It is easy to find strong similarities between the New Zealand Human Rights Act 1993 and the so-called anti-discrimination laws in the United States. Indeed, laws of this type are increasingly popular elsewhere in western democracies, and perhaps throughout the world, so that a comparison of these two systems carries with it wider implications. If I were to sum up my attitude to such laws in a single phrase, I would borrow the words originally used by Thomas Macaulay, perhaps inaccurately, in speaking about the US constitution – “all sail and no keel”. Macaulay meant that the constitution pulled people powerfully along, but lacked any countervailing forces to provide it with stability. If we run a boat on all sail and no keel, we put ourselves in peril. Human rights laws of the type now in force in New Zealand expose us dangerously to this problem – so much so that, in my view, the entire statutory apparatus should be scrapped.