New Zealander of the Year Dame Anne Salmond has used Prime Minister John Key’s own warnings while Leader of the Opposition about ‘threats to democracy’ to condemn his planned law changes empowering the country’s spy agencies.

In an essay published by the NZ Herald today, the highly respected author accuses the National Party-led government of enacting laws which are an assault on its citizens’ civil liberties.

Dame Anne points to a NZ Law Society report to the UN highly critical of the government’s dubious legal processes and lack of proper Parliamentary scrutiny while ‘acting in conflict with the rule of law’:

Who could have imagined that in 2013, this same political leader would be presiding over an assault upon the democratic rights of New Zealanders? This is a matter of such gravity that last month, the Law Society felt impelled to report to the United Nations that in New Zealand “a number of recent legislative measures are fundamentally in conflict with the rule of law”.

Extraordinary though it may seem, this statement is no more than the truth. In its report to the United Nations, the Law Society lists a series of recent acts that have allowed the Executive to use regulation to override Parliament, that deny citizens the right to legal representation and cancel their right to appeal to the courts to uphold their rights under the law.

The Law Society also draws attention to the use of Supplementary Order Papers and urgency to avoid proper Parliamentary scrutiny of legislation. They express their concern that a number of bills formally declared by the Attorney-General to be in breach of the Bill of Rights have recently been enacted.

This report does not mention other key defects in the law-making process in New Zealand at present. These include the willingness of a minority government to pass laws that impinge on the rights and wellbeing of New Zealanders at the request of foreign corporations – Warner Brothers, for instance, or SkyCity and various oil companies. None of these deals, which amount to “legislation for sale”, can claim a democratic mandate.

Read Dame Anne Salmond: A warning to New Zealanders keep hold of democracy at NZHerald.co.nz

I wonder if all the criticism of his planned spying-on-New-Zealanders laws, and the disquiet expressed by ‘establishment’ and watchdog-types like The NZ Law Society, The Privacy Commissioner, The Human Rights Commission, as well as media, tech & internet groups, and other notable Kiwis will penetrate John Key’s defensive bubble.

That seems doubtful at present, given Mr Key’s ill-tempered ‘misrepresentation’ yesterday of the Human Rights Commission’s special direct report to the government about its concerns about wider surveillance/privacy issues as a ‘tardy’ committee submission that ‘missed the deadline’. It later emerged he’d apparently been expecting it for days.

Consider Mr Key’s if-not-bullying-at-least-intimidatory response to the Human Rights Commission sounding the alarm (as it should!):

“…they need to pull their socks up. If they’re going to continue to be a government-funded organisation they should meet the deadlines like everyone else did.”

Now read that again — especially “If they’re going to continue to be a government-funded organisation…” —  imagining Sir Robert Muldoon’s voice. (See?)
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