Table of Contents
David Seymour
ACT Leader
The revelation that Paul Hunt gave money to a criminal organisation is further evidence that the Human Rights Commission must be abolished.
This morning we learned that the Commission gave koha to the Mongrel Mob at the same time it met with the gang.
ACT’s long-held view is that the Commission is a hard-left organisation masquerading as a government department and must be abolished.
It has been undermining free speech, cuddling criminals, pushing for more redistribution, and peddling countless woke issues.
Time to shut it down.
The Commission’s recent manifesto calls for a new hate speech law, a living wage, raising benefits by 47 per cent, “fair pay” agreements, more government departments, two new human rights commissioners, and another public holiday, among a raft of other policies.
The Commission is no longer interested in helping real people with actual human rights issues, but simply advancing a left-wing agenda.
When electorate MPs go to the Commission and ask it to help with constituents, it runs for the hills.
ACT would keep the Human Rights Review Tribunal and beef it up. The HRRT is charged with helping people on a case-by-case basis when their actual rights are practically affected, not pontificating about what other people’s rights should be. In my experience as a local MP, the HRRT has been underfunded.
If the Paul Hunts of the world want to be in politics, they should try to getting elected. I’d love to see him try. In the meantime, the Human Rights Commission needs to go, replaced by a beefed up Human Rights Review Tribunal to help actual people affected by rights violations.
Whenever there’s a political issue, the Commission is eager to insert itself into the debate.
The previous Human Rights Commissioner, Susan Devoy, waded into public debates that were completely outside her role.
Paula Tesoriero, the Disability Rights Commissioner, has conducted herself on the End of Life Choice Act in the most unprofessional way.
Chief Human Rights Commissioner Paul Hunt has undermined free speech by pushing for new hate speech laws.
The Commission has become irrelevant, and even dangerous when it cannot defend our most basic human right.
The Commission has become a highly-politicised, left-wing organisation, and when it comes to actually helping people with human rights, it doesn’t help at all.
ACT sees no purpose for it and would abolish it completely.
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