indeed the peak in terms of disability issues, which is why I want to focus much of my speech tonight in the second reading of the Human Rights Amendment Bill specifically on the establishment of a commissioner with responsibility for leadership in disability rights within the Human Rights Commission. I acknowledge that Jacinda Ardern, the speaker who has just resumed her seat, was a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee in the last Parliament—I am pretty sure of that—whereas I was not, so I have not had the benefit of sitting through the full parliamentary process. But I do know some things, as do we all, and one is that disabled people in New Zealand suffer—in myriad ways, large and small—discrimination most days of their lives, from a very early age through to adulthood, and that those casual discriminations often continue well into adulthood.

I will say on a personal note, being very close to a person with a significant disability, that that person has had to fight from childhood, from babyhood. First of all—and I will generalise it out to anybody—any child, any baby, born with a significant, lifelong disability will have to fight for their whole life. Their family will have to fight for them. They will have to fight the social welfare system, perhaps. They will have to fight to get good medical treatment and to get good treatment through their schooling years in whatever form their education takes, and that may or may not start at 5 and it may or may not end at 16—it may go on for many, many years and take many forms. But always, always, always that disabled person and their family and their support will have to fight so that that disabled person continues to get the rights that those of us New Zealanders without a disability can sometimes take for granted.

It does not mean—and I do not want to say—that disabled people are, necessarily, hard done by. And God forbid, because they would not want to be regarded as being hard done by—far from it. But what I think it does for people of disability in New Zealand is it makes them very, very strong of character and very, very full of resolve to live good lives. Despite all that—despite all the support that disabled people should, could, and can get from their families, from their supporters, from their loved ones, and from the State—they are still prone to suffering discriminatory behaviour, disparaging comments, misunderstandings, and deliberate or maybe casual slights and insults. It does not matter where it might pop up, and they certainly will not be expecting it or anticipating it, but, bang, there it is, and there goes their day. And that is the lot of a disabled person. So in this Human Rights Amendment Bill—and look, I have not had the benefit of sitting through the select committee process and of hearing the submissions coming from the community, but, I guess, from my own second-hand experience—I am so pleased to see the establishment of a full-time commissioner with the role of advocating on behalf of disabled people.

As parliamentarians—those of us who hold regular constituency clinics and who go and see people—often we have disabled people and their representatives coming to see us who are struggling with maybe a Government agency or maybe an NGO, or maybe something that is happening in their lives. Maybe there was an incident at the supermarket or an incident at the movie theatre—it does not matter. Those people come to their parliamentarians for assistance, and we all do what we can because that is our job and we care about people—that is why we do this job. But now, when this bill is enacted and, I think, when it receives the Royal assent, there will be the ability for a full-time commissioner with responsibility for disability rights to be appointed. Good stuff, good job—really pleased to see that.

I think of when, just a couple of weeks ago, somebody came to see me who had been treated in the most appalling way in a public place. They had been treated most appallingly, and probably not even intentionally, but this person had been humiliated in public for no better reason than he was not quite normal—he was in a wheelchair. Those little slights and humiliations—the person perpetrating them, well, they will be held to account, I do hope. But for the person who is offended against in this way, they need a recourse; they need somewhere to be able to express the impact that this hurt and humiliation has had upon them, because it might not be unlawful. The person doing it to them might not have contravened a law or a rule or a regulation, but harm has still been done to that person, and now we have a commissioner whose role it will be to back their corner. Good job, is what I say.

But, of course, that is not all that is contained in this Human Rights Amendment Bill. There are some changes being made to the structure and form of the commission, and this is designed to strengthen its performance. So I do have to disagree with the contention of the previous speaker—and I enjoyed her contribution; I think it was a thoughtful contribution—that the roles of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and the Race Relations Commissioner have been somehow diminished by being folded back, if you like, into the Human Rights Commission. I would probably say this in response to that concern: it is not so much that the roles of the Race Relations Commissioner and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner have been diminished but rather that they have been unified together with the Disabilities Commissioner, and unified under the banner of the Human Rights Commission—and that is, I guess, a wider term and it brings a more unified approach to the Human Rights Commission. So it does not matter whether it is a disabilities issue, it does not matter whether it is an equal employment opportunity issue, or indeed a race relations issue; they are commissioners and they are part of the Human Rights Commission.

So, going back for just a moment to the Disabilities Commissioner, of course the Act did not allow for that commissioner position to be created, and so we have this bill before us. The Act does not currently allow for formalised leadership roles in other prioritised areas. So although it was obviously the desire of many of us to have a Disabilities Commissioner, the Act simply did not allow it. So this bill, brought forward by the Minister of Justice, satisfies that need. It also provides for a more focused approach on behalf of the Human Rights Commission. I have no problem with the Human Rights Commission consulting with the Minister. Is that not what they should be doing? Is not dialogue one of the most useful things we have when we have an Act of Parliament, which in this case is the Human Rights Act, and we have commissioners appointed? They are not there to take direction from the Minister but I think dialogue going both ways can only be helpful because the Minister does not have the ability to direct the commissioners and no good commissioner will allow themselves to be directed, and they should not do that. But I think that consultation and a focusing of the Human Rights Commission can be only a good thing.

Finally, I just want to note that this amendment satisfies our requirements under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. New Zealand is responding to its responsibilities under the UN convention, and so we bring this bill to the House. I endorse it. I think it is a good step forward in recognising the rights of people with disabilities. It brings a focus to the Human Rights Commission, and I commend the bill to the House.

Ā, tēnā koe, e Te Māngai o Te Whare, tēnā tātau katoa. Ki roto i te pō ka noho ruru tātau.

[I thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker of the House, and greetings to us all as we sit owl-like in the darkness.]

Sadly, I was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee, which dealt with the Human Rights Amendment Bill, and I was unable to sit through, obviously, all of the submissions. But I wanted to take this opportunity to tell the House that recently I attended the United Nations Human Rights Council conference in Manila, and I would like at this time to acknowledge the member Mr Jono Naylor for his excellent presentation. In his presentation he trumpeted the excellent work of the Human Rights Commission as it stands today, not the proposed changes that are in this amendment bill.

The other delegates in attendance were in awe of our Human Rights Commission. They were in awe of the recent work over the past 3 to 4 decades on human rights in this country. They saw New Zealand as leading this field. I cannot help but wonder whether they would have applauded that particular presentation by Mr Naylor if he had included the proposed amendments to the Human Rights Act here in New Zealand. I quote from one of the speakers at that conference: “While there has been progress towards a common understanding and commitment to a universal set of human rights and fundamental freedoms, the challenge of translating these into realities remains.” I do not think that the amendments being proposed in this bill are translating human rights issues into actual realities for our people. In fact, I think they are taking them away. I think they are taking away the rights of our people and the right of the Human Rights Commission itself to conduct its onerous task of ensuring that the rights of our citizens are upheld.

That delegate went on to say: “To us who are elected representatives of our people, this challenge is personal.” On that point, most of the delegates at that particular conference still recite and recollect the strong words expressed by the former member for Tāmaki Makaurau, the Hon Dr Pita Sharples. In fact, they saw him, and rightfully so, as the face of human rights in this country. We all know he was the first human rights commissioner appointed, so I want to acknowledge that point. As elected representatives our respective parliaments are instruments of democracy, and they stand at the forefront in the promotion and protection of human rights. Once again, I would argue that the amendments proposed in this bill do not do that.

One of the proposed changes disestablishes the part-time roles and puts them into full-time roles. One of the beauties about Dr Sharples’ time as a commissioner—I found this out after a discussion I had with—was that although he may have been full-time the actual strength of his role was the ability to be involved in his community, not just in his official capacity as a commissioner but as a member of the community. If we put an onerous task on these commissioners and make them full time in the hard task of carrying out the roles of the Human Rights Commission, I fear they will become disconnected from the people they purport to represent as human rights commissioners. With that, as has been mentioned, comes added responsibility to a minimised group. What I mean by that is that by taking away those part-time positions and establishing the full-time ones as proposed, you are essentially putting more responsibility on a smaller group with a smaller resource. I do not think that that is a good thing for our country. Perhaps it was the foresight of this Government, knowing full well that a lot of the legislation it is rushing through this House is a breach of human rights.

I just want to quickly mention the Employment Relations Amendment Act, which took away the right to breaks, and the disestablishing of the role of Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner. There is also the Government Communications Security Bureau, but I digress. These emerging rights issues show just how important the Human Rights Commission is, and I do not think that the amendments in the bill empower the Human Rights Commission enough to ensure that it still does the fantastic job that it has done to date.

I am also concerned about the lines of reporting. One of the beauties of the Human Rights Commission is that it has been able in the past to speak out about breaches of human rights in this country without fear of reprisal or having to front up to a Minister the following day or week, or whenever it is summoned down here to Pōneke, Wellington, to explain itself. The beauty of our Human Rights Commission is it can speak out on behalf of the people of New Zealand without fear of reprisal.

We oppose this bill because of, of course, the reasons I have already mentioned, but we also think that the rationale for abolishing these roles is actually rather weak. We have already heard that half of those who made a submission on this particular bill do not agree with the amendments that are being proposed.

💬 Paul Foster-Bell: The other half do.

I am sure we can all count. Half is a pretty significant number in such an important issue.

💬 Brett Hudson: It is very significant—all the ones that agree.

I can hear the members across the House there talking about being able to count, and half—well, you know, plenty of people did not vote for that Government, and that is a significant number too. So the rationale behind abolishing these roles is pretty flimsy, and the official explanation is that it will ensure that they are members of the commission and will operate at all times on behalf of the commission. But it is hard to think of a time when they did not or would not in the future.

In conclusion, I want to point out something from the past that is an example of how these proposed amendments do not work. They do not work for the Human Rights Commission and they will not work for this country. Mr Prebble, a former member of this House, thought that to strengthen the Serious Fraud Office, the Government would incorporate it into the police. I will read that again—to strengthen the Serious Fraud Office, the Government would incorporate it into the police. Well, are we not glad that they did not do that? We saw what happened over the past decade with white-collar crime, and the role of the Serious Fraud Office is as an independent body to carry out the heavy responsibility, the big task before it. Its strength is in the fact that it is independent and separate from the police.

So in my mind, and certainly in our party’s mind, the proposed amendments in the Human Rights Amendment Bill will not work. I think they are poorly thought through. The commissioner will lose independence, and the disestablishment of the roles of Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and Race Relations Commissioner is a step in the wrong direction for human rights in this country. We oppose this bill. Kia ora tātou.

It is a great privilege for me to be able to rise and take a call on this, the Human Rights Amendment Bill at its second reading. I refer to New Zealand’s proud history in the area of human rights. I felt great privilege when I was at the seminar that was mentioned by the previous speaker, Peeni Henare, in Manila less than 2 weeks ago. It was a great trip, I can tell you. It was very interesting to share the stage with those people. But I took great pride in being able to talk about New Zealand human rights issues and our history, and the fact that we were, in fact, the first nation to give women the vote, for example.

In hearing some of the things that I have heard talked about here, people have said that we should just sit on what we have got. People are saying: “Oh, we’ve got a good Human Rights Commission. We have got this structure in place, and this is very good. We should rest on our laurels, perhaps, and stay there.”

I find that a little disturbing, because I think if we are not going to continuously improve what we are doing and if we are not going to continue to amend our legislation to make it better, to make it stronger, and to deliver an even better human rights record in New Zealand than what we have, that would be very sad. I cannot help but reflect on what would have happened if we had simply patted ourselves on the back in the fashion that I have heard so far this evening from the opposite side, and said: “Well, we’ve given women the vote; let’s just stop there.” I think that would be ridiculous. We have moved on so much further. We have been able to achieve so much more, and that is why it is important that we have a Human Rights Amendment Bill—for us to do even more to further enhance the human rights of the people living in New Zealand.

At the conference that I attended, it was really interesting to be able to share the stage and share some time with many countries whose human rights record is not the same as our own. I found it rather ironic, at times, to be sitting next to people who, for example, had refugees leave their nation to come and live in my home town of Palmerston North. I thought that it seemed a little odd to be in that situation, but it was a great opportunity for us to be able to share. My colleagues Peeni Henare and Marama Fox were also able to talk about some of the lessons that we learnt in terms of our indigenous people and what we have learnt in terms of the role of women within our society and addressing some of those issues.

But my responsibility and the topic that I had been given was to talk about New Zealand’s response to the periodic review that is conducted every 4½ years by the United Nations. That periodic review highlights a bunch of recommendations. There were a significant number, actually, for New Zealand. We have heard people talking about how we can sort of stop where we are and we do not need to move forward, when in fact there were 155 recommendations that those other nations had, to suggest to us that we could move forward. We have picked up on about 120 of those and we are starting to incorporate some of those into the practice here. I am looking forward to the Human Rights Commission coming up with its action plan in July of this year.

But it cannot stop there. We need to continue to move forward. Although those countries, as the previous speaker said, perhaps were in awe of what we had achieved over this recent time—they were envious, in fact, of our Human Rights Commission, and we even had countries approaching us asking how they might be able to set one up in their own nation—I think those people would be somewhat disturbed if we said we have come as far as we can go, we do not need to move on, and we do not need to make further progress.

So this amendment is about continuous improvement. It is about the establishment of a commissioner who is going to be sort of set aside in the work that they do in the role of disabilities. I know from my previous experience as a mayor of Palmerston North—the number of times when I would be confronted by people from our community who were facing issues around disability, whether it be about access to public buildings or whether it be about all of the other issues that perhaps people in our communities are facing when they are discriminated against on the basis of disability—that it is critically important that our Human Rights Commission has an absolutely designated person involved to be able to work in that area, with some specialist knowledge to assist those people in our community who need that assistance, and to provide the advocacy that is required from somebody in that role.

When I think about people who talk about being discriminated against, they do not want to be defined necessarily all the time simply by their race, by their age, by their gender, or by their disability. So it sort of seems ironic to me that in fact, if we are going to have a Human Rights Commission that is trying to get away from discrimination, we are actually going to have separate titles for people. They are the “EO Commissioner”, they are the “Disability Commissioner”, or they are the whatever-else-specific commissioner. Let us not reflect those in the titles. In terms of the work that they do, it might be specific, it might be specialised, because it will take a certain amount of specialised knowledge, but it does not mean that we necessarily have to keep using the titles. I cannot understand why everyone is so upset over titles, because, at the end of the day, it is the function of the human rights commissioners, it is the function of the work that they are doing, to ensure that we have got those bases covered, which is really what is important.

The previous speaker alluded to the fact that around half of the people who submitted on this bill were opposed to it. It was sort of described as that being a significant number. If you are going to talk about half, well, actually, the other half is just as significant. So half of the people agree with what was being proposed. In my experience, it is usually the people who do come and make submissions, whether it be to council plans or to bills, who are the people who think there is something wrong with it. The people who think that it is OK tend not to speak up. Also, at the end of the day, we cannot simply base our decisions on the number of submissions that we receive either for or against any particular piece of legislation. We need to weigh it up on the basis of equality of what is presented.

We need to give our Human Rights Commission some flexibility. Yes, it is an independent body. It needs to be able to work in a way that reflects what it believes needs to be achieved. There has been a little bit of a talk about whether or not it is going to be told what to do by the Prime Minister or the relevant Minister. Well, it makes sense to me that they have an ability to consult and to talk and to have a conversation. No one is talking about giving up the independence of the Human Rights Commission, but we are talking about ensuring that we do have communication lines open and ensuring that those people who are responsible for making legislation that will affect this commission do have a direct line of communication. I think that is very important also.

It is one of those things we could talk about, really. There has been a lot of banter and discussion from people really nit-picking over some of the specific things, whether it be job titles or otherwise. But, in my mind, it really has to be about whether we are going to have a Human Rights Commission that is going to be improving. Is it going to be delivering better results for New Zealanders? Is it going to ensure that it is flexible, that it is adaptable, and that it is able to meet the needs of New Zealanders? That is what this amendment is about. It is about us ensuring that those people who need the services of the Human Rights Commission will have those needs met in the most appropriate way.

One of the things we were talking about a lot in Manila was the human rights conventions that are international conventions. This amendment absolutely wants to ensure that New Zealand is better equipped to meet those requirements that we voluntarily joined up with when we signed some of those various UN conventions. If we see an opportunity to enhance what we are doing, if we see an opportunity to make sure that we comply in a better way with those UN conventions and ignore it, well, then that is a little bit like, sort of, looking at yourself in the mirror and then going away and forgetting what you look like. It is a little bit like, I do not know, really disregarding yourself and disregarding what you stand for.

I think it is critical that when we see these opportunities, we make the amendments to the legislation to ensure that we do fulfil those things that we say, with the UN, we will do. I think that by making these amendments to ensure that the Human Rights Commission is better equipped to deal with that, when we ensure that our Human Rights Commission has the right kinds of roles in terms of best meeting the needs of New Zealanders, then that is exactly what we need to do. So, on that point, I want to finish and commend this Human Rights Amendment Bill to the House. Thank you.

Kia ora, Mr Assistant Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare ko tēnei pō. Before I start my speech I just want to pass an acknowledgment for a great activist Margaret Long, who passed away yesterday. She gave her life to women’s fight for equal pay, a campaign that we have by no means achieved. But Margaret’s life, and the life of her husband, Dan Long, was a tremendous life and a tremendous contribution to this country. Kia ora, Margaret and to all your whānau. Our thoughts are with you.

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear! Some of the things Government members have said tonight are just bizarre.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.