Meetings with Political parties
Update May 2010;
Over the last 2 years, we have had productive meetings with Attorney-General, Chris Finlayson, and with representatives of the Progressive, Green, Labour, ACT, Maori and United Future parties. These have been reported in our newsletters.
In October 2009, we met with Heather Roy, then Deputy Leader of ACT, and reported on this at the time. We have probably more concerns over ACT than with any other party, specifically relating to their policies on the Human Rights Act. Their votes in the House on issues relating to the Act as well as the statements of some ACT MPs, leave us to strongly question their commitment to its principles, especially within the context of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation. In practice this currently related most strongly to their support of the Partial Defence of Provocation, as outlined above. The current situation is that the ACT MPs appear to be voting as 5 Independents on issues which are not part of their confidence and supply agreement with the Government, so it may well be that the party per se has no specific policies on human rights issues, which in itself is revealing.