M.P. advocates bill of rights

Press, 10 February 1983, Page 11

M.P. advocates bill of rights

Parliamentary reporter

The Government should consider seriously drawing up a bill of human rights to protect the citizen against the sovereignly of the Government and Parliament, the National member of Parliament for Fendalton. Mr P. R. Burdon. has said in Christchurch.

Addressing the Christchurch Lions Club. Mr Burdon said that criticism of the adversary nature of politics, and short-term policies caused bv three-yearly General Elections, was justified. It was time for a public debate on Parliamentary reform. he said. T believe a bill of rights is in order, to defend certain rights that neither the politicians nor institutionalised society, nor anyone else has a right to undermine."

The precedents were the United Nations Charter and the European Covention of Human Rights.

Parliament was an elected dictatorship which made laws that the courts could not overrule or annul. Mr Burdon said. But the Government and Parliament were not the only institutions that the individual needed to be defended against.

The trade union movement was another overpowering institution.

“The issue of compulsoryunionism is in my opinion a particularly offensive example of the infringements of the rights of the individual," Mr Burdon said.

“I have great respect for the European Court on Human Rights when it invoked Article 11 at the European Convention in order to

confirm the right of three British rail employees not to join a union." The bill of rights would be a set of guarantes of fundamental individual human rights that would be entrenched in law. Parliament was the wrong instrument to protect certain individual rights and the anchoring of those rights in partv philosophy could no longer be taken for granted. Mr Burdon said.

"The helplessness of law in the face of the legislative sovereignty of Parliament also made it difficult for the legal system to accommodate the concept of fundamental and inviolate human rights", he said. The defects of the Westminster system were that it demanded" “clear lines of conflict."

“Parliament is a stand-up fight between two adversaries for the favour of the onlookers, the public. It is a forum that demands confrontation and conspires to show moderation and consensus as weakness. “The most frequent criticism I hear is. Why are politicans so abusive and derisive of one another?’ “But it is not the fault of the politicians but of the Westminster alternating oneparty style of Government. “It presupposes that the best way to hammer out differences is to give one side the chance to do what it thinks is right, and let the other side expose the weaknesses." This adversary system naturally put undue emphasis on short-term objectives. "Without doubt the House

of Representatives is preoccupied by the next election. As a society we can pay a dangerously high price when the party in power is tempted to take risks on the eve of an election." Mr Burdon said.

The suspension of the synthetic gasoline plant negotiations with Mobil during the last election were a graphic illustration of the uncertainty the adversary system produced in economic planning. The many other criticisms made of the New Zealand political system were in the main extensions of the divisiveness and lack of longterm planning. Any debate on Parliamentary reform must improve the Westminister system, not substitute for it. Mr Burdon sid.