Human-rights issues reveal slew of complex questions

HUMAN RIGHTS is an interesting concept which seems to become more complex the more you apply your mind to it.

Parliament has, just this week, relaunched a cross-party parliamentary network and you have to wonder why such a network would ever have gone into recess - which is a polite way of saying "was forgotten about".

I guess if you don't feel you have to assert rights for yourself, it is easy to assume everyone enjoys those same rights everywhere. But they don't.

When do they start - at or before birth? When do they stop - at death or some later stage?

Can one person hold rights on behalf of another ... such as the current debate around parental notification of a child's pregnancy?

Does a country have a mandate to impose rights on other sovereign states, forcing Western democratic freedoms on Third World countries? Did Teina Pora have a jury of his peers? There is a right to life, but is there a right to die?

I have taken on the role of co-chair of the parliamentary network and this is going to be an interesting part of my work.

When I was first a policeman there was no applied Bill of Rights. We operated under a legal framework called Judge's Rules which had been held to be a guide rather than absolute and we police pushed that envelope so far that eventually a Bill of Rights was required.

A breach of those rights can nullify an otherwise perfect prosecution or conviction - and so it should.

I do not think we locked up a lot of innocent people before the 1990 Bill of Rights, but some of our practices would be considered abhorrent today.

For example, we would chuck a suspect in a cell for a few hours to "have a think about it". When taken back to the interview room he would miraculously disclose the modus operandi of the crime and have all the knowledge of where stolen property was and so on. But obviously the suspect had been denied his liberty, access to a lawyer and there was an element of coercion - today we see these as fundamental elements of fair treatment by an agent of the state.

There were also many groups within society who felt the sharp end of enforcement more than others, and their stories of the treatment dished out to them in the past are hair-raising. In the post-war period through to the 1990s, most of us wiped away any angst about this by saying that if you don't break the law you have nothing to fear.

Funnily enough, my going over to "the dark side" and becoming a defence counsel for five years after being in the police so long taught me more about being a good policeman than the 24 years I had spent in the force.

New Zealand has a better record than most on human rights, but they need to be monitored and asserted along with the responsibilities of citizenship.

John F Kennedy's comment - "The rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened" - and Edmund Burke's famous line - "All that's necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing" - remain true.