RICHARD PREBBLE: Some suggestions to Winston on how he should write to the UN

Mr. Albert K. Barume, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples, based in Geneva, wrote to ministers alleging that the Regulatory Standards bill “fails to uphold the principles of partnership, active protection, and self‑determination guaranteed under the Treaty of Waitangi”.

David Seymour responded expressing the views most of us hold saying: “We neither require nor welcome external lectures on our governance, particularly from bodies whose understanding of our nuanced historical, cultural, and constitutional context is so clearly deficient.”  

Winston Peters says as Foreign Minister it is his right to respond, which is technically correct.

What is worrying is that Mr. Peters says he needs advice from “ministries” to draft the letter. Advice from the ministries whose unbridled power the Regulatory Standards Bill seeks to restrain.

Peters could just re-date Seymour’s letter, sign it, and send it again.

It would send a very powerful message not just to the UN but to the critics of the Regulatory Standards Bill.     

Mr. Peters should reflect if this toothless bill is too much for the bureaucracy, what are they afraid of?

Is it because the bill implements not 21^st century invented socialist “treaty principles” but the 1840 promises that the Crown did make to protect property rights and grant equal citizenship?

Is it because the bill states that Parliament and the executive should be guided by principles—principles like property rights, proportional taxation, judicial independence, and fair compensation when the state takes your land?

The bill doesn’t create new rights. It merely codifies values New Zealand claims to support.

If Mr. Peters must amend the letter he should point out that New Zealand is a founding signatory of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 17 says:

(1) Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.

(2) No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.

Every UN member pledge to uphold the declaration.  New Zealand never has. In 1990, a Labour government deliberately excluded property rights from the Bill of Rights Act.

Taking property without compensation is a feature of New Zealand government from the settler administrations to today.

Councils by “regulatory takings” turn private land into de facto public parks. Homeowners have their houses red zoned. Property owners who have their land seized under the Public Works Act can face years of delay before receiving inadequate compensation.

Mr. Peters could advise the Special Rapporteur on the rights of Indigenous Peoples that it has been estimated that around 69% of Māori land is under-utilized, largely due to regulatory constraints. Now that is a breach of the Crown’s guarantee to Maori of “full exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands”.

These aren’t ancient injustices. They’re current practice.

What critics of the bill oppose is citizens, Maori and non-Maori, having property rights.

They fear legal clarity.

The Regulatory Standards Bill sets out six principles that laws should meet: clarity, equal treatment, protection of liberty and property, proportional taxes, judicial respect, and transparency.

These are principles Winston Peters has championed.

In establishing New Zealand First in July 1993, Peters emphasised his loyalty to the original ideals that defined the National Party, and he pledged that New Zealand First would support “accountable and transparent government”.

These are the principles upheld by the Regulatory Standards Bill.

What happens to those principles if the bill is guttered or defeated?

That would send a message louder than any law. It would confirm that in New Zealand, the state answers only to itself. That despite signing human rights declarations we are unwilling to apply the principles we preach aboard here at home.

Mr. Peters cites his experience. That experience should make his letter to the UN an even more vigorous defense of the Regulatory Standards Bill.

The Honourable Richard Prebble CBE is a former member of the New Zealand Parliament. Initially a member of the Labour Party, he joined the newly formed ACT New Zealand party under Roger Douglas in 1996, becoming its leader from 1996 to 2004.