Gary Judd KC: Human rights - are they real?

Or are they just a gift of the government?

Roy, a commenter on my Lessons from Iran, says there is no such thing as human rights: “Human rights are given and allowed by Governments.”

This introduces a deep philosophical/legal question with profound implications. If Roy is right, it means that the Iranian people do not have the right to life or liberty because the government of Iran has not given and allowed them to have those rights. By way of an opposite example, it also means that New Zealanders have those rights only because the government has given them to us or allowed us to have them.

Bob Edlin: High Court champions prisoners’ rights and Goldsmith gets a Thistoll-whipping....

High Court champions prisoners’ rights and Goldsmith gets a Thistoll-whipping – but govt can make law-breaking legal

Maybe there’s no pressure, but stand by for more laws being amended under urgency – to make legal what the Government has done illegally.

The rest of us don’t have that privilege but it’s something governments can do. And it’s something the Luxon government has done already this year.

Will it happen again to remedy more recent transgressions?

Bob Edlin: Minister is admonished for not mentioning the muting of Maori media.....

Minister is admonished for not mentioning the muting of Maori media – but budget cuts have been bruising for ALL media

Remember what Budget 2025 did for the news media?

The government provided $6.4 million over four years to hire journalists in heartland New Zealand for reporting on councils and courts.

David Round: Thoughts for our Time - Article 13

Although it may be a slight digression from the main direction of these columns ~ and I risk being accused of being part of a ‘white feeding frenzy’, in the words of the head honcho of one of the growing number of Maori Parties ~ it may be of interest to consider several recent ‘reports’ about what a dreadful country we are.

Michael Laws on the incompatibility of human rights and Māori sovereignty.

On The Platform, Michael discusses Auckland Law School Associate Professor Andrew Erueti's new research, Indigenous Rights Beyond the Liberal Frame, explores how governments use the language of "equalit", "non-discrimination" and "one law for all" to resist Māori authority and constitutional transformation.


Click to view

Steven Gaskell: When “One Law for All” Becomes the Problem

https://shorturl.at/DxqkP

Apparently, human rights in New Zealand are no longer the solution they’re the enemy. At least, that’s the gospel according to Associate Professor Andrew Erueti, who’s discovered a shocking new injustice: the principle of equality is getting in the way of Māori sovereignty claims.

Mary Hobbs: ANZAC Day 2025 – A salute to some NZDF heroes

Non-cooperation with tyrants is a duty. — Gandhi

ANZAC Day is a traditional public holiday revered in New Zealand and Australia. It is a time when we remember, with the greatest respect, those who fought for what we all believed to be the freedom and democracy of our people and our countries.

Rebekah Barnett: Australia’s Covid Response Caused Significant Harm, Yet Another Official Report Finds

Five years on from the declaration of a global pandemic, I’m weary of Covid inquiries. They tend to go either of two ways. They either run through bureaucratic checkboxes and give everyone a medal for having locked down the fastest and vaccinated the most. Or, they spend months reviewing submissions and focus group transcripts to come to very obvious conclusions, like “closing schools for prolonged periods is damaging for kids” or “people don’t trust public health authorities if you attempt to force everyone to take an over-hyped vaccine“.

Point of Order: Buzz from the Beehive - 30/9/24

Corporate welfare? The Luxon government has yet to put a cork in it – and the wine industry has become a beneficiary

Eradicating corporate welfare was the rationale applied by the PM when he set about delivering National’s campaign promise to end the Government Decarbonising Industry Fund (GIDI).

Before the election, Christopher Luxon said he would use the Emissions Trading Scheme to give companies an incentive to install clean energy without taxpayer grants. He criticised Labour for handing out grants to “in many cases profitable” companies.

Alexander Gillespie: Foreign policy has been missing from NZ’s election campaign

Tax cuts, crime, the cost of living, potholes and co-governance … these and various other issues are now familiar to most voters. But there has been one major election area missing the serious debate it needs: foreign policy.

Whichever parties form the next government, and whoever becomes prime minister, they will also be charged with negotiating New Zealand’s place in a dynamic and changing world.

Adrian Beaumont: Foreign policy has been missing from NZ’s election campaign

Tax cuts, crime, the cost of living, potholes and co-governance … these and various other issues are now familiar to most voters. But there has been one major election area missing the serious debate it needs: foreign policy.

Whichever parties form the next government, and whoever becomes prime minister, they will also be charged with negotiating New Zealand’s place in a dynamic and changing world.

Point of Order: Little heed is paid to select committee advice that an immigration bill is not needed

Malcolm Harbrow, blogging on No Right Turn, has drawn attention to More petulance from Andrew Little

He reminds us that back in June, the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee reported back on the Inspector-General of Defence Bill, making numerous improvements.

But Defence Minister Andrew Little spurned the push for transparency and petulantly undid them.

Ian Bradford: The Labour Government continues to ignore human rights issues

In 2017, human Rights organisation Amnesty produced a report into cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It found that there were children as young as 7 working in dangerous conditions. 

Cobalt is a vital component of Lithium-Ion batteries used in electric vehicles. The DRC produces around 70% of the world’s cobalt. Miners working in the mines face long term health problems due to the inhalation of the dust from the compounds in the mine. This leads to lung disease.  Fatal accidents occur regularly due to mine collapse. 

Garrick Tremain: Merger

 Here is Garrick Tremain's cartoon commentary on Labour's new commissioners! 

Barend Vlaardingerbroek: Human rights – the gift of pale but not stale males to humankind

 Some of the pale non-stale males who drafted the 1789
Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen

Human rights are rights we have simply because we exist as human beings - they are not granted by any state. These universal rights are inherent to us all, regardless of nationality, sex, national or ethnic origin, color [sic], religion, language, or any other status. They range from the most fundamental - the right to life - to those that make life worth living, such as the rights to food, education, work, health, and liberty. 
-  UNHR Office of the High Commissioner

The expression ‘human rights’ has mantra status, but what exactly does it refer to?

Cam Slater: Oh, So Now You Are Interested in Human Rights?

Without even a shred of shame, David Seymour spoke at Waitangi about preserving universal human rights. So, apparently, now David Seymour is interested in universal human rights, freedom, and equality.

Point of Order: Ministers tackle various issues overseas....

.....while Kiri Allan extends the Human Rights Act to combat religious bigots in NZ

Two ministers are overseas, combating climate change (in the case of James Shaw) and Russian invaders (in the case of Defence Minister Peeni Henare).

Another minister is bound for Paris, to combat mental ill-health among other things, according to his press statement.

And back home, Justice Minister Kiri Allan is combating religious discrimination.

Chris Trotter: Eliminating The Racism Virus.

Unwilling to endure the opprobrium associated with its “gulags”, the Soviet Union of the 1970s changed tack. Rather than sending dissidents to labour camps the Soviet authorities decided to redefine dissidence as a form of mental illness. Opposition to the Soviet system could now be presented as a sickness, not deserving of condemnation, but care. Opponents of the USSR no longer faced summary trial and incarceration. Instead they were to be diagnosed and hospitalised. The barbed wire fences of the labour camps rusted away, replaced by the locked doors of Soviet mental hospitals. Resisting the tyranny of the Communist Party didn’t mean you were bad – it meant you were mad.

That this grim historical detail should be recalled more than thirty years after the collapse of the Soviet Union is due to Ao Mai te Rā | The Anti-Racism Kaupapa a document which first saw the light of day back in August 2022 under the rubric of the Ministry of Health. Subtitled “Combatting racism in the health and disability system”, Ao Mai te Rā boldly declares:

Bob Jones: More hitherto unknown human rights

Reporting on a voluntary palliative care group in Marlborough, the Dominion-Post quoted one member inventing yet another hitherto unknown human right, specifically,

“Everyone has the right to die comfortably…”

I’ll say it again, re this seemingly endless flow of “rights” claims; they’re aspirations, usually desirable to be sure, but rights they’re not.

Point of Order: Govt announces new transport and rental housing initiatives and enthuses about human rights

But without mentioning voting rights

The big announcement from the Beehive so far today is that workers and public transport users are at the heart of a new approach to public transport branded the Sustainable Public Transport Framework.

This is great news, although when you take workers and public transport users out of considerations it is hard to find too many other interested parties, besides politicians and administrators.