NZ Council for Civil Liberties

New website features: Your Rights and Laws limiting the OIA

We are pleased to introduce two new features on our website:

Your Rights

One of the missions of the NZ Council for Civil Liberties is to educate people about their rights.

In our new Your Rights section we’ve provided links to the most important laws, and one treaty, that help protect people’s rights in Aotearoa New Zealand.

This includes our new Introduction to the Bill of Rights where we explain what the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is and its place in our constitution, as well as a detailed explanation of each right.

We hope to expand on these sections with more information about their history, important court cases, and how to take action when your rights have been impinged upon.

Laws limiting the Official Information Act database

The Official Information Act is an overarching piece of legislation that sets the expectation that official information will be made available, but also provides a limited number of grounds for withholding it.

However, since then there have been a number of laws passed that impose new limitations on access to information, often needlessly as the current withholding grounds would be sufficient. Each of these carve-outs weakens the Official Information Act and weakens open government in Aotearoa New Zealand.

We have spoken out against these clauses time and time again, as well as worked with the government as part of the Open Government Partnership in order to limit and remove these clauses, but to no avail.

We have now created a database of laws that limit the Official Information Act. The database is current up until 2024 and will soon be updated with the latest laws.

We’d like to thank volunteer Bill Gardner for his work in collating this database. Please send any additions, omissions, or corrections to secretary@nzccl.org.nz