Andrew Easterbrook

The New Zealand legal system requires all prospective legislation (“bills”) to pass through the Attorney General’s office, which produces a report on its consistency with the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990. This is a crucial part of our process – since the Bill of Rights is not supreme law (it doesn’t trump other statutes unless a rule states otherwise), compatibility with it needs to be ensured to avoid possible human rights breaches within statutes. That is, if bills could pass through Parliament being inconsistent with the BORA, nobody would have recompense against those human rights-violating statutes just because they violate their human rights. That would be pretty shit. And guess what? It IS pretty shit: the AG’s vetting almost always gets ignored.

22 bills have had reports attached to them warning of inconsistency, and all but two were passed in their original form! The two most recent examples: the Copyright Amendment Act which introduced the controversial s92a-c (see my earlier posts) and just this week the Parole (Extended Supervision Orders) Amendment Act. The latter basically gives the parole board the power to extend conditions on monitoring and other parole-like conditions after a convicted person has served the entirety of his or her sentence. That is in effect basically extending a sentence beyond that which the judge deemed appropriate.

What the fuck? Why aren’t we listening to the Attorney General? Despite me not particularly liking National, the current Attorney General is very smart and on top of his game. And Parliament should be listening to him if he says something is wrong! Especially regarding bills passed under urgency, like the Parole (ESO) Amendment – when bills contrary to the BORA can be passed with 95% support in as little as a few days in the face of a warning by the AG something is wrong.

Further reading: 15 Lambton Quay – Claudia Geiringer, Greens the only party to oppose.