Human Rights Amendment Bill

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.

—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—

You are spoilt for choice, Mr Chairperson. I rise to make a contribution in this stage on the Human Rights Amendment Bill. I want to preface my contribution by mentioning that just recently, approximately a month ago, I attended the Ethnic Communities’ Engagement Summit hosted by Auckland University of Technology. They did a great job of bringing together a broad range of ethnic communities to discuss human rights, of all things.

We had present at that particular forum the current Race Relations Commissioner, Dame Susan Devoy, who heard from all of the ethnic communities that were represented there just how stretched the resources of the Human Rights Commission are, from their perspective as people within the communities who are looking towards the Human Rights Commission to look after some of these issues that they are faced with every day. They were very clear in their dissatisfaction with the service they received and are afraid that that is going to get worse under this particular amendment bill.

I think my colleague Jacinda Ardern has covered off quite well the aspects of the bill that we do not agree with that are forcing us to not support this bill. In particular, I want to have a look at clause 5, “Functions of Commission”, in particular where it says: “Section 5(2) is amended by inserting the following paragraphs after paragraph (k) that section 5(2) is amended by inserting the following paragraphs after paragraph K: ‘(ka) to report to either or both of the Prime Minister and the Minister responsible on any existing or proposed legislation (including subordinate legislation), administrative provision, or policy of the Government that the Commission considers may affect human rights:’ ”

Some of that I get. That is pretty straightforward. I think there should be a good relationship there between the relevant Minister and, of course, the commission in the important work that it does. But I take the contribution made by my colleague Dr Clark on the previous matter before the House where this seems like another process in licking your finger and putting it in the air and just wondering which way the wind blows. I am rather confident that there is no crystal ball in existence that allows that kind of a prescribed work agenda to be set to allow the Human Rights Commission to really do its job and do it well. What this tells me is that once it has put its finger in the air it has said to itself that there clearly is not a need for some of these roles—that we will not need an advocate for important matters such as equal employment opportunities.

We have had particular pieces of legislation come through this House recently where it has actually been highlighted that we do these types of roles to make sure that there are people there to represent the views of a wider community that are disaffected by these matters. Also, in terms of the disestablishment of the Race Relations Commissioner role, I would have thought at this particular point in time—as I said at the beginning of my contribution about the ethnic communities’ summit and the realities that they face—we know that there is an increasing number of people entering and flooding into our country. Some of them find their feet, but many of them do not.

I want to just digress very briefly, Mr Chair, with your indulgence, about one of the points made by a lot of the ethnic communities there. One of the panels that I spoke on was about the relationship between the Treaty of Waitangi and ethnic communities. They wondered whether there was any provision, or any sort of plan by this Government, and those who set the test for citizenship, to allow ethnic communities and those who come into the country to be afforded some sort of training in the Treaty of Waitangi, and a bit of history around the Treaty of Waitangi. But I will leave that on the floor for consideration.

So it is important, then, that the disestablishment of the Race Relations Commissioner as a full-time appointment is of huge concern to us. It is of huge concern to us in Tāmaki-makau-rau, where most of the large ethnic communities find a home. A lot of them struggle. A lot of them do not know where they can go to. I am afraid that, sadly, by disestablishing these full-time appointments, we are going to find a group in our society who will not know where to go and who will not have the confidence to approach the office of the Human Rights Commission to express their views so that their views are heard and so that the role of the commission can be fulfilled in advising this Government, or producing the types of evidence and reports that are required to assist this Government in making a good policy plan moving forward, on how we help to establish the many ethnic communities that find a home here in Aotearoa New Zealand.

I want to just go back briefly to the section that I talked about with regard to the provision “to report to either or both of the Prime Minister and the Minister responsible”. We have some concerns with regard to this, as we feel that the role of the commission is actually to be somewhat of an independent lens upon many of the issues that are brought to its office from across the country. Sadly, we feel that by having that kind of a relationship, where work schedules are set and where policy directions are forced upon the Human Rights Commission, we are afraid that a lot of the actual work that was done by the commission—the good work—is going to be lost. There will be no consideration in the future for a lot of the priority needs of the communities that seek the assistance of the Human Rights Commission.

Just in conclusion, one of the big concerns, and this is my contribution this evening, is the reduction in the number of commissioners. We have debated many times in this House about the huge workload and the programme being placed on institutions such as the Human Rights Commission and our public sector, yet we question whether or not the support is in place for them to fulfil their job properly and we question whether or not they have the resources and the capacity to actually fulfil their job and do it well. Recently I have talked about the Māori Land Court and some of the shortcomings there, and I am afraid that this amendment being proposed to the Human Rights Commission is just going to put more stress on it.

I want to finish by quoting—which I have done before in this Chamber, and others have—the expression of Meri Ngāroto from the far north, who said “He aha te mea nui o tēnei ao, māku e kī atu he tangata, he tangata, he tangata!”, and I can say that he tangata come in many shapes and forms. We are afraid that the proposed amendment that we are debating this evening is going to remove the rights and the assistance and the services for those many people in our community who make up that expression “he tangata, he tangata, he tangata!”. Kia ora tātou.

I would like to focus my comments in support of Supplementary Order Paper 175, which reinserts the separate designation of the Race Relations Commissioner and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, as well as that of the Disability Rights Commissioner. I want to stand and acknowledge the Māori Party for lobbying and enabling that, and I acknowledge Minister Amy Adams for listening and bringing this Supplementary Order Paper to the House.

The Supplementary Order Paper expresses one of the major concerns that the Green Party and many submitters had about the bill, which the Minister of Justice at the time refused to address. It was clear to me from listening to the many submissions that the removal of the specific titles was perceived by the communities that these commissioners support as a lessening of the roles and a change in the specific special character and focus on disability of these roles.

So the change in this Supplementary Order Paper, I would say, is not minor. It is significant. It is significant because titles do matter, and for each of the priority areas of the Human Rights Commission it is vital, in our view, that the titles of the commissioners do reflect these priority areas. Specific designations not only create clarity and increase visibility; they affirm the critical importance of these issues to the groups represented, in a way that downgrading to generalised commissioners leading the areas of priority does not.

This is because the priority areas in the bill are just that—priority areas that really focus on the community, where there is still a long way to go to ensure that their human rights are recognised, for disabled people are amongst the most marginalised and discriminated-against people in New Zealand. They are under-represented in employment and homeownership, they are overrepresented in prisons, and they face major challenges in accessing health and other services. Over 30 percent of complaints to the Human Rights Commission are related to disability. Gender issues are as critical as ever, with record levels of domestic and sexual violence in this country, and a significant pay gap for women in many sectors. We see appalling—absolutely appalling—levels of abuse and racism directed at Māori in this country on an almost daily basis. All of these factors combined affirm that this is absolutely not the time to be disestablishing the specialised designations for the human rights commissioners.

First, I want to put on record, again, that the move by the Government to create the position of a Disability Rights Commissioner was partly prompted when a member’s bill by my colleague Catherine Delahunty was pulled from the members’ bill ballot in 2010. That bill by Catherine established a designated disability commissioner to sit alongside the existing specialist designations of the Race Relations Commissioner and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, and it was long overdue because for far too long the needs and rights of disabled people have languished far behind those of other people, in part due to the major structural and systematic failures that disabled people face in this country, along with systematic, negative attitudes towards people living with impairment—towards disabled people.

Catherine, at the time, was doing her best in good faith, when the Government announced that it would be creating a disabilities commissioner, under the assumption that such a position would be created to stand alongside the existing designated positions, and that is why we objected so strongly when it was found that the bill was going to go much further than that and actually restructure the commission and downgrade the specific designations. So it is a huge relief, in fact, that this Supplementary Order Paper now reinserts these specific designations. Thank you.

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.

I will take a call this evening on the Human Rights Amendment Bill and address a number of the issues that I have heard discussed around the Committee this evening. Firstly, it is not entirely clear to me that Mr Shearer, who has just resumed his seat, and Mr Henare, I think it was, who spoke earlier in the debate, are aware of the Government’s Supplementary Order Paper 175—which I will talk to in a minute—which makes it very clear that, far from disestablishing any positions, they are absolutely being maintained in name and in function.

What I want to take the Committee through is that the point of the bill was to address the fact that, at the moment, the structure of the Human Rights Commission limits the ability of the Commission to act as effectively as it could, so at the moment the Commission can only act with three full-time members and a number of part-time members. It might interest the Committee to know that, actually, at the moment the commission has the equivalent of 4.7 commissioners, so we have three full-time and a number of part-time commissioners, who make up 4.7 full-time slots if you take them out to a full-time equivalent. What we have found in talking with the commission is that, actually, for those part-time commissioners, although they have done some excellent work, it has really impinged upon their ability to take full part in the life of the commission as what they are, first and foremost, which is human rights commissioners.

The change of the structure of the commission is an important one, and one that the commission supports, which is to say that, actually, to have four or five full-time commissioners absolutely preserves the resourcing of the commission, and that is the point I wanted to make very clearly. We are not reducing the total number of commissioners. Four to five full-time commissioners is the same as is available at the moment, and slightly more if needed, but it means that each one of those commissioners is a full-time human rights commissioner and is not finding that they are losing a large part of their working day on administrative matters.

I have spent a number of my working years in part-time roles. I can tell you that when you are in a part-time role, you spend a huge amount of your time doing the administrative meetings that everyone has to do, and that leaves you very little time to do your job, and that is certainly what our part-time commissioners were finding. So by making them all full-time commissioners, we expect, and the commission expects, that they will be far more able to take an active role in the life of the commission.

I want to come back to this point around this alleged disestablishment of the roles. I want to read what the bill said initially, which made it very clear that there must be a commissioner, other than the Chief Human Rights Commissioner, who will lead the work of the commission in respect of disability rights—which is, of course, the new commissioner position—equal employment opportunities, including pay equity; and race relations. All the way through, the bill has been extremely clear that there has to be a full-time commissioner appointed to lead the work in each of those roles.

Talking with my colleagues in the Māori Party, they felt very strongly that the title itself had to be provided in statute, and, look, I was very open to that. So we have put up the Supplementary Order Paper, which makes it clear that after each of those lines, it now goes on to say “(the Disability Rights Commissioner)”, “(the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner)”, and “(the Race Relations Commissioner)”. The roles were always in the legislation, the roles have never been disestablished, and now, with the Supplementary Order Paper, we are making it very clear that the title also remains. If the title gives this Committee some comfort, then that is wonderful; I am very happy to support that. The roles were always there. They were there in substance, and they remain there. So to stand in this Chamber and suggest that the roles are being disestablished is completely misleading and, I would say, somewhat disingenuous. From the day this bill was introduced, it has been absolutely clear in statute that there would always be a requirement for commissioners to be leading each one of those pieces of work and, in fact, as I have said, now we have made it very clear that the titles are also not being removed, and I would argue that there was no requirement they ever would be. But, as I said, if it gives the Committee some comfort, we are very happy to do that.

The other allegation that has been made is one that, somehow, the bill removes the independence of the chief commissioner. Again, I dispute that. The bill makes it very clear that the chief commissioner has the right to determine other priority areas. One of the things I like about the structure of this bill is that although we have created the new Disability Rights Commissioner and we have protected the statutory roles of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and the Race Relations Commissioner, we have also made it very clear that we have provided the capability for the chief commissioner to identify other priority areas.

Human rights are not a static beast. We are living in a period of incredible change with the advent of the digital economy, and the way we live our lives is changing. It is absolutely clear to me that in the period that this legislation is current, there will be the need to have human rights commissioners focused on other pieces of work. We wanted to make sure that the chief commissioner absolutely had the capability and the legislative scope to do that. Under the bill, the chief commissioner has the absolute right to determine any of those other priority areas. Yes, there is an obligation to consult with the other commissioners, as there is an obligation to consult with the Minister, but the Minister does not control it, the Minister does not dictate it, and the Minister cannot veto it. You would expect any chief commissioner working under the responsible Minister to at least advise and seek the views of the Government. That chief commissioner can ignore them if he or she chooses, and that is very clear in the bill—it is only an obligation to consult. I would suggest that to not do that would be absolutely poor practice, and I would not think anyone would support that. But it cannot be said that somehow the Government has the control or that that independence is in any way being diminished.

The last comment I wanted to pick up on was, again, Mr Shearer’s suggestion that somehow this bill was being looked down on by the international community and we were being criticised or it degrades us. In actual fact, I was at the UN—

💬 Jacinda Ardern: We were. The UN criticised us. That’s why you changed the bill.

—no—Human Rights Council in Geneva this year, and it was very clear—in fact, it encouraged the Government to pass this bill without delay. So I would just say to the Labour Party, which is opposing it, that the Human Rights Council of the UN urged the Government to pass this legislation without delay. That is what we are doing, and I think the Labour Party has to look at itself to ask why it is opposing legislation that the UN Human Rights Council has urged this Government to pass without delay, that the Human Rights Commission is anxious to get under way with, that creates the new role of Disability Rights Commissioner, that provides the scope and capability for the chief commissioner to develop other priority areas, and that ensures that they have the full resourcing to do that.

It is an excellent bill. I look forward to this House passing it.

Every party in this House wants an effective and efficient Human Rights Commission—that much, I think, is common amongst us all. The only question, then, is: how do you achieve that? On this occasion New Zealand First agrees with the Government and does not agree with either the Greens or the Labour Party. The reasons for that are fairly clear in my mind. Firstly, I listened to David Shearer’s speech and he said that the bill is not fixing anything—for reasons I will give later, I think that it does—he questioned underlying motives, which he did not specify; he said that there would be a weakening of rights, which does not occur in this bill; he questions independence, which is not actually threatened at all; and he says that, internationally, minimum standards, especially in relation to the Race Relations Commissioner, would be reduced, thus resulting in international reputational damage. I do not see any of that occurring either.

The truth about the matter is that if you actually look at what the bill says, it says that there must be a commissioner other than the chief commissioner appointed to lead the work in each of the priority areas, which are actually specified: disability rights, which the Greens are particularly interested in, and that is great; equal employment opportunities, which I know the Labour Party is particularly interested in, and that is great, too; and race relations, which we are all very interested in. But the important thing here is that the chief commissioner is also able to designate a commissioner to lead work in other priority areas, and that is a leap forward as far as I am concerned.

We in New Zealand First, for example, think that there is a lot of work to do as far as the elderly are concerned and some of the rights that they are not being delivered in this country. In fact, ageism is a really serious problem in New Zealand. I hope that the chief commissioner will have a look at that. Of course, he will have to consult about those additional designations with the other commissioners—and, yes, with the Minister—but I see no harm in consultation on that.

New Zealand First does not agree with the other parties about the perceived loss of specialised commissioners. If you look at Supplementary Order Paper 175 you will see straight away that the titles or designations are actually restored in that anyway. The new approach will lead to commissioners being appointed to lead priority areas but that still allows the flexibility that those commissioners can work in other areas as well. I think that is very important. I think that is one of the things that is fixed in this legislation. I think it will make the Human Rights Commission more effective and more efficient, and surely we all want that.

💬 Hon David Cunliffe: More efficient to abolish it altogether.

See, that is the kind of comment that I hear from Mr Cunliffe: “abolish it altogether.” Can that member have actually read this bill if he is going to make an inane and idiotic statement like that? Can he have actually read the bill if he is going to make a stupid statement like that? Obviously not—obviously not. What the bill actually says is that the decisions made about what those lead areas are going to be has to be done in accordance with the strategy that all of the commissioners have to agree upon. The Justice and Electoral Committee actually added the words to amended section 8(1B): “… in accordance with the strategic direction and the general nature of activities determined by the Commission under section 7(1) …”. So it shows that what is going to guide its decision making in this is a strategy, and I am very glad to see that, because if it had not been in this bill it is exactly what New Zealand First would have moved to achieve.

Those new priority areas will have to be allocated in accordance with the strategic direction determined by the commission as a whole. That is, I think, one of the things that is being fixed in the bill. We do not have the concern that some of the other parties have over the fact that the Minister is to be consulted over the strategy in those priority areas. There is nothing wrong with consultation if that is all it is—consultation. Consultation with the Minister of Justice is completely appropriate, as it would be with anyone else who has a direct interest, but consultation does not mean direction. Direction would be inappropriate, and I am sure that if direction was attempted with that commission, it would be rejected. So I do not see an issue with that either.

The issue that I want to end on is simply this: the bill does fix something else in that it makes sure that the people appointed will be suitable people for the lead areas. This is something that I would like the Green Party in particular to consider, because I know that it is especially concerned about disability issues, and I have great respect for its expertise in that area. But it says that you have to have a commissioner whose only job is to do that. I do not think that is necessarily good for the commission, and I think that as long as suitable people are selected then there is not going to be a problem. If you look at new section 13, inserted by clause 9, you will see that the Minister has to have regard not just to their own personal opinion but to some specified criteria. The first is an understanding of the principles and practice relating to the relevant priority area—the relevant priority area; secondly, an appreciation of the issues in the area internationally; and thirdly, an ability to carry out the functions specified in new section 16, which itself has actually been substituted to ensure skills and leadership ability and the ability to contribute to public debate. So if you look at all of those criteria together I am sure that this regime will result in a more effective and more efficient Human Rights Commission where people will have specified roles, leadership to exercise, special expertise backing that up, and they will also, however, work together as a commission on everything. I think that one of the defects in the existing legislation is that it did not make that very clear.

I think that this is a prescription for a much, much better Human Rights Commission, one that will work together in an integrated way and one that will understand what each area is doing, and yet, at the same time, will mean that that leadership that is necessary in those priority areas will still be exercised. So I think that is a great balance. It is a big step forward. I do not for the life of me understand why either the Labour or the Green Party are opposing it, because it is good legislation. We do not hesitate to say so when that is true, and we will be voting for it.

I just want to clear something up: the Greens’ position on this bill has changed from time to time, and with the introduction of Supplementary Order Paper 175, in the Minister’s name, we have revised our positon. If that Supplementary Order Paper passes, then we will be supporting the bill. The reason we are doing that is that we see it as an act of good faith. The reason we see it as an act of good faith is—if some people in this House cast their minds back, they may remember—that in October 2010 the Greens had a member’s bill in the name of Catherine Delahunty pulled, which was called the Human Rights (Disability Commissioner) Amendment Bill. That bill, essentially, set out that the Human Rights Commission would have a designated disability commissioner, because we do not actually agree with the New Zealand First speaker who suggests that you can do everything. Generalisation means that specific attention wanders, and that is what we need if we are to address some of the issues facing the disability community.

As well as creating a designated disability commissioner, Catherine Delahunty’s bill also spelt out the specific criteria for the appointment and an extensive list of the functions that that disability commissioner would undertake. It was developed in extensive consultation with the disability community. One of the things that the disability community said it really wanted from a disability commissioner was for that person to have experienced having a disability, for them to actively engage with different communities or persons living with impediments—they needed to be an advocate for their interests, rights, and well-being, and, crucially, they needed to assist the Government to work towards the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. This was all part of a bill that was pulled from the ballot. When the Government said in 2010 that it was looking to introduce legislation that would enshrine in legislation the position of a disabilities commissioner, we pulled that bill in good faith. So you can imagine that we were very, very disappointed when this bill came to the House and it was not actually at all like what we had hoped for. In fact, it looked like it was set to disestablish the specific positions and to just have them covered by broad portfolio roles. That has been our major concern all the way through: that the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and the Race Relations Commissioner and the work of disability would basically be portfolios rather than specific commission roles.

The other thing that we found extremely difficult about the introduction of this bill, as it was written when it went to the first reading, was that it did look like it was restructuring the Human Rights Commission by stealth. We certainly believe that we still need designated commissioners working within the Human Rights Commission, with the Chief Commissioner, and that they are specifically addressing the issues of each of those areas. We still need an equal employment opportunities commissioner. We just have to look at the whole situation with the Kristine Bartlett equal pay case, where the Crown is currently negotiating what the principles are in order to ensure that women’s work is valued at the same amount as traditionally male occupations. There is still a pay gap of between 11.8 percent and 14 percent for the average hourly rate for women workers. So we have not achieved pay equity yet. Women are still facing barriers to leadership in the workplace, both in the public and private sectors, with only around about 43 percent of women in senior positions at board level. How can we know these facts if we have not got someone keeping their eye on it? The role of these commissioners is to advocate in these areas. We would not necessarily know this information if we did not have someone set to do it.

We also need a specific Race Relations Commissioner. The New Zealand Federation of Multicultural Councils rightly pointed out in its submission that the “genericisation” or “mainstreaming” of positions that are dedicated to race relations functions means that the functions are diminished and absorbed, which is why it stated that it is therefore all the more important that the designation of Race Relations Commissioner itself not be disestablished. We know from its report, which it released last year, Our Multicultural Future, that non-Pākehā New Zealanders still continue to face massive discrimination in New Zealand, particularly in the areas of education and employment, with people who have the requisite qualifications and experience facing difficulties finding commensurate employment and having their previous employment overseas recognised. The 2012 Statistics New Zealand report revealed that 187,000 New Zealanders had experienced racial discrimination and that nearly one in five Asian New Zealanders has also reportedly experienced racism in the last 12 months. That harassment ranges from a variety of bad behaviour, including workplace harassment, street cat-calling, applying for work, or dealing with the police. So it is clear that New Zealanders have a lot more work to do and that a specific Race Relations Commissioner is part of that.

We also support, and we specifically need, the Disability Rights Commissioner, and that is the major reason we are supporting this bill, because it creates that in legislation for the first time. We need a Disability Rights Commissioner because of the shocking 60 percent unemployment rate among people with disabilities. Disabled people are also less likely to have a formal qualification, with 67 percent holding a school or tertiary qualification compared with 85 percent of adults with no disabilities. Sixty-four percent of disabled adults have an annual gross income of $30,000 or lower, compared with 45 percent of the abled community. So, overall, it is clear that in this country we are not doing more to enable New Zealanders with disabilities to fully participate in everything that our country has to offer, and that is why we need a Disability Rights Commissioner to advocate for that and to make it happen. Thank you.

I rise to reaffirm Labour’s opposition to this bill, and I do so on two grounds in particular. Firstly, this bill undermines the independence of the Human Rights Commission. It makes it subject to consultation with a Minister, which is the antithesis of the independence required of an independent body, such as the Human Rights Commission, which is charged, sometimes, to lean against Government policy. Therefore, making its work programme subject to ministerial consultation is entirely the opposite of what would make a more effective and more efficient commission.

Secondly, although it is true the Government has introduced a late Supplementary Order Paper that restores the title of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and the Race Relations Commissioner, which we welcome, we still do not believe that the process there has been transparent, nor was the original bill one that would uphold New Zealand’s reputation, and I will come back to that reason and the evidence for it.

Thirdly, this bill still reduces the number of commissioners, thereby limiting the scope of the commission. Taken as a whole, Labour continues to believe that this was not a bill that was required, and that the so-called fix is worse than the problem. It reduces the effectiveness and efficiency of the commission.

May I also introduce, as I set out the case here, the fact that the Government’s attempts to weaken the Human Rights Commission—because that is what it amounts to; or to fetter it or to hog-tie it to the whims of the Minister of the day—is in keeping with other efforts that the Government has made to weaken the independent statutory watchdogs of our polity. The underfunding of the Ombudsman is something that is now so well-known across the community, and the backlogs that have been created by the current Government’s arrogant and out-of-touch efforts to constrain its resourcing are such that we are faced with a position where Ministers thumb their noses at Official Information Act requests awaiting an appeal that might take a year to come.

We have also noticed, in terms of independent watchdogs, the weakness in the Overseas Investment Commission, which has been thrown—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! That is not in this. Come back to the bill.

—into stark relief, no doubt, by the Panama Papers.

Coming back to this bill, our concern is that the weakening of the Human Rights Commission would be amongst the factors that Transparency International will consider next time around when it gives New Zealand a further downgrade. Why does this matter? Because New Zealand’s international reputation as a trading nation, let alone our hoped-for position as an upstanding member of the international community committed to the rule of international law and human rights, is downgraded by this successive top-slicing of these independent institutions by a Government that is showing every sign of “third-term-itis”, wanting to take more power to the executive, undermining the role of the watchdogs—

💬 Hon Simon Bridges: The member knows all about that. He’s been there, done that, written the book.

—undermining the role of the legislature. Oh, Mr Bridges. Mr Bridges has not learnt the lessons of the Northland campaign, where he showed up and offered a whole few bridges, and the good people of Northland sent him packing.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Come back to the bill.

I am responding to an interjection, Mr Chairman, which I am sure you found as amusing as the members opposite. Look how enlivened they are. Look how enlivened they are by the debate.

💬 Chris Bishop: You couldn’t even be bothered running.

Mr Bishop, the also-ran from Lower Hutt, is just looking across at his colleague in jealous admiration—

💬 Peeni Henare: Get involved in Northland.

—of his also-ran in Northland. I am surrounded by the sons of Ngāpuhi, and they are looking across the Chamber and saying “Mr Bridges, good luck.”

But look, back to the issues that concern us here. All revelry and joking aside—it is late in the evening—the issue here is that New Zealand’s reputation counts for something. If we want to be a trading nation, if we want to expand our markets overseas, then our reputation for integrity has got to be beyond question. It is a matter of concern to New Zealanders that we are slipping down the rankings for the anti-corruption index and Transparency International, and it is, in part, because the Government is doing successive small weakenings of our independent watchdog agencies—and that is what this is.

Let me come to the second issue here, which is concerned with Supplementary Order Paper 175. The Government initially stripped the explicit titles of the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner and the Race Relations Commissioner out of the legislation governing the Human Rights Commission. Although we support, as our Green colleagues do, the appointment of a disabilities commissioner, we are very concerned to see those titles withdrawn. It might seem semantic, but how would a commissioner stand up in public and uphold the specific weight of an office if that office’s title has been removed? And why do it, other than to subsume that?

💬 Hon Member: The SOP.

I know that the Supplementary Order Paper does, but I am just saying that we in the Labour Opposition have not been impressed by the original displayed intent, nor the lack of transparency in the process. It is only after the United Nations itself criticised the Government for the original drafting, and only after, word has it, some of the Government’s coalition partners turned turtle on it and it lost the numbers to get the bill through in its original form, that it has had to compromise and come back to the House with its tail between its legs, offering up this Supplementary Order Paper in a last-ditch attempt to get the bill through.

Why such a humiliating back-down for a Government, on a bill that has been before the House since January last year—and done in Budget week. Has the Government nothing better to do? Has it nothing better to do? There are huge issues facing New Zealand—climate change, homelessness, poverty—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! If I have to interrupt the member again on relevancy, I will terminate his speech.

Thank you, Mr Chairman. Therefore, we have had a considered reflection on this bill, and we maintain our opposition to it. It is, in summary, based on three grounds—firstly, the fettering and limitation of the commission by requiring consultation with the Minister of the day, and I will say a couple more words on that. The Minister, of course, represents the executive. The whole point of having an independent statutory commissioner is to weigh against the executive by taking an independent statutory perspective. The commission has its own resourcing; it has its own media. It is not subject to Order in Council. It is not subject to Cabinet collective responsibility. That is the whole point. It is a creature created by statute, created by this House.

The commission has delegated statutory powers that depend upon not only its actual independence but its perceived independence. That perceived independence is under threat, as is the actual independence, when its work plan has got to be consulted on with the Minister. Consultation, in this context, is a loaded term. It means that the civil servant has to walk up to Minister Adams’ or Minister Collins’ office, as it was when the bill was drafted, to say: “Well, this is what we want to do. What do you think?”. The Minister says “Well, I really don’t want you doing (a), (e), and (f) on that list.”, and some sort of compromise might be worked out. That is what consultation amounts to. That is inappropriate, both in substance and in perception, and that is the principal reason why this Labour Party continues its opposition to this bill.

If we want to have a reputation for integrity, if we want that to underpin our position in international affairs, then we have to have not only the substance but also the recognition of that independence, and that does not mean fettering independent watchdog agencies to consultation with a member of the executive. It is not appropriate. It is actually the antithesis of what the commission should be.

So, summing up, we have got three reasons why we are continuing to be opposed to the bill: the first is the consultation process, the second is the lack of transparency and the original formation of the withdrawal of the titles of the Race Relations Commissioner and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, and the third is the overall limitation on the number of commissioner positions. Thank you very much.

I think we need to be absolutely clear about what Minister Adams has and has not done with her amendments to this bill. This bill does not simply reinstate positions that were removed and everything is back to the status quo. The current legislation allows for there to be up to three full-time and up to five part-time commissioners and for the flexibility to appoint around what those roles need to be. Of course, we have added the Disability Rights Commissioner, the specific role, and we applaud that. Obviously it means that we would then have four commissioners. But what this bill does is it means that we could, essentially, end up with fewer commissioners than what the original Human Rights Act allowed us to have. I want to be absolutely clear. Thank you, Minister, for your Supplementary Order Paper 175. We support the Supplementary Order Paper. It was the right thing to do, to reinstate those specific designations, but the bill still has not changed the fact that the commission will consist of the Chief Human Rights Commissioner and no fewer than three and no more than four other commissioners. Even if they take the maximum, we will still have fewer commissioners. That is a matter of fact.

I am yet to see a rationale from this Government as to why we would want to reduce the representative roles that commissioners have within the Human Rights Commission. Why would we want to reduce their capacity? They have always used their flexibility appropriately in that regard. They have sometimes used their part-time roles as a 0.3 and up to a 0.5, according to what the needs of the commission were. But it seems suspicious to me that at the same time there have been criticisms that the chief executive of the Human Rights Commission is drawing a salary that required, as I understand, a special exemption from the State Services Commission. At the same time as we are drawing higher salaries for our chief executives, we are reducing the number of commissioners. So I am somewhat suspicious about that. Unless the Minister can tell me that she fully exhausted all of the rationale as to why we would not want to give the capacity to have the same number of commissioners as we have now, then I will remain suspicious as to why we are doing that—unless I hear some rationale as to why we would reduce that representation. That is one of the reasons that we have had concerns and previously had opposition to this bill. Thank you for the designations, but I still have significant suspicions.

Perhaps the Minister might want to rise, and if she is perhaps suggesting that this is not an issue of concern, why is there not a Supplementary Order Paper that, at the same time as she has included the specific designations, reinstates the number of commissioners that it is possible to have? It was one of the options canvassed by the regulatory impact statement. It looked at just simply retaining that flexibility. In fact, one of the whole reasons we had this bill in the first place was a complaint that there was a lack of flexibility for the commissioners to be appointed. Well, now we have got a situation where the Minister, rightly, has said we will have a specific Equal Employment Opportunities Commissioner, we will have a specific Race Relations Commissioner, and we will have a specific Disability Rights Commissioner. Actually, if you include the Chief Human Rights Commissioner in there, we could end up with nothing else—nothing else.

Minister , I would really appreciate some rationale from you, perhaps; maybe, if not that, a commitment that any budget saved would be going back into representative work and not just higher salaries, or a Supplementary Order Paper on the Table saying that actually there is no point reducing the number of commissioners and that you will maintain what was the status quo. I look forward to some response from the Minister in that regard, because it is significant. It may seem like we are just removing some flexibility, but we, of course, had grave concerns with taking out a designated title, so why would we not have concerns with removing the discretion in the future to appoint a commissioner in an area that becomes of substantive concern? I have already raised an example of where, down the track, it would be potentially useful to have that ability from the human rights commissioner.

There has also been raised the issue of consultation with the Minister. Even though there is some specification within the Human Rights Act 1993 around consultation—that is in specific reference, it reads to me, to the commissioner’s allocation of portfolios—in this particular amendment bill, it is very clear under Part 1, clause 6(1B), where it 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 and the other Commissioners.” That reads to me that both the strategic direction and the designation of roles could, therefore, be determined with the Minister.

I know it has been stated that consultation—consultation—means that the commissioner can come in and inform. I have seen the word “consultation” used in those relationships before. Let us be really clear, because I have heard, for instance, the Law Commission, which I doubt anyone in this Committee would think feels under the thumb of the Government at all, say at select committee that even though it has the ability to set its own agenda in terms of the work that it does, it knows there is no point in bringing to the Minister—in consultation with the Minister for its work programme—something that is not within their political orbit or their political priorities. So there is a self-filtration that happens when you are required to consult—even though it is the word “consult”—that means entities, naturally, will not bring something that they consider to be unpalatable in case it gets taken off the agenda and just dismissed. If it is simply a matter of being informed, then call it that. Let us be specific that it is actually just that they have to notify the Minister. The word “consult” is very different to the word “notify”, and I have no doubt that a human rights commissioner who is obliged to consult is therefore likely to take on board the feedback that is given by that Minister when it comes to allocating any potential new commissioner roles.

I thought that this amendment bill could have been a perfect chance to reflect back on the Paris principles, which were passed by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1993, which set out the status of national institutions—basically, what should it look like when a country sets up a human rights institution? What are the really core principles to make sure you establish a proper, robust human rights institution? It says in the Paris principles that a national institution “shall be vested with competence”. It should be given “as broad a mandate as possible”. I think that is interesting: “A national institution shall be given as broad a mandate as possible, which shall be clearly set forth in a constitutional or legislative text”. So although we want to specify composition and sphere of competence, actually allowing that flexibility that we talked about in those roles, which we lose in this bill, is a core principle of the Paris principles. It also talks about submitting any human rights concerns to the Government “on an advisory basis either at the request of the authorities” or at the exercise of its own power.

But all the way through, right down through, I found, particularly, Minister, the methods of operation—the framework that the national institution shall freely consider any questions falling within its competence, whether they are submitted by the Government or not; hear any person; address public opinion; and establish working groups from among its members as necessary. All of these fundamental principles talk about the need for it to maintain that independence. There was a prime opportunity with this review of the Act to sit back and ask: are we upholding the Paris principles to the very best of our ability? And if there is any concern that embedding principles around consultation may be misinterpreted by a commission to be more than advising or informing, then perhaps we should change our language. Perhaps we should look at the kind of language that embeds independence.

In fact, if we really were taking a first-principles review, why would we not set up at the same time a select committee within our Parliament to review human rights on a regular basis to ensure that we are upholding those important institutions within New Zealand? It has been recommended. I think there are good grounds for it. That is the kind of first-principles debate we should have been having when this amendment bill was put forward, and, in fact, when the Ministry of Justice in 2010 established its review in the first place—going back and ensuring that we were trying to uphold those principles that we signed to in Paris in 1993.

I move, That the question be now put.