By: Cam McLeod

Cam McLeod — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 06:06:28 +0000

As illustrated in the celebrated NZ case of Taylor v NZPB the New Zealand courts will be willing to strike down law of parliament if fundamental rights are breached, this requires no higher human rights legislation at all, the fundamental rights lord Cooke spoke of in that case will always exist with or without NZBORA1990. Fundamental rights have existed since time immemorial in England and Wales, they were applied to NZ law in the 19th century, over the last thousand years they have been codified in a number of statutes such as the magna carta and the Bill of Rights 1688, though the point I am making is that they don’t have to exist in any written form in a westminster state to exist as recognised law. so really this means that repealing the HRA 1998 (UK) would really make no difference to UK law at all, the rights would still be enforceable by the courts and as a matter of fact they would be more flexible in application to the everyday situation. it is a well known fact that the HRA (UK)was introduced as a formality or to show to the European Council that the UK was committed to human rights when the system worked better under common law. the only way a human right can be removed (both NZ and England) is by the expressed desire of Parliament to do so with a 51% majority, and the HRA/BORA does nothing to combat this problem. if 51% of parliament wanted to make it illegal to question the leader under penalty of death it could do so in a few days… the only way human rights can be truly protected is through parliamentary entrenchment, this was recommended by Sir G Palmer in the 1980′s when the Bill of Rights (NZ) was introduced to parliament though parliament was as always stone cold scared of loosing power to the courts.

Comments on: Bringing it all back home

By: Cam McLeod