Bill ‘gesture’ — Bolger

Press, 6 October 1988, Page 3

Bill ‘gesture’ — Bolger

by

GLEN PERKINSON

in Wellington Repealing a non-en-trenched bill of rights is low on a national Government’s list of priorities, says National leader, Mr Bolger. The bill advocated by the Justice and Law Reform Select Committee this week was “nothing more than a gesture,” Mr Bolger said yesterday. However, he would not go as far as committing a National Government to repealing the bill if National became the Government. Mr Bolger had said that National "strongly opposes the enactment of a Bill of Rights in any form” because it did not add to rights enjoyed by New Zealanders. “What has been recom-

mended is a far cry from what the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General, Geoffrey Palmer, was proclaiming was necessary to protect New Zealanders from dictatorial Government. “We now have dictatorial Government but it cannot find any support for its Bill of Rights,” he said

Mr Bolger said the nonentrenched bill would “die a natural death”. Mr Palmer had bowed from what he had promised in 1984, that the Treaty of Waitangi should be contained within a Bill of Rights, said Mr Bolger. “He is accepting the non-entrenched Bill of Rights because there is no longer any support for his entrenched bill.” Tie rights Mr Palmer

said were under threat were not. There was no need for the bill in any form, Mr Bolger said.

“Mr Palmer contends that because of New Zealand’s small Parliament and no second House we are lacking in the safeguards other countries take for granted. When we become Government this bill won’t be the first priority — this bill will be of little consequence. It is a sop to Geoffrey Palmer’s ego,” Mr Bolger said.

Mr Palmer said yesterday that responses from Maori people making submissions to the Select Committee on the White Paper were overwhelmingly against the treaty’s being incorporated in an entrenched Bill of Rights. Maoris were con<erned

that the treaty would loose mana if it were included in a bill. Mr Palmer said that with the rejection of a fully entrenched bill the concern that the treaty would loose stature would be heightened. The treaty could be indeed overruled by a simple majority in Parliament if it were covered by a nonentrenched bill. Mr Bolger’s criticisms were the ravings of a "constitutional pygmy,” he said. Mr Palmer emphasised that his policy statement of 1984 referred strictly to an entrenched Bill of Rights. “An entrenched and non-entrenched bill are two totally different animals.