Geoffrey Palmer

Other countries have councils of future generations.

Sir Geoffrey Palmer in the past has talked about getting the existing commissioners, environment, human rights, children, et cetera, and form a council with them.

So I commend them for doing the policy work.

I got to do a study trip to Wales last year to see how their future generations at commission is working.

I'm just looking for the vehicle that will make a real difference.

Yeah, but if I can give you an example of a period when I think a commission did brilliantly, it's when Helen Clark put Geoffrey Palmer in charge of the Law Commission, and he was an outstanding lawyer.

a president because, and I remember in my first term in Parliament, he pushed through the evidence project.

And you were minister at the time, responsible for that.

1984 Waitangi.

Geoffrey Palmer makes an announcement that a new Labour government would give the Waitangi Tribunal powers to go back to 1840.

I strongly suspect that Geoffrey Palmer did not actually know that Te Tiriti o Waitangi existed and It was not yet clear inside the Labour Party, because the election, snap election, wasn't until July 84, that the neoliberal agenda is what would be their spearhead once they were elected.

And so they had this tension there that they then had to reconcile.

The place that ended up doing that reconciliation was actually the courts.

So the constitutional practice is definitely more property rights friendly.

Is that more, because let's go back and talk about the constitution that Geoffrey Palmer and so forth were talking about where you gave a speech.

Yes,

so

Geoffrey Palmer, of course our former Prime Minister and his co-author Andrew Butler, a lawyer, they drafted a constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand and it was about a decade ago they invited me to speak at the launch of that constitution in Auckland.

And I was a bit hesitant because even though you would have guessed by now I actually like constitutions in some ways, I still don't think New Zealand should have one.

Yes.

I speak to whoever invites me.

Yeah, first year of the '90s.

Yeah, Geoffrey Palmer's Prime Minister.

We're leaving the sounds...

I was gonna insult the '80s, but then I thought about it, and I was like, A, do I actually have an accent, uh, uh, accent? An insult to give, and B, do I wanna, like, put that on myself?

Right, okay.

Yeah.

Um, so Geoffrey Palmer's not gonna, not gonna make this one?

No, no.

You've got support from Act, you've got support from Greens.

I think you had support from former prime ministers like Jeffrey Palmer and-

Yeah

... and Jim Bolger and people like that.