Media Release Saturday 21st July 2018
Right to Life is appalled at the government’s embarrassing inconsistency in defending human rights. While the Minister of Justice, Andrew Little is commended for his principled high moral stand on Australia’s Foreign Correspondent programme this week, he is nevertheless being hypocritical. He warned that Australia was in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child in its detention of a 17 year old New Zealander.
Andrew Little lambasted Australia’s lack of “humanitarian ideals” and its “breach of human rights”. He continued to hold the high moral ground by saying “it seems to me that there is a venal political strain to all this,” Andrew Little in representing the New Zealand government at the periodic review of our human rights by the United Nations Committee reviewing our performance on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights at Geneva in April this year, claimed that “New Zealand has a strong human rights record”, but this is not so.