Supreme Court Bill

We are discussing Part 2 of the Supreme Court Bill, and, as I recall, there have been speeches from United Future and two speeches from the National Party, and a speech from Mr Field and from the Minister. So we have a long way to go yet, on Part 2, because we have barely touched on it.

The Supreme Court Bill is being rushed through Parliament by the parties in favour of it, without adequate electoral support for it. At the last election the Labour Party received 31.4 percent of the vote of those eligible to vote. The Green Party received 5.3 percent of the vote of those eligible to vote, and the Progressives received 1.3 percent, making a total of 38 percent. The other parties’ voting percentages were ACT, 5.4 percent; National, 15.9 percent; New Zealand First, 7.9 percent; United Future, 5.1 percent; and others, 3.7 percent—also totalling 38 percent. In effect, in so far as the electoral mandate in New Zealand is concerned, the parties favouring this bill, and the parties opposing this bill, are tied. There was no mandate, at the last election, from those eligible to vote, in favour of this legislation.

That, I think, is a very important fact. We see that a vital constitutional change is taking place, yet the Government, the Progressives, and the Greens are ramming and rushing through legislation without the support of the people of New Zealand. I am quoting from information that has been made available to me from the Parliamentary Library that I requested; it is not something I have dreamt up myself in the last half-hour.

Part 2 has a provision dealing with the work of the Court of Appeal. One of the things that became very clear from the submissions that were put to the Justice and Electoral Committee is that the Court of Appeal is overworked—with about 400 criminal cases and about 200 civil cases. This bill purports to reduce the number of judges on the Court of Appeal. One way the Government proposes to get around the situation seems to be to reduce the number of judges who will sit at hearings of the Court of Appeal. We have a court that is overworked now, yet the Government is going to reduce the number of judges who will be sitting at it. That is really Labour Party logic! This bill will make it even more difficult for the Court of Appeal, and, inevitably, in a court that is currently overworked, there will be more applications for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court, as a result. That is another failing in this legislation.

Mr Field, when he spoke last night, gave us the example of Canada and Australia, but did not mention the fact that when Canada and Australia abolished appeals to the Privy Council they already had a two-tier appeal system in place—and that had existed for quite some time. We cannot compare Canada with New Zealand, bearing in mind that North America was settled by Europeans from the late 15th century—1492. North America was being settled by the French and the British in the late 16th century, and Canada was taken over by the British in 1791, finally, under the Quebec Act, after Wolfe defeated Montcalm in Quebec in 1759. There is no comparison between Canada and New Zealand.

In so far as Australia is concerned, the First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788, and colonisation got under way at that stage. New Zealand, of course, was a colony of New South Wales. It was part of New South Wales for quite some time, until action was taken in 1839. So comparing New Zealand with Australia and Canada is a clear example of this Government’s trying extremely hard to draw a long bow on its justification for this bill. But the main point is that at the last election the parties that are in favour of making this dramatic constitutional change did not get any electoral mandate to make this change. Extraordinarily enough, it is a dead heat—38 percent each, or 76 percent in total, and with 24 percent of those eligible to vote not making up their minds to vote on the day. Usually a non-vote is an indication that the person does not support the Government.

I am sorry to be debating Part 2 of the Supreme Court Bill. I am sorry we are on Part 2, because on Part 1, where the issues that Part 2 now deals with, in terms of transition, were decided, I did not get more than 5 minutes. I did not get any chance to cover, in Part 1, what I now have to deal with, where it arises in Part 2, on the matters that a proper transition would deal with. A proper transitional provision would have actually dealt with the method of appointment. It would have dealt with the concern that so many New Zealanders have about the political influences that this court is exposed to. A proper set of transitional provisions would have recognised that this is a one-off, when one is sacking one’s entire top court and replacing it with another brand-new court of people appointed by the Attorney-General.

The transitional provisions would have provided, or should have provided, for a special one-off regime, at the very least, for that initial set of appointments. It would not have been left to Government Ministers to leak that they thought they would get the Attorney-General’s arm up her back far enough simply to move Court of Appeal judges upstairs. We would not have had 8 months of speculation about who she might be going to appoint—that has been very damaging to this court. If, right from the start, there had been a proper transitional provision in Part 2 that said exactly how these judges were going to be selected, or if there had been a ministerial statement along the lines that we have seen, perhaps, forced out or extracted in the last few days, there would have been quite a good deal less damage to the judiciary in this country. As it stands, we are stuck with the Part 2 that we have.

We are up to clause 43, after the ACT party has had 5 minutes in this debate on all the substantive clauses. Let us start with clause 43A, “Technical advisers”, a sort of hasty cosmetic change that the select committee managed to get in. It allows technical advisers to sit in criminal cases. I asked during the select committee process what the effect of that was on the very longstanding requirement of our justice system that an accused know the nature of the material before the court on which his or her guilt or innocence would be based, or on which the sentence would be founded. There was no assurance to the select committee that the advice tendered by a technical adviser appointed in a criminal case would be available to the accused. So this Attorney-General and this Government, with a mere flick of the pen, in what they claim is not a constitutional element, get rid, or potentially get rid, of a fundamental provision in our criminal law.

Clause 43A states that a court can appoint technical advisers, but there is no protection there. There is no assurance that the accused or the accused’s counsel will know what kinds of representations and what influences will be brought to bear on the judge in that case. That is not a light matter. Why was it done? It was done, I think, because the select committee was so embarrassed at having had such overwhelming evidence that there was nothing to support this bill, except primitive nationalism, that the majority on the select committee were desperately keen to make some changes that would look as though they had addressed their minds to the issues.

The select committee got through to clause 43A, having dismissed its own misgivings about the appointment process, and having dismissed its own misgivings about the number of judges by providing that there might be five or six—knowing full well that the Attorney-General only ever wanted five, and that she could ensure that temporary judges made up the numbers whenever there was a shortfall; temporary judges, of course, being much more selectable and biddable than judges with secure tenure.

So the committee got to the stage of clause 43A and wanted to show that it was actually addressing its mind to doing something and was prepared to change something in a bill that it was otherwise being whipped to pass. That, I believe, is why we ended up with a provision so poorly thought through that it changes the composition of the court. It is no good saying a technical adviser is not the judge.

It is a great headline in the paper today, is it not? It states: “Stop this stunning abuse of power”, and to have the Minister’s photo there, with that comment—“Stop this stunning abuse of power”—says it all. As we have heard during the Committee stage of this debate—

💬 Stephen Franks: Is that Snow White, or the wicked queen?

Well, it could be both. The member is right; it is a good question he has asked. When we look at the abuse and the changes to the constitution, which I talked about during the Committee stage last night, we see that not one Government Minister, not one Government member, has been prepared to stand up and come out and bat for this legislation. Yet this is a major change to the way the courts and the judiciary are going to operate in the future.

I draw the Committee’s attention to clause 43, and in particular to section (2)(a). Although the bill does not contemplate changes to the Court of Appeal, it does reduce the numbers. It is going to reduce the numbers of judges from eight—the Chief Justice, the president, and six other judges—to six or seven, being the president and five or six others. We oppose that. We oppose the reduction of the numbers on the Court of Appeal.

The creation of the Supreme Court should not be an occasion or a reason for reducing the ability of the Court of Appeal to do its work. It should not be a reason to reduce the funding. In fact, as Dail Jones mentioned earlier, the workload of the Court of Appeal is such that there should be an increase in the number of judges at that level. In fact, when I went back through the submissions, I saw that the New Zealand Law Society said that there should be eight judges on the Court of Appeal. Yet here in clause 43 we have a reduction, and it is our view that this is wrong, because if there is a reduction in numbers, and the workload increases—and there was absolutely no evidence that there will be a reduction in the workload at the Court of Appeal level—the Supreme Court is not going to take over and simply fill the void. There will be an increase in the workload of the Court of Appeal, and what this clause does is actually reduce the numbers of judges. If that goes hand in hand with the reduction of resources, be they manpower or finance, then, of course, we are very concerned about that.

It was interesting to hear the submissions of the Bar Association, which considered it a very serious error to approach the reduction of the Court of Appeal contemporaneously with the creation of the Supreme Court. This is the association’s comment: “At present the Court of Appeal is seriously overcommitted with a complement of seven permanent judges plus significant resources from High Court judges sitting on rotation in divisional courts, plus the occasional availability of the Chief Justice. It is symptomatic of an unacceptable cheese-paring attitude to contemplate immediate reduction in the judicial resource in the Court of Appeal.” It goes on to say: “The extent to which it can be prudently reduced ought to be left for reassessment after a period of operation of any Supreme Court.” This is the point that we have made.

It is all very well bringing in a new structure, but if at the same time we do not give the resources to what will be a very important part of the judicial system, then we find that a major failing. That is one of the points that came through in today’s New Zealand Herald. The headline states: “Stop this stunning abuse of power”, and the article goes on to state: “To assume that a wafer-thin majority is sufficient to enact fundamental changes to the legal and constitutional fabric of New Zealand is nothing short of an abuse of power.” Here we have the number of judges on the Court of Appeal being reduced, to be replaced by something inferior.

I would like to make a couple of brief points. The first is that for 99 percent of New Zealanders justice under the Privy Council is completely out of their reach. In fact, the Privy Council is of no relevance to 99 percent of New Zealanders for the simple reason that they cannot afford to fly themselves to England to take their appeals to the Privy Council. In certain exceptional circumstances people can get legal aid, but for the bulk of them it is simply out of their reach. People have to hire their counsel, fly them, business class or first class, to England, and put them up in an English hotel. These are huge costs that most New Zealanders are not even able to contemplate. If people lose an appeal in the Court of Appeal and have costs awarded against them, those costs will probably be about $7,500; but if people lose their appeal in the Privy Council, the costs awarded against them could be well over $100,000.

I happen to know some small law firms in New Zealand, and one in particular that dearly wished to take a case to the Privy Council. When that firm added up the costs of lawyers’ air travel, hiring counsel in England, and so forth, it found it was quite simply beyond its reach. I am talking about a small law firm in New Zealand. Many have argued that all lawyers are in favour of the Privy Council. Virtually all the lawyers I know are passionately seeking an end to the Privy Council, because they believe, as I do, that it is a system of justice that does not provide small law firms in New Zealand, let alone average New Zealanders, with access. It provides justice for those wealthy corporates that can afford the costs of flying people across to the other side of the world to put their case, and that is an infinitesimal number of New Zealanders.

The denial of access that people are talking about, is actually the denial of access to all but a tiny proportion, comprised largely of wealthy corporates, and, of course, in a few cases, to people on legal aid who can afford to trek to the other side of the Earth, to hire legal counsel, to put people up in London hotels, and so forth.

The other thing I cannot quite understand is why there should be such discrepancies in terms of access to the Privy Council. Why should people be able to appeal to the Privy Council on civil cases but not on employment cases? Why can people not appeal on environmental court cases? Why is there one set of rules for certain cases of law and not for others? Why should someone who is involved in an Environment Court case not be able to access a final court of appeal? Why should we not have one that can be accessed by whatever class of law it is, whether environmental, criminal, employment, and so forth? I cannot understand why we should have a system that seems to be quite discriminatory—that allows certain classes of law to go to the Privy Council and denies access to others. That does not seem to be fair and equitable. Mostly, I would just like to say that under the present system most New Zealanders are denied access to this Privy Council because of costs. I know of cases where law firms are not able to access that court because of the costs.

I move, That the question be now put.

There were two short points in the previous speech that will not take long to answer. The first point was why there is no leave to appeal in environment or employment cases. It is probably because the previous speaker, Miss Kedgley, supported legislation that prevented that from happening, because of the statutes involved.

In so far as the question of costs is concerned, I would think that 99.9 percent of New Zealanders do not want to go to court. They absolutely do not want to, and 99.99 percent of New Zealanders would oppose the Labour Party’s increase in High Court fees that made it even more difficult for them to go to court. Of the 12 cases or so that we have going to the Privy Council, I would not be surprised if in many of them lawyers took the case for free. If people think that replacing the Privy Council with a Supreme Court will reduce costs, they have another think coming. The costs of legal attendances in the Supreme Court will be much the same as in the Privy Council. The fares, the hotel accommodation, and the agency fees will not be there, but we can be sure that the cost of legal counsel will be the same. We do not know what this Government will charge in the way of the Supreme Court filing and hearing fees.

What are daily hearing fees now? Are they $1,500 or $2,000 a day? The average New Zealander cannot afford to go to the New Zealand High Court, let alone to the New Zealand Court of Appeal or any further appeal past that. The argument about costs is absolute nonsense. In fact, the Privy Council made the point in the Taito case that it was really the New Zealand Court of Appeal that prevented so many people from going to the Privy Council and having their cases heard, rather than the reverse.

I want to ask the seven Māori members of the Labour Party where they are. What are they doing about this bill, with specific reference to the insertion of new section 58A in clause 44, “Further appeal to Court of Appeal from Maori Appellate Court”? They have been very silent on this bill. Is their attitude a “Dopey” one? Are they “Grumpy” about this bill? Is Ms Turia the “Grumpy” party? Their lack of attendance might indicate they are “Sleepy”, or perhaps they think this is not to be worried about and they are all “Sneezy”.

💬 Pita Paraone: They are “Bashful”!

They could be “Bashful”, or perhaps they are “Happy” about this legislation. Finally, maybe they have gone for the doctor, and “Doc” is in charge. Could we describe the views of the seven Labour Māori members of Parliament as “Dopey”, “Grumpy”, “Sneezy”, “Bashful”, “Happy” and “Doc”? Maybe they think this legislation is “Snow White” and they have nothing to worry about. All of them have the view that this legislation is “Snow White”, and they have taken a “Dopey” or “Grumpy” attitude. Maybe they are “Sleepy”, “Sneezy”, “Bashful”, or “Happy” and have gone for the doctor. Maybe that is the view of the seven Labour Māori members’ in respect of this legislation. It could be, for all this Opposition side of the Committee knows, because they have taken no part in this debate.

John Tamihere is very good on talking about the interests of Māori, but what does he have to say about further appeals to the Court of Appeal from the Māori Appellate Court in terms of the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act—that famous Act in so far as the foreshore and seabed is concerned? What is he doing to protect the interests of Māori in so far as that is concerned? Where is the Minister of Māori Affairs? Is he “Sleepy” about the whole thing? Is the attitude of Hon Parekura Horomia to this bill a “Sleepy” one? What about Nanaia Mahuta? I presume she is still a Māori member of Parliament, but I am confident that, with this sort of attitude, she will not be a member after the next election.

Dover Samuels is always a “Happy” chap, is he not? But where is he as far as this bill is concerned? He is out there on the marae talking about the foreshore and the seabed, while the rights of appeal of Māori to the Privy Council are being taken away from the Māori of New Zealand. Where is he? What about Mr Okeroa? Where does he stand on this legislation with regard to clause 44 and further appeal to the Court of Appeal from the Māori Appellate Court and the Te Ture Whenua Maori Act? The Māori members of Parliament do not have the slightest interest in this legislation. Their views are as absent as they are.

I move, That the question be now put.

I want to make a short contribution to this debate today, and say first that I am very pleased that the Green Party is supporting this bill to the final stage. I do not believe that Māori gain anything from the retention of the Privy Council as the final appellate court of this country. I do believe that it is absolutely essential that there is a second-level stage of appeal, and that that process is crucial to ensuring—[Interruption] I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I take offence at the description of Māori as “dumb natives”, as stated by Stephen Franks. I seek that you rule that he withdraw and apologise for that statement.

💬 Stephen Franks: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I was characterising the member’s statement that Māori do not get any benefit from the Privy Council when, in fact, nearly all the Māori submitters gave evidence that they saw the Privy Council as being of great benefit. It is Metiria Turei who is characterising her own people in that way, by suggesting they do not know what is good for them. If she cannot understand heavy irony, she should not be in this Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): Meteria Turei has taken offence, and in those circumstances we ask only for a withdrawal.

💬 Stephen Franks: What do I withdraw? It was not an accusation made at her. I was addressing her view of people outside this Chamber. I have made no imputation on her, other than that I believe she is characterising her own people, whom she purports to speak for, in that way. I have not addressed her in the terms of which she complains. I have alleged that that is the effect of what she is saying about the many sincere Māori submitters who came before the Justice and Electoral Committee. That is precisely the effect of what she is saying. She is saying that they do not know their own minds and do not know what is good for them, because they told us they valued the Privy Council.

The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich): I thank the member. I guess almost anything one says in this Chamber could offend someone, but in this case the speaker really took offence. In these circumstances, just a simple withdrawal would be sufficient, please.

💬 Stephen Franks: I withdraw.

In my view I do not believe that Māori gain anything from the retention of the Privy Council as the final court of appeal. It is most essential that there is a second tier—a second level of appeal rights—as it is by that process that decisions made by the lower courts can be assessed against high principles of justice. In my view, and in the view of the Green Party, this bill is a small step in the process towards decolonisation.

I have heard some argument from a number of Māori that the Privy Council provides Māori with a level of protection against the settler Government from which this Parliament is derived, that the relationship with the Privy Council is a treaty-based relationship, and that there is a very serious and deeply considered tie to the British Crown, and to what it represents, through the remaining links to the Privy Council. That is an extremely important point of view. It is a very valid point of view, and not enough has been done to deal with those concerns. I absolutely understand that. But the Privy Council has not been a friend to Māori, nor has it protected us from the harms caused by the thefts by successive Governments since the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. I do completely respect the feeling in the Māori community that Māori do need a buffer—some form of independent watchdog over the actions of Parliament and the legislature. But the Privy Council is not that. It has not done that job, and there is no indication to show that it will do that job in the future.

Very few of the decisions by the Privy Council have favoured Māori. Very few decisions about Māori issues have gone to the Privy Council, and very few of those have come out in our favour. I do recognise, though, that there have been some good decisions—for example, the Māori broadcasting case. But many other Māori-focused cases do not get to go to the Privy Council. One area that has been raised is the Environment Court cases, where Māori on the ground are struggling every day with their territorial local authorities to prevent issues like the discharge of sewage into waterways, and are finding that they have no ability to continue those cases through the appeal system, so that Māori values can be recognised as part of the process. The Supreme Court will provide some avenue for that to happen, because there will be greater accessibility for Māori to that second level of appellate court.

It has to be said that along with some good decisions—for example, the Māori broadcasting case—there have been Privy Council decisions that have been very damaging to Māori. I refer to the 1941 case where the Privy Council stated that the Treaty of Waitangi was only enforceable if incorporated into municipal law. That decision has caused us enormous problems and difficulties. It eventually led to the ridiculous notion of the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi that came through in the 1970s and the 1980s. That means it is very difficult to have the articles of, and direct references to, the treaty considered to be part of New Zealand law. Instead, we have to look to the principles of the treaty, which are Crown-derived and tend to utterly water down the fundamental decision-making tino rangatiratanga that the treaty guaranteed. That Privy Council decision has invaded and infected the whole of the treaty legislation and the treaty debate in our law since the 1940s. So we must be careful to remember that the Privy Council has done damage to the Māori community, as well as providing some relief in some cases.

I move, That the question be now put.

Part 2 is interesting. Stephen Franks made the point in his earlier address that it relates to the transitional provisions. Because there was not sufficient time last evening to talk at length about the very important provisions in Part 1, it is now left to us to surmise how the transitional provisions will work.

First, I draw the Committee’s attention to clause 48, which, in essence, provides that a case cannot go to the Privy Council unless the Privy Council appeal process is under way before the Supreme Court legislation comes into force. We have an issue with the transitional phase. It was recommended in a number of submissions that the transitional phase should be longer, so that no one would be particularly disadvantaged by that. As a matter of principle, one would have thought that existing rights should not be taken away by legislation, except to the minimum extent necessary to achieve other interests that plainly outweigh any existing rights. We are concerned that the existing rights of appeal to the Privy Council can be defined as applying to those cases that are engaged and proceeding in New Zealand and for which the final court of appeal is the Privy Council. The transitional provision identified in Part 2 is not sufficiently long for that.

I draw the Committee’s attention to the next point, regarding the transitional arrangement for running the court in clause 51(2). Before I do that, we need to ask how the judges will be appointed. Part of the transition—

💬 Dail Jones: There’s nothing in this bill.

That is right.

💬 Dail Jones: It should be here.

The point I make is that if there is to be a transitional clause, we need to know how the process will work. If we go back to the provision about the constitution of the court, we see that there will be five permanent judges in the Supreme Court and they will determine all appeals. There was a very strong argument that maybe there should be six judges, but that has been left in limbo. How can there be a transitional provision when we do not know how many judges there will be?

It is surprising to have a proposed constitutional enactment prescribing the number of permanent judges in the top court as no more than the number of judges required to decide the cases before the court. That will create a number of problems. The Law Society suggested that the number of judges should be seven or eight, just as it did with regard to the Court of Appeal, which I talked about earlier. The Court of Appeal is covered in clause 43. The society said that, in relation to the Court of Appeal, rather than reduce the number of judges the number should be extended to eight, because the workload would not reduce. At the moment it is six or seven; it should go out to eight.

With regard to the constitution of the Supreme Court, if there are to be only five permanent judges and the Chief Justice, some of those judges may be away. There will be absences for various reasons—for example, one judge may be sick, and another judge may be on leave or attending a conference, or there could be other obligations. Also, judges have their sabbaticals. Within a 5-year period, most lawyers—and we have lawyers in Parliament—would be able to take up those sabbaticals.

💬 Simon Power: I wish I had.

That member is a young lawyer who is probably too young to know what a sabbatical is. The point I make is that there will be times when judges will not be available. We believe that the transitional period—and we argued this at the select committee, and the submitters were very clear on this—needs to be much longer than it is now.

I move, That the question be now put.

In the debate on this part we have had some quite curiously wide comments, and I will refer very briefly to a couple of them. First, on the question of cost, there is the notion that somehow New Zealanders will be saving something with the commencement of this legislation. Indeed, the cost will come in very early, because the court is to be set up and ready to run by the middle of next year. However, it may well be that people will elect to run most of the appeals that could be run—a backlog, a pipeline, of appeals for several years—to the Privy Council. So we will incur all the set-up costs, we will incur the cost of removing judges from the Court of Appeal and taking them to the Supreme Court, where they will sit twiddling their thumbs for quite a long while if, as we expect, those New Zealanders who can still do so exercise their right to take their cases to an assuredly impartial and independent tribunal. That may be the dozen or so cases a year that we currently have.

This legislation subjects New Zealanders to another 40 or 50 cases a year. We will have the highest ratio in the English-speaking world of final appeals at the third level. We will have around 12 appeals per million people when the court is in full force after the transitional period is over, and I calculate the transitional period set out in clauses 48 and 50 will expire in around 2 years. When that is over, we will have around 12 appeals per million people, and that number will go up, while Britain contents itself with one per million, the United States with even less, the Canadians with around two to three per million, and the Australians with, at most, four to five per million. This Government thinks it is justice to have New Zealanders so engaged in dispute resolution that they carry 12 appeals per million people through, at the expense of approximately $200,000 to $300,000 a case.

I also want to talk about the reasons for the changes recommended by the Justice and Electoral Committee to clause 48 and the consequential changes to clause 50. Clause 48 states that a case that has been fully heard in the Court of Appeal or another New Zealand court, and that could have been appealed to the Privy Council, can still go ahead to the Privy Council after the Supreme Court is set up. The obvious reason for that is that the judges who are being appealed from may be the same judges one is forced to appeal to. That is elementary. But what about the cases that have been partly heard? The same problem occurs, but the bill does not deal with it. Of course, the Government is utterly indifferent to the problem of apparent bias or apparent partiality in a court. It just says we should leave things to it, and that is not what it intends.

The effect of the transitional provision is that if one has a partly heard application that has not been completed, or for which a decision has not been rendered, one may be obliged to appeal to the same judges at the next level. If a matter is partly heard and a decision is given after the commencement of this legislation, then the applicant must apply and take an appeal to the same judges. That did not matter to the Minister. She did not want her court to sit twiddling its thumbs and looking idle, while consuming $6.5 million a year and sitting in premises that cost $20 million to set up, because New Zealanders who had a choice continued to take cases to the court they preferred. That would be a very bad look in an election year, so we have this half-cocked transitional provision that does not achieve what it should have achieved. Clause 48 is an abortion to those who believe that justice should be done by courts that patently are not being judges in their own cause.

The other element that arises, as Mr Lindsay Tisch said, is the appointment process. We left that open and had no time to debate it, because we had one 5-minute speech on the previous part. The only way to avoid apparent bias under clause 47, I believe, will be to use to the max the power to appoint temporary judges. And, of course, who does that? The Attorney-General can choose temporary judges who suit the Attorney-General’s ideology. There is no protection in this bill against stacking the court with the favourites who have proved, by their decisions, to suit the Government. The Government can go out and recall Justice Thomas. Justice Thomas made it plain in his submissions how keen he was to be able to develop an indigenous law, and we can expect to see him back as a temporary judge appointed by the Minister to deal with that.

I move, That the question be now put.