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Mike's Minute: We get a lot of reports from people with no power or influence

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We have in this country a lot of people paid for by us that basically do a lot of talking and gesturing and do it with no real power or influence.

A lot of them are commissions. One of them is the Human Rights Commission.

I'm sure these are well-meaning groups of people who espouse on their particular area of expertise.

I guess in a grand scheme type of way they are there to inform and guide us through whatever area it is they specialise in.

The human rights folk have written about the Government's desire to change or remove references to the Treaty in 19 pieces of legislation.

They are doing this for the simple reason that referring to the Treaty and its obligations in literally everything it does is not helpful, or efficient, or even relevant.

In this day and age if you mention the Treaty there will always be a hardcore collective of those who oppose it. They oppose it because they oppose everything.

The Human Rights Commission has written, saying exactly what you think it would say.

"This is bad", "this must not be done, partly because it fails to respect indigenous people's human rights" etc etc.

That of course isn't true. Your human rights are universal, or should be, and the moment someone has more, or better, or bigger, or brighter human rights based on race you have trouble, which is partly why the legislation is being amended.

1) The Human Rights Commission would say that, wouldn’t they,

2) It will make no difference,

3) It never makes any difference because these sort of groups have no power.

It's good they have no power because if they did we'd all be shot. It's kind of like coroners who come up with weird recommendations, that if they ever had any legal standing would grind us to a halt.

But given the human rights people say exactly what you think they would say, and given it has no power, and given they will be ignored by the Government (as they should be), can anyone offer me a cohesive and sensible reason as to why we have them and why we keep paying for it?

If we're looking to save money and cut waste - Exhibit A.  

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