Gielda. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. In New Zealand, there are a number of tribunals and review boards you can go to when you feel things haven't quite gone your way, whether you've had a bad experience leaving your job, or something's gone wrong in your healthcare journey.
These committees are tasked with working out what has gone wrong and who, if anyone, should be held responsible, but some of them can be limited in how much they can hold people to account. For example, the Human Rights Review Tribunal is one of the few in New Zealand that can award damages. Reporter Jeremy Wilkinson covers a lot of these tribunals for Open Justice and he joins us today on the Front Page for the first in a series of exams nations of how these processes work. And Jeremy,
let's start with the obvious one. What exactly is the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
Yeah, so the tribunal, it's our highest human rights jurisdiction in the country. It's charged with hearing claims relating to discrimination, sexual and racial harassment. Privacy breaches, and health and disability rights.
It can IFU.
Findings make awards up to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
And there are a few paths that lead you kind of to this tribunal.
Hey, there's three pads that can get you there, each through a different commissioner. So you can go through the Health and disability, the privacy or the Human Rights commissioner. They don't each other. They need to make a favorable finding in your case for you to go up a level, so to speak, to get to the Human Rights Review tribunal. But you do need to kind of tick that box through one of those commissioners before you can actually make
it to the tribunal. And that's meant to be the kind of triaging.
Right, So let's talk through those briefly, Health and disability handles issues and healthcare and will come to that with you on another episode. But the Privacy Commissioner considers complaints about things like breaches of privacy and access to personal information. That sounds pretty broad. What kind of cases have you seen considered here?
Yeah, So the procy Commissioner, their rulings are for the most part, funnily enough, private they probabished some of their rulings every year, but they're mostly anonymized. In terms of a case that we've seen where we did have a woman contact us with an active complaint. She was at a bar and Wellington met a guy and they hooked up, but it was on CCTV and one of the staff members at the bar was watching on CCTV, filmed it on their phone and sent it to the man's partner.
As partners then come in and assaulted the woman. So she took the bar to the Privacy Commissioner on the basis that filmed the CCTV and distributed it. The result of that wasn't given to us, but often parties will reach a settlement, but the Privacy Commissioner can't make a damages award. But often parties will reach a settlement as part of that mediation, if you like.
Paula Hamilton went to the Deanery three years ago for help with her alcohol problems. A good relationship with the christ To Rehab Center soon turns out and ended with her seeking two hundred thousand dollars for breach of privacy.
What was important to me was that he not be allowed harm all those sort of establishments harm people again.
Now she's been awarded forty thousand dollars damages for humiliation and loss of dignity. The Human Rights Review Tribe NAL says the Deanery is guilty of serious breaches.
And the Human Rights Commissioner. I think we can all imagine the worst type of human rights abuses, like war crimes and the like, but I don't imagine our commissioner is tackling those cases on the regular is he? So what are they looking at?
So the Human Rights Commission doesn't actually publish its cases, even anonymously, but we do see them as they filter through to the Human Rights Review Triviunal. I think one that stands out to me has been the case of Judith Webe. She subjected her flatmate. He's a professional immigrant who was trying to set up a place to live when he got to New Zealand, and she's subjected him to a racist tirade that was so severe that the tribunal ordered that she paid him twenty eight thousand dollars.
That was a couple of years ago. So that's the kind of ruling that the Human Rights Commissioner would deal with first and then it goes up to the Human Rights Review Tribunal.
So once the case gets to the tribunal level, so to speak, what happens from there and how long can these processes take?
It can take two years, according to an OAA released to NZME. I suppose, for context, high Court judges are expected to deliver judgments within three months, while their average is two years. In reality, we actually see people waiting a lot longer than that. Some people there we've talked to have waited two years after lodging a complaint to get a hearing, and then they've waited another two years
to actually get a decision from there. Some experts speculate that the various commissioner's ability to not award damages means that people don't feel that justice has been achieved at that lower level. So they kind of reach the end of the road with the Privacy commission or the Human Rights Commissioner and think, okay, so what now and the what now is the Human Rights Review Tribunal?
What are some more cases that you've covered from the tribunal?
Judith Weby is the one that again stands out for me. She keeps cropping up over and about her again a few more times, not through the tribunal, but that was one that does stand out for me. There was another really interesting one, a guy in the whited Upper called
Stephen Butcher. He objected to his photo being on his driver's license because it was his interpretation that when you encode a photograph digitally, it turns into a series of zeros and ones, and those zeros and ones and his estimation could spell out six sixty six or the mark of the beast, and that went against his Christian religion.
That was a pretty wild case where they flew up a historian from Dunedin to give the expert evidence on this thousand year old piece of papyrus that Stephen Butcher presented his evidence. Suffice to say, he did not win that and he must have his photo on his driver's license if he wants to drive like everyone else in New Zealand.
I guess that's a perfect starting point to my next question, I suppose, and I want to ask about what kinds of cases can be heard and if there's any limit, because based on some of your recent reporting and that case that you've just told me there, it doesn't seem like there is any limit. What can you tell me about a man named Timing Zong.
Yes, so, mister Zong has had five rulings through the tribunal. Some of them have had more merit than others. One of them, he took the Redhill Restaurant in Wellington to the tribunal because he wanted to eat a meal called a hot pot, which is generally shared, and he wanted to just pay for one person, but he'd have to pay the full sharing price as just the way the restaurant and the meal is set up, so he took
them to the tribunal for that. He took Samsung to the tribunal Samsung's New Zealand branch because his Chinese simcard wouldn't work in his phone. He took Apple Apple New Zealand sales to the tribunal because he claimed that his iPad's voice function was racist. And he tried to take the James Cook Hotel in Wellington to the tribunal as well when they gave him Coke zero instead of Coke no Sugar, which was what it was advertised on their menu.
The Tribunal was called many of his claims frivolous, but they can't stop him making the claims and this is where that triajin from the other three commissioners kind of comes into play, and that Zen would have had to take his complaints to any one of those three commissioners, and it doesn't matter if they make a no finding. He's ticked that box, so he can now take it
up another level. The Director of Human Rights proceedings's a guy called Michael Timmins, and he's spoken to The Herald before about how that triaging from those bottom or those lower level commissioners needs to perhaps be more more effective, or perhaps those commissioners need more power to stop frivolous claims advancing and to help resolve claims before they need to go up another level.
The Human Rights Tribunal has found the Crown breached the privacy of Kim dot Com. In twenty fifteen, the Attorney General rejected dot COM's requests for access to all information held about in my government ministers and departments. The reason given was that the Internet mogul's request were vexatious and trivial. Now the Tribunal has found there was a breach of privacy and has now ordered the Attorney General to play him ninety thousand dollars in damages.
So I suppose anyone can just take a case up if you've got the money for it. What sort of impact does that have on the process.
We actually see quite a few people self represented through the tribunal, So there has been quite a few inmates or former inmates taking the Department of Corrections through the tribunal or breaches of privacy and a breach of privacy here in this context is where you apply for information from any agency new jay them. They don't have to be government. You can apply for no leaning to send you any information it has about you under the Privacy Act.
So we're seeing lots of people who apply for this information and it's not released. It's a similar process to the IA process. I suppose we see a lot of people who don't have money for a lawyer. They will actually just progress a claim self represented through the tribunal and actually they do often have a fair bit of success.
So if you don't have the money, but you do feel like you've had your human rights breached, say what are the options available to you? Then?
So, as we mentioned before, you can self represent or the Director of Human Rights Proceedings he is in a tax funded position where he can take certain cases on
and progress them through the tribunal on your behalf. It's quite an essential function because it means that people without the means to take serious claims, or without the time, energy or knowledge to research the Human Rights Act or the Privacy Act or the Health and Disability Act, it means they can be represented by someone who is familiar with that and they can seek justice in that manner.
You've spoken to people who have gone through these tribunal processes. Do they feel like it's worth it?
The phrase it's often touted as justice delayed is justice denied, And when you're waiting four years sometimes from claim to ruling, can probably feel like it's not with it. But then again, there was a guy we covered, Malcolm King. He's claustrophobically locked in a police cell, waited four years for a decision. He said it was incredibly frustrating, but at the end of the day he was represented for free by the Director of Human Rights Proceedings and one forty five thousand dollars.
So incredibly frustrating to wait four years, but he didn't need to pay for a lawyer out of any of those fees. I suppose as another factor to again bring it back to Judith withbe she was ordered to pay twenty eight thousand dollars but hasn't paid it, so it was it worth it for the complaint in there? Maybe not? The government departments tend to pay up, but the tribunal doesn't actually have the power to enforce its own orders.
None of the.
Tribunals in New Zealand do. Finally enough, they can make an order, but then it needs to be backed up by the district court, at which point your bailiffs can get involved, or you can get money taken directly from a salary or a benefit. But again that takes more time and energy.
What's the argument for giving tribunals and review committees these kind of things more powers.
There's a Ministry of Justice kind of working group that looked at this and they were looking at potentially giving the dispute tribunal more power. One of their recommendations was to actually double the damage's capped for the Disputes Tribunal from thirty thousand dollars to sixty thousand dollars, which this current government has has put forward, so that that's something they're aiming to progress in terms of giving tribunals more power.
I don't think there is among experts and among the recommendations that we've seen, that's not something that seems to be on the table because New Zealand operates on a trust basis. Right, you can go and buy, you can fill your car up and then pay for petrol, for example, and that kind of filters down into the way that we operate as a society. We tend to trust people.
And ninety nine percent of people who have a tribunal order made against them see you know, the Ministry of Justice letterhead and they think, oh, I have to pay that, and they don't look into it any further. But there is a very small percentage in people who don't pay, or perhaps can't pay so they won't pay. Undergoing massive law changes in order to give tribunals more power. Is that something and it's worth it? From the advice to the Ministry, it isn't worth it.
Thanks for joining us, Jeremy.
No worries.
That's it for this episode of the Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news at enzed Herald dot co dot nz. The Front Page is produced by Ethan Seals, Dan Goodwin is the sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the front page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.