Neil Sands
Speaking with Labour’s shadow attorney-general Vanushi Walters, it quickly becomes apparent that she has an enduring and deeply personal passion for human rights.
There’s a dark reason for this intensity – one that most New Zealanders, used to the settled rule of law, would find deeply shocking – an atrocity inflicted on her family in Sri Lanka 36 years ago.
Walters’ relative, Richard de Zoysa, was a prominent news agency journalist in Colombo whose reporting had angered the ruling regime.
De Zoysa – also a celebrated actor and poet – paid with his life in February 1990. A pro-government death squad abducted the 31-year-old from his mother’s home in the middle of the night. He was tortured, shot, and his body found washed up on a beach the next day after apparently being dumped at sea from a helicopter.
Walters was a nine-year-old child at the time whose family had moved to New Zealand three years earlier to escape the tensions in her homeland. She learned about the state-sanctioned murder of her relative when she was about 12.
“It was probably a few years after [the killing] that I remember my mum telling me the story. She talked about his mum [Dr Manorani Saravanamuttu] moving to London and becoming a really staunch Amnesty International activist,” she said. “Of course, there was this big exodus of journalists and human rights defenders from Sri Lanka at the time.”
“So that was the pull. I really wanted to find out more about human rights. I was completely outraged that this was happening and that there seemed to be a culture of impunity in so many countries in the world. I got really engaged with Amnesty with, I’d say, the serious violations of human rights – the death penalty, impunity, disappearances.”
Anchored in public law
While studying law at the University of Auckland, Walters was elected to the board of Amnesty, working with renowned lawyer and diplomat, Colin Keating. After graduating in 2005 she joined him at Chen Palmer, a specialist public law firm.
Since then she has held roles at numerous organisations including the Auckland Refugee Council, Children’s Commission, Office of Ethnic Affairs, YouthLaw Aotearoa, as well as private practice and a year-long detour into marine insurance (“which has proved to be useful this year, given what we’ve seen in the Strait [of Hormuz].,” she says.
“In general, both public domestic law and public international law have really been the areas where I felt most at home, where I can contribute most, and regardless of which jobs I’ve held, that’s really been the anchor.”
“Defending human rights, defending international law, the rule of law domestically, and then stretching into the access-to-justice space.”
Walters represented the electorate of Upper Harbour from 2020-23, then returned to Parliament last year as a list MP after David Parker’s resignation, taking on the shadow portfolios of attorney-general and foreign affairs.
“In many ways, I feel like the roles I now have in the House bring together aspects of what I’ve done in the past,” she said.
‘Bizarre’ foreign policy decisions
On foreign affairs, Walters believes Foreign Minister Winston Peters’ position became untenable after his attack on Lawrence Xu-Nan last month, when he told the China-born Greens MP to “go back to where you’ve come from”.
“My view is that that was completely inappropriate, completely racist and also irresponsible,” she said. “I think we’ve seen a shift in the minister’s language recently and the shift means that he is no longer capable of holding the role of Minister of Foreign Affairs.
“We’ve seen international reporting of the comments he made as minister, and I think it’s unrealistic to suggest that he made them as leader of New Zealand First. That’s not how it will be perceived internationally. We’ve already seen a reaction from China.”
She said the tone of the comments was “alarming” for multicultural communities, who felt they were being targeted, reflecting a view among some that they shouldn’t be in New Zealand.
More broadly, Walters said she wants New Zealand to articulate an independent foreign policy and resume its role as a champion of international law.
“What I’m hearing from diplomats is some surprise and confusion as to why New Zealand’s position is so hard to pin down on these issues,” she said. “There have been times under this government where they’ve stood up for human rights such as after October 7 [2023 Hamas attacks on Israel].
“However, we’ve then seen New Zealand say absolutely nothing when the US issue sanctions against ICC judges and prosecutors, we’ve seen our prime minister say that New Zealand is going to be a force multiplier for the US in the Pacific, which does nothing for our security nor our trade positions, and we’ve failed to sign on to the updated WHO rules on the pandemic, which is just bizarre.”
She said Labour would have backed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) if it were in power and her understanding was that “the window for being able to join the case remains open”.
Changing the rules of the game
In the attorney-general portfolio, Walters is critical of the government’s move to introduce legislation halting environmental activist Mike Smith’s lawsuit against major greenhouse gas emitters, saying it undermines the courts.
“Democracy ultimately is so fragile and it depends on trust,” she said. “It depends on citizens knowing that each aspect of that democratic architecture respects its own bounds, and I don’t think that’s what we’re seeing right now.”
“The Smith case is a perfect example. Labour is not disputing parliamentary sovereignty. What we’re saying… is that pre-emptive political intervention directly undermines the rule of law and violates the constitutional separation of powers. There’s a long-standing constitutional convention that Parliament should not intervene to change the rules of the game midway through an active lawsuit.”
Walters also accuses the government of gaming parliamentary rules to avoid legislative scrutiny, saying reform would be a priority for her if Labour is elected in November.
She said urgency was used too frequently and one in five bills passed during the current Parliament underwent no select committee scrutiny.
Even when bills do go to select committee, Walters said time for submissions was often curtailed, or major amendments were introduced late in the parliamentary process, preventing them from being properly examined.
“This culture of weaving around the rules that we are supposed to have respect for, I find appalling… My view is we’re now at the point when the culture of urgency and those other things that I’ve mentioned has slid so far that we must do something within standing orders, and I would hope that it will be a live issue for debate as we come up to these elections,” she said.
Some of her strongest criticism was directed as the Electoral Amendment Act, passed last year, which imposes a 13-day deadline for voter registration, rather than allowing voters to register right up until polling day on November 7.
She said the change would make it more difficult for people to vote.
“That’s the thing that is truly appalling about what this government has done in terms of democracy,” she said. “While there are many things we don’t know in terms of what will be in the news in the weeks leading up to the election, we do know one thing, which is that people will turn up to vote and not be able to.”
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