6 New Zealand and the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (1990)

Abstract

Abstract This chapter considers the socio‐politics of bill of rights debates and outcomes in New Zealand. The first part of the chapter focuses on the unsuccessful proposals for a bill of rights in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This debate was triggered politically by a felt need to strengthen institutional checks following abolition of the upper house. However, the trigger was very weak and never pointed specifically to the need for a bill of rights. Meanwhile, strong social support for such an instrument was confined to the neo‐liberal Constitutional Society. Postmaterialist rights groups were ill‐developed and, in any case, largely adhered to traditional Westminster precepts. The second part examines the very different debate of the 1980s which led to the statutory New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBOR). This was politically prompted by a more focused ‘aversive’ reaction against the perceived authoritarianism of Robert Muldoon's National administration. Meanwhile, postmaterialist rights groups were not only better developed by this stage but also more open to formalizing rights guarantees. Nevertheless, the relatively weak, backward‐looking nature of the political trigger combined with a continued societal belief in parliamentary sovereignty shaped and limited the nature of reform. Both parts of the chapter include detailed discussion of the particular role of the Māori including analysis of the failure to include special protections for indigenous rights with NZBOR.