Dear Mayor and Councilors,

Please accept my apologies for the lateness of this communication. I was only today made aware that you were considering this matter tomorrow.

I am writing to you to encourage you to take a human rights centered approach in considering the agenda item relating to the Rockfall Report at your 6 December meeting.  I have attached a general summary of the human rights issues relating to natural disaster recovery that I presented to the World Ombudsman’s Conference in Wellington last month. 

If you decide one way you will in effect be forcing people from their homes should they wish to stay.  Before the development of modern human rights laws the idea that a citizen’s “home was his castle” lay deep in the common law.  Human rights are about both safety and freedom and the presence of risk and the responsibility for the consequence of choices made is often an indication of the presence of freedom. One of the many citizens engaged in helping others in Canterbury told me – “I bought my home so I could be free. Free from people telling me how to live my life. Now everyone is telling me how to live my life.” I do appreciate that local government must feel that it is the last person standing too often in cases where risks have been taken by many – leaky buildings comes to mind.  However, I would ask you to consider the logic of how we would all be constrained if a risk of 1:10,000/yr became the intervention point for constricting freedom of choice and prohibiting people from taking risk.

I was confronted in my younger days with the personal reality of how one can distort risk.  My uncle ran the biggest casualty department in Belfast from 1967-87.  When I arrived in Belfast in 1985 and said is there anywhere I should not go he looked at me sternly and told me I had a greater chance of getting killed by a car in London than by a bullet, bomb or car in Belfast. He was right.

I am not sure what material the Council Officers have given Councilors’ to assess the relative risk of rock fall to other risks to life in the area of the Council’s jurisdiction.  In the short time available since I heard you were considering this matter I have found that risks from adverse effects can be classified as:

• Negligible (risk < 1/1,000,000 e.g., being struck by lightning);

• Minimal (risk 1/100,000-1/1,000,000 e.g., railway accident);

• Very low (risk 1/10,000-1/100,000 e.g., death playing soccer);

• Low (risk 1/1,000-1/10,000 e.g., death from influenza);

• Moderate (risk 1/100-1/1,000 e.g., death from smoking 10 cigarettes a day);

• High (risk greater than 1 in 100 e.g., transmission of measles);

• Unknown.

One is left wondering what the implications are for many parts of government in New Zealand if “prohibition” is the response to low to very low risk. One cannot see much future in adventure tourism or walking across active volcanoes if the incorrect approach to risk is taken. A human rights approach would be to alert and involve  potentially affected people to the risk and within reason allow them to consider the risks before taking the risk or avoiding or mitigating the risk.  There are also situations where a human rights analysis would favour prohibition.

A more collaborative approach may also lead to much better solutions in terms of cost and effectiveness.  We will make staff available to assist the Council in conducting a human rights based analysis if that were thought helpful.

Kind regards

David Rutherford

CHIEF COMMISSIONER TE AMOKAPUA | NZ HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION TE KAHUI TIKA TANGATA |

+64 9 375 8632 [direct] | +64 21 375 860 [mobile]

Everyone belongs, everyone has rights, the dignity of everyone should be respected