[10] In 1985, Minister of Justice Geoffrey Palmer tabled in Parliament a document titled A Bill of Rights for New Zealand: A White Paper.

[11] The paper proposed the enactment of a law to protect certain rights and freedoms considered crucial for upholding liberty in a democratic society.

[12] The White Paper sparked widespread debate due to its controversial features as the Bill of Rights was to become entrenched law so that it could not be amended or repealed without a 75% majority vote in the House of Representatives or a simple majority in a public referendum, therefore having status as supreme law, thereby causing some erosion to the doctrine of parliamentary sovereignty.

Lastly, the judiciary would have the power to invalidate any act of Parliament, common law rule or official action which was contrary to the Bill of Rights.

The Committee recommended that the Bill of Rights be introduced as an ordinary statute, which would not have the status of superior or entrenched law.

The proposed bill followed the recommendations of the select committee, and was an ordinary statute without the status of being a superior or entrenched law.

[3] Despite this, Palmer introduced the legislation with the aim of providing some level of protection for fundamental civil and democratic rights.

He highlighted the importance of the bill in ensuring that the government's actions are able to be subject to judicial scrutiny to uphold individual rights.

Warren Kyd, speaking against the bill, argued a hypothetical that a conservative judiciary could say that the right not to be deprived of life prohibits a person from being able to have an abortion.

[21] The Act also guarantees, in section 15, everyone the right to manifest their religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in a community with others, and either in public or in private.

Nonetheless, the Court held in this case the Bill of Rights had not been breached, and the appellant, Flickinger, had to return to Hong Kong to face charges.

[36] In 1994, the Court of Appeal heard Simpson v Attorney-General (also known as Baigent's case), the plaintiffs represented by leading human rights barrister Antony Shaw alleged that police officers had persisted in bad faith with the search of the late Mrs Baigent's house when they knew that her property had been mistakenly named in a search warrant issued for a drug dealers' house.

The plaintiffs sued on the grounds the police breached section 21 of the Act, which provides for the right to be secure against unreasonable search and arrest.

This initially developed in the courts as a presumption of exclusion but was subsequently lessened to a balancing exercise where various factors are weighed up to determine the admissibility of evidence tainted by a breach of the Act.

[33] In Williams v R [2009] NZSC 41, the Supreme Court held that a reduction in sentence was a more appropriate remedy than a stay of proceedings, except for extremely minor offending.

In this case, the plaintiffs were seeking damages for a search warrant executed on their place of residence that was obtained on the basis of incorrect information.

Cooke P stated that the court would "fail in our duty if we did not give an effective remedy to a person whose legislatively affirmed rights have been infringed".

[45] In Udompun v Attorney General, Justice Glazebrook of the Court of Appeal stated that monetary compensation will not be awarded where a more suitable remedy exists.

[46] Most significantly, in Taunoa v Attorney-General the Supreme Court of New Zealand awarded compensatory damages for breaches of the Bill of Rights by the Department of Corrections' Behaviour Management Regime.

[49] Following this, Temese v Police (1992) C CRNZ 425 and Quilter v Attorney-General (1998) 1 NZLR 153 both suggested that it could be available in the appropriate case, but fell short of making a declaration.

In July 2015, Heath J at the High Court of Auckland in Taylor v Attorney-General issued a formal declaration of inconsistency that an electoral law amendment introduced by the Fifth National Government that removed the ability of inmates voting rights (section 80(1)(d) Electoral Act 1993) was an unjustified limitation under section 12(a) of the Act, which prescribes voting rights to all citizens aged 18 years and over.

[8] In its ruling, concluded that no breach of parliamentary privilege occurred and that senior courts had the jurisdiction to make a declaration of inconsistency.

On 29 August 2022, the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Act 2022 received Royal assent and commenced on the same day.

It is an ongoing conversation amongst legal academics in New Zealand as to whether there should be an entrenched constitutional Bill of Rights that gives the court the power to strike down inconsistent legislation.

[58] This would provide a remedy to breaches of the Act as the courts could uphold the right, rather than finding it to be subservient to the contradictory legislation under section 4.

The UN Human Rights Committee criticised New Zealand for the lack of court power to strike down legislation inconsistent with the Act.

[59] Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler published a book in 2016 entitled A Constitution for Aotearoa New Zealand that laid out a proposed entrenched bill of rights, including a judicial power of strike down.

The resistance to an entrenched Bill of Rights in New Zealand is partly because the country is currently governed by parliamentary sovereignty.