Supreme Court Bill

I move, That the Supreme Court Bill be now read a third time. One hundred years ago the then Chief Justice and former Prime Minister, Sir Robert Stout, called on New Zealand to reappraise its continued use of the Privy Council for New Zealand appeals. Shortly thereafter, East Coast Māori petitioned this House to end New Zealand appeals to London in relation to Māori land issues, and instead to direct them to courts here—to judges more familiar with New Zealand conditions. In 1983 the then Prime Minister, Sir Robert Muldoon, acknowledged the time was coming when our use of the Privy Council would cease. In 1989 the Law Commission report on the structure of the courts supported the end of appeals to the Privy Council. The report stated: “The underlying motive for ending judicial committee appeals is that the final New Zealand court responsible for clarifying and developing the law of New Zealand should be composed of senior New Zealand judges who are part of our community, and closely familiar with our historical, social, and legal history. Moreover they should be part of a permanent court made up of judges regularly working together as a collegiate group.”

It is now 30 years since we have accepted, in a broad way, the proposition that we should have a final court actually sitting in New Zealand with permanent New Zealand members. It is that aspiration that successive Attorneys-General have sought to achieve over the past 20 years. In 1996 the National Government introduced a bill to end appeals to the Privy Council, but that Government failed to gain sufficient support to proceed. In 2000 I decided not to introduce legislation immediately but to follow a more inclusive process, by publishing a discussion paper with the options identified by the previous National Government. Public submissions revealed an even balance in the community’s attitudes towards abolishing or retaining appeals to the Privy Council. There was, however, a clear message: that if the Privy Council were abolished there needed to be a clear, distinct, and independent two-tier appellate court structure above the High Court.

Following further consultation with Māori, business groups, and the legal profession, a ministerial advisory group was established to provide advice on the framework of the new Supreme Court. Rather than proceeding immediately, the Government deliberately decided to wait until after the 2002 election before proceeding. This bill was introduced after that election, and the Justice and Electoral Committee then held extensive hearings on it, thus completing a 4-year-long process of consultation on the role and structure of New Zealand’s Supreme Court.

Throughout the debate on the bill very little has been said about the real reasons why the time has not only come but is overdue to establish our own final appellate court. When our Court of Appeal was established in 1957, it was intended to be the final appellate court for most cases. Limited appeals to the Privy Council were retained for rare cases. The Court of Appeal was intended, at that time, to have the role of error-correction, as well as of clarification and development of the law. With the Court of Appeal’s increasing workload, the latter function has become increasingly more difficult for the court to perform. As a result, the development of New Zealand’s law has been stifled. The Privy Council cannot fulfil that development of the law function because of the narrow range and limited number of cases it hears, and, most important, its lack of understanding of the context within which New Zealand cases arise. Members of the Opposition have suggested that this problem could be overcome by all cases going to the Privy Council—after all, they argue, it is cheaper than our courts, because it is subsidised by the British taxpayer. That “freeloader” approach is not the policy of this Government.

That brings me to the second reason why the time is overdue for New Zealand to take responsibility for its own court system. With the passage of time there have been significant changes in Britain, in the Commonwealth, and in New Zealand—such that the Privy Council now faces an uncertain future. Fifty independent countries have withdrawn, or are in the process of withdrawing, from the jurisdiction of the Privy Council. Only the independent countries of Mauritius, Brunei, and the Bahamas will continue to appeal to the Privy Council. Tuvalu and Kiribati, although they still have a right of appeal, have not exercised it in 30 years!

It is not only the fact that so few countries remain with the Privy Council that makes change urgent here. This year the United Kingdom Government announced major changes to its court system—namely, the abolition of the Appellate Committee of the House of Lords, to be replaced by a new Supreme Court. This court will hear devolution appeals from Scotland, which is the only other significant jurisdiction of the Privy Council. Somewhat belatedly, the Opposition has noted those developments, which make its promise to repeal our Supreme Court legislation and reinstate the Privy Council a nonsense. I rather doubt that the United Kingdom would wish to reinstate the remaining trappings of colonialism, at a time when it is firmly turning towards Europe. The Opposition may want to be the last to leave—[Interruption]

💬 Mr SPEAKER: This is a serious debate, and I am going to make sure that during the course of it people are able to have their contributions heard in relative silence. I do not mind the odd interjection, but I do not want too many. There were too many interjections when I intervened.

The Opposition may want to be the last to leave the Privy Council, but this Government has more dignity and foresight than that. True leadership means that one creates one’s own future, and does not wait for others to impose it. With this bill, this Government has demonstrated the courage of leadership.

It is appropriate at this time that I formally express to the Privy Council, New Zealand’s appreciation of the service it has provided over a long period. That service was particularly important when we were a young, emerging nation and our judicial resources were limited. As countries mature they develop their own legal resources, and that is what we have done. It is time we stood on our own feet.

In conclusion, the reasons why this bill is so important are simple. If New Zealand is to develop as a fully independent country we must give all our people equal access to justice, and not just a privileged few. If New Zealand is to develop its own jurisprudence, reflecting the needs of our own society, then we must throw off, once and for all, the fetters of our colonial past. It is time we took responsibility for our own legal destiny, and celebrated the fact that we have a judiciary of the highest integrity and capability. Speaking as the Attorney-General privileged to act as midwife to this long-awaited change, I, along with this Government, will continue to protect the independence and integrity of our legal system as it embarks on this new phase of its development.

I think the way that speech was greeted in the House is a very serious issue for this Parliament. This new Supreme Court starts out damaged at conception, and the reaction of this House is the measure of it. It is the measure of the fundamental problem at the core of the dispute today, and that is distrust. This is made obvious even by the way the Prime Minister has conducted the debate in recent weeks. She has said that this is not a major constitutional change, and that that is why it does not require a public referendum. Well, that is rubbish. She stands alone, popular, modest, and competent as she is, as the only person—aside from members of the Labour caucus—who believes that. Anyone else who has looked at this measure, which not only abolishes appeals to the Privy Council but sets up a final Court of Appeal in New Zealand, says it is a major constitutional change.

So why does that matter? Well, I just wish the Government would listen to this advice. This court can succeed only if it meets one of two conditions: it has broad support in Parliament, or, if that is not the case, it has the broad support of the public. It is a major constitutional change, and the constitution belongs to the people. If, in the first instance, this Parliament offers broad support, that can be enough. In the case of MMP, it was decided that there had to be not only one referendum but several, because it was such a major change that would affect the direction of this country and its political life for decades.

I say to the Government that it has failed the very court that it so much desires to have. It has failed because it has not gained broad parliamentary support. It has made no effort whatsoever to gain that support—none whatsoever. So the Government ends up passing this bill in this House, on a narrow, left-wing majority. It could have done differently. National did put a bill forward in the mid-1990s, which failed for lack of parliamentary support. That tells that side of the House that these ideas are not altogether foreign on this side of the House. There could have been debate and discussion about it, but there was none. In fact, the Government did such a bad job of parliamentary support that it started out with the support of the United Future party, which had goodwill and whose members are supporters of the Government, and it lost that support. That is how badly the Government has failed.

Then the Government failed the second test, which was that if it could not win over Parliament, it should put it to the test with the public. It has not. That goes to the core of the mistrust of this Government and its social agenda. The way that the Government has dealt with that issue has been arrogant, elitist, and contemptuous of public opinion. Helen Clark, Margaret Wilson, and Lord Cooke—our most eminent jurist, apparently—have all said that the public are not up to it. In fact, Lord Cooke said that the thought of the proposal being subject to a referendum made him tremble. I sat there and watched him tremble as he said it. That is the risk for New Zealand—that the spirit of the founders of this Supreme Court, Margaret Wilson, Helen Clark, and Lord Cooke, will infuse it. The risk for this country is that people who have so much contempt for public opinion, who think we are just not clever enough to understand the issues, are the types of people who will be appointing the Supreme Court and will be on the Supreme Court. It is a disgrace. I say to this Government that long after it has gone this Parliament will be wrestling with that Supreme Court, because it started out without the foundation of support that even the supporters of the Supreme Court should be looking for. If the Government really wants this court to work, then it should get the public behind it, if it has failed to get Parliament behind it.

The next step in this process is the process of appointment. Again, it is blighted by distrust. Margaret Wilson’s record on appointments is disgraceful. This Parliament does not trust her to make the appointments to the Supreme Court. Many people do not realise that Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark get the opportunity to appoint two courts—the Supreme Court, and then to fill all the vacancies on the Court of Appeal created by that process. It could be the case that in the next few months Margaret Wilson and Helen Clark will appoint 10 of the 12 senior judges of New Zealand, for a generation. That is unacceptable. I believe that it would be unacceptable if the National Party set out to do that. It has never happened in New Zealand history, and it ought never to happen. If the Government is determined to push this through, judges cannot be appointed in the way that, traditionally, they have been.

I recommend to the Government that it take this advice as well. It must fundamentally change the appointment process for this round of appointments. In the ongoing business of Government, we accept that appointing a judge or two at a time, which is the way it has been done traditionally, is all right and is effective; the record shows that competent people are appointed. But when up to 10 judges are going to be appointed, for a generation, it must be done differently. I believe that it should ultimately be done by resolution of this House. That resolution should occur after hearings by a special select committee to consider the candidates for the Supreme Court. We need to know what these people think. We cannot trust Margaret Wilson’s judgment about it, nor can we trust the judgment of Sir Paul Reeves, or that influential knight of the realm Sir Geoffrey Palmer, or Heather Simpson. Those people have no concept of the mainstream views of New Zealanders about New Zealand, and this court will certainly be taking points of view and making judgments about New Zealand.

I believe that the primary constitutional difference that it will make is to render the Treaty of Waitangi a virtual constitution for New Zealand. That is written into the legislation, quite specifically, at the wishes of Labour and the Greens. The court will be charged to deal with the treaty in a way that the Privy Council simply refused to do. We need to know whether these judges are breathing thin pink oxygen, the clapped-out, warped ideology of separatism that Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson are driving into this country, or whether they will stick to a judge’s job of interpreting the law, not making a new constitution for New Zealand. If any of them think they are going to do a Lord Cooke and put five of them on there, they are wrong, because that approach will certainly lead to a head-on clash with this Parliament.

That is why the appointment process must be changed. For just this one-off group of appointments, of which there could be up to 10, we should have select committee hearings where those judges can be interviewed and their views discussed. Parliament can then decide whether to pass a resolution to appoint those judges.

I ask the Government to please take the advice. It failed to win parliamentary support, and it refused to seek public support; it must now seek the broad support of Parliament for those judges’ appointments, or this court will be damaged at birth in its credibility, and therefore will fail to fulfil the Government’s vision, but, more important, will fail to fulfil the role that it potentially could have for New Zealand.

Before I take the next call, I advise the House that I have had a request from National and New Zealand First that they split the 10th call into two calls of 5 minutes each. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is not. So when the 10th call is made there will be two calls of 5 minutes each.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Just before Mr English spoke you reprimanded the House and said that this is an important constitutional debate and that you would insist on the highest standards. I waited because I thought perhaps you did not intend to break up Mr English’s speech, and would reprimand members now, at the conclusion of his speech. We saw two extremely unparliamentary actions during his speech. The first was made by the co-leader of the Green Party. He walked between Mr English and yourself, conducted a conversation with the Clerk, then came back and started to make gestures towards the Opposition like a soccer hooligan. The second grossly unparliamentary action was the Attorney-General deciding to stand in the gangway—standing is completely out of order when interjecting—and heckle Mr English as she walked, ignoring you. I believe that those two members should be reprimanded by you for their conduct.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I will do that, because I thought that the interjection should not have been made in that way. I ask the Minister to withdraw and apologise for interjecting.

💬 Hon Margaret Wilson: I withdraw and apologise.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Mr Donald broke one of the traditions. One does not go in front of the member when one is moving in that way. I think the point was validly taken.

The Greens are proud to support this bill. We believe that it accords with the Green Party charter and our principles. We also believe that the idea of the final court of appeal in New Zealand being situated on the other side of the world, in London, is just bizarre and not credible for an independent nation such as ourselves. We are pleased that this country will finally get a fully functioning final court of appeal. The point has been made in this debate previously that we do not have a fully functioning final court of appeal in this country. The access to the Privy Council is so restricted, and the number of cases that can get there are so few, that the Privy Council is just not able to fulfil the traditional functions of a final court of appeal. On the other hand, our own Court of Appeal gets so many cases that it is unable to fulfil that function. It does not have the time to deal exhaustively with matters of law in order to play that function.

It is no surprise that we see the right-wing parties of the House line up together to support a final court of appeal that serves the rich well but does not serve the ordinary New Zealander. The question that the Green Party had to address in dealing with this bill was whether we support justice for all New Zealanders or justice just for the rich. We unashamedly support justice for all New Zealanders. We believe that this bill is a step towards the decolonisation of this country and the development of the forging of a national identity. Some people have claimed that this is a move towards republicanism. Those claims are exaggerated. Lord Cooke said very clearly in the select committee that although he is an ardent monarchist he supports this bill. We have only to look at the example of other countries—Canada, Australia, and the like—which have ended their appeals to the Privy Council but remain part of the Commonwealth, with the Queen as their head of State.

However, I personally have to say that I hope we will see constitutional change in the not too distant future. I believe that we do need to move towards a republic. We do need treaty-based constitutional change, and a written constitution to constrain the ability of this House to act, particularly within the context of a unicameral system. We need to end the fallacious doctrine of the indivisibility of sovereignty, which is just incorrect in the context of Aotearoa.

The Attorney-General has outlined the process by which this policy was developed and by which the bill arising out of the policy was developed. This bill has highlighted a more general concern that the processes by which the Crown engages with Māori in general have not been well developed by any Government, whether Labour or National. The select committee has asked for more work to be done by the Government on how processes of negotiation can be better managed. However, it is simply not true to say, as some do, that this bill has been rushed, that it has been introduced by stealth, or that the public has not had the chance to have input. The Attorney-General has outlined the lengthy process that the bill has gone through, and that process included an extended select committee process to try to ensure that the public had ample opportunity to have a say on the bill in addition to the discussions prior to it being introduced into this House.

There have been accusations by some, including the Hon Georgina te Heuheu, among others, that the Greens are supporting this bill because we have done some kind of a deal. One has to ask: “A deal on what?”. I cannot even begin to imagine. Perhaps a deal on GE? Well, we have yet to see the Government budge one millimetre on the GE issue in response to the Green Party representations and in response to the many thousands of people who marched in the streets this last weekend. Did we do a deal on the Clean Slate Bill perhaps? I do not think so. Perhaps we will see tomorrow, if my Clean Slate Bill comes up during members’ day, but I am certainly not holding my breath to see the Government support my Clean Slate Bill, because I would probably expire if I did. Those people simply find it difficult to understand that there is a party in this House that does not operate like that—that does not trade between issues, and that acts with integrity on such matters. They fail to understand that the Green Party has a consistent position that we will support legislation when we think it is good legislation, and we will oppose legislation when we think it is bad legislation. It is just that simple.

I have to distinguish the members of that member’s own party, National, whose leader, Bill English, said on National Radio last Friday that he supported the National bill in 1996, but is opposing this bill now, because of who has put it up—because Margaret Wilson has put it up and because the Prime Minister is Helen Clark. If that is the reason the National Party is opposing the bill, I have to say that is the kind of first-past-the-post politics that this country rejected when we moved to MMP. The Green Party has not done a deal, and, in fact, the position of the Green Party to support this bill was a democratic decision of the entire party, not just of the caucus—and I believe that the Green Party policy development process is the most democratic of any party in this Parliament. It was the position of the party, and it was reaffirmed by the caucus, to support this bill.

I have to acknowledge that there are members of the Green Party who do not support the position that the party has taken. In particular, some of the Māori members have expressed grave concern about the bill, and would prefer to see the Green Party oppose the Supreme Court at this stage. They want to see a written constitution developed and the status of Te Tiriti o Waitangi clarified before the bill is passed. That is a perfectly legitimate point of view. But it was a decision of the whole party, democratically arrived at through our policy development process, and affirmed by the caucus through a separate process, to support this bill. That is the will of the Green Party, and that is what the Green Party caucus will continue to uphold.

The concerns expressed by those members have been acknowledged by the party, and are the subject of ongoing discussion with the Government in terms of providing impetus to a proposal for a constitutional inquiry through the Justice and Electoral Committee. I certainly do not think it is the place of the select committee to say what our constitution should be. But I think the select committee could play a very useful role in saying what our constitution is now, because there is a lot of confusion about that, and in saying what the appropriate process is by which this Parliament can engage with the public to have a public discussion about our constitution.

I would like, in the last stages of my speech, to refer to the question of referenda. I talked about this during the Committee stage, so I will not go over the many good arguments against referenda on this particular bill in general, except to say that although some media have jumped on the bandwagon in the last few days and whipped up fear through, in one case at least, a good deal of misinformation and outright lies, there is no evidence, in fact, of a widespread call for a referendum. A poll published in the New Zealand Herald today shows support for a referendum, but any poll would show support for a referendum on just about any piece of legislation. If one phones people up and asks them whether they want to have a say through a referendum, they are bound to say “Yes”. But I think it is highly significant that the campaign to get a petition to force a citizens initiated referendum had to be relaunched a few days ago because it had flopped so badly the first time it was launched. So I think this House has to conclude that there is no evidence of a significant call from the public for a referendum.

This bill is good legislation, and it was clearly signalled by Labour before the election. Finally, this country will have a fully functioning final court of appeal that is open to all kinds of cases, and wide open to all New Zealanders, not just the elite friends of some of the parties of this Parliament. The Green Party will support this bill.

This idea was illegitimate at conception and it will be illegitimate at birth. There was no mandate for this matter at the 2002 election. It was in Labour’s manifesto, and it was in the Progressive manifesto, but both those parties could not get a majority. It was not in the Green manifesto. The Greens said they would pay attention to what the Māori people wanted. So firstly, there is no mandate. Secondly, 80 percent of the people of this country want to have a say on this issue, and they should have it. On such a significant issue of constitutional change, the people should be asked, not the temporarily empowered politicians about to go from this Parliament as Margaret Wilson soon will. The moment the Prime Minister flies the white flag she will be gone as well. They want to leave that legacy to the rest of us to try to put in place in the long term as we carry on in Government.

Helen Clark said she knows at least 10 other people who support this legislation. Is that so? Could that be true? Are there 10 other secret supporters of this bill? Well, I tell the Prime Minister to put her money where her mouth is and have a conscience vote today. We will then see who is telling the truth—Helen Clark, or the rest of us.

Then she talked about the cost. Any international business that in the future has a dispute—and this will be written into the contract—will not have that dispute decided in New Zealand. It will be decided in the UK, Canada, Australia, or Europe—anywhere but in New Zealand. Because there is no way that 4 million people can put together a group of judges far enough removed from the maelstrom of politics to be independent. Those are not my words, they are in the 1969 thesis of one Geoffrey Palmer. It is all there. No way could one have that proximity to the people and guarantee independence. So we disposed of that argument as well. But the costs to New Zealand business will be huge.

Then, of course, they say, as Nandor Tanczos and John Tamihere did, that the Privy Council is only for the rich. It is amazing to hear that stupid statement. Who took the Samoan people during 1982, who were not the rich, to a win in the Privy Council? Who took a whole lot of Māori claimants just last year to the Privy Council—all seeking legal aid, and three-quarters of whom were Māori—to benefit hundreds of people because our High Court and Court of Appeal got it wrong? They were ordinary poor people. I myself have been there, against the rich and famous, in the wine-box case.

💬 Pita Paraone: Labour supporters!

Oh, Labour supporters; Labour donors! They gave Labour millions. This argument about the cost—that the benefit will be only to the wealthy—is therefore spurious, totally false, and a diversion.

They say we are doing just what Canada and Australia did. That is not true. That is false. Helen Clark says she is widely read on this issue. She is not. Margaret Wilson made that claim too. This is a former dean of a law school. Mind you, it was Waikato University! This former dean does not understand that in Canada—after it finally established its last and final Court of Appeal—the right to go to the Privy Council went on for another 74 years. In Australia, the other example put up by Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson, the right to go to the Privy Council went on for another 85 years. Not this bunch, reciting those examples! Ignorant of the facts, they say we will be in the same circumstances as Canada and Australia. That is totally false, and historically wrong. There is a word for that, but I cannot use it.

And here is the other Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson deceit. They said that the last time Māori went to the Privy Council and won was in 1927. That is demonstrably false and totally untrue. A former assistant clerk of this House, Ellis, took 12 people to the Privy Council, three-quarters of whom were Māori—but the beneficiaries in the main from that finding were Māori, and there were hundreds of them—and they won. Those people were so poor they could not even afford to go there unless it was on legal aid at the time. So we have debunked that argument as well.

But I want to come to those seven Māori MPs, who every day say that they are the unique, special, and particular voice of the Māori people of this country who have been here for 1,000 years, and entitled to a special ward, in political terms, themselves. Those seven Māori members say that, above all else, they speak for Māori.

My colleague Pita Paraone passed on an old saying to me this morning: “Even lambs make noises.” Even lambs say something. So can people hear the voice of Māoridom, down the centuries, the tangata whenua, the people of the land? What can members hear? A deafening silence; not a mutter, not a murmur, not a syllable, not a sound, and not even a bleat! “Yes ma’am, yes ma’am, three bags full.” They talk of tino rangatiratanga, the tribe, the mana, the majesty of the people, and standing in the shoes of chiefs. Can members hear the voice now? No, I cannot.

💬 Hon Brian Donnelly: Taihoa, taihoa.

Yes, it is. “Taihoa, taihoa, it’s off to vote we go!” That is their idea of representation. If ever I saw a nail in the coffin of special Māori representation, I am seeing it today. For there is no reason to carry on with the separate Māori seats, if that is what the standard, unique, and special voice represents.

I say to the Māori members over there that they have nothing to be afraid of. Those seven Māori members have nothing to lose by crossing the House to vote with their people today. They have nothing to lose. They will not even lose their seats, because we will not stand against them. They have nothing at all to lose but their weakness. They have nothing at all to lose but their subservience. They have nothing at all to lose but the subjugation of their people. So they should stand up today for their people. They should do something. [Interruption]

They should not shout at me; they should shout at their leader. They should not shout me down; they should shout their leader down. Or better still, those members should get up on their feet to defend this bill. If ever I saw a patronising attitude to Māori, it is in the way Labour has treated them today. All during this debate they have not been able to speak. Not one Māori member has spoken for the full time since this debate started.

The senior Government whip pretends that he speaks for Māori, right over his colleagues’ heads. If that happened in my party, we would be shouted down, would we not? But those members are colonised. They are suffering from overbearing imperialism. They have nothing to lose. They should cross the floor. Their people are asking them to do that.

Lastly, this is a defining moment for this country. We intend to repeal the legislation. No respectable jurist, if he or she is halfway wise, will take on that office. But more importantly, unlike what their spin doctor told them, this will not be forgotten in 2 years’ time. It is the defining moment for the next election, and when it is all over, those members will be over here and we will be over there.

It is a defining moment when a court is born in these circumstances. Every decision it makes for the next few years will be scrutinised to see whether, indeed, we have ended up with hero judges. I shall read a description from a paper in Australia that is very influential: “Hero judging signals the reversal of time-honoured beliefs about the role of judges—transforming them from guardians of liberty with a healthy suspicion of Governments into partners of the politicians, working to strengthen, rather than limit, the role of Government. It asks judges to participate in economic, social, and political governance, and sets tasks for which they are ill-suited. Hero judging is profoundly antidemocratic, because it allows unelected and politically unaccountable judges to participate in Government. It allows elected politicians to avoid dealing with politically sensitive issues by transforming political issues best decided through the give and take of the political process into legal questions of right and wrong.”

That is what this is about. That is why 80 percent of people want a say. There may be many who think that hero judging is a good idea. Others are starting to sense that there can be no other reason for the false arguments and claptrap that has surrounded this debate. The only argument that remains after the select committee consideration and the Committee stage in this House is one of national pride—the so-called “maturing as a nation” argument. The other two were clearly falsified by the evidence, and no one now tries to sustain them—that is, the argument of cost, and access to justice.

On the argument of cost, this legislation will cost New Zealand at least $27 million more than we spend at the moment on appeals to the highest level. This Government—on the argument of access—will put families who have been through the Family Court, farmers and business people, and someone who wants to build a granny flat, who have been through the Environment Court, and workers and employers who have been through the Employment Court through three stages of proceedings.

That is not justice. That is litigation savagery. To have people required to go through three stages, instead of two, is not something suffered by the Australians or the British. In Britain the number that go through two stages of appeal to a third court is one per million, in Australia it is about four per million, and in Canada it is about three per million. Under the heading of “Access”, this Government is planning to put 12 per million through our Supreme Court.

That, of course, does not add to justice. It simply adds to uncertainty, especially when we see what lies behind the Attorney-General’s promotion of this bill. All those extra appeals that will go not just two stages, but three—except one special area—will be on law and fact. Typically, appeal courts do not go through the facts again, because that is torture. That is exposing people to enormous expense. The Attorney-General has carefully changed perhaps 10 different Acts to make it plain that there can be appeals to the Supreme Court on both law and fact. However, there is one very telling exception. That exception is in employment law. Employment law appeals can go only on the law.

I wonder why that would be. I believe that it is very clear. As time went on, the Attorney-General still would not state a simple process for appointing judges to the Supreme Court. She will still not unequivocally acknowledge that it will be the senior judges from the Court of Appeal. She still will not accept any process or mechanism to ensure that it is not politically stacked. She can see that she will not get away with more than one, or at most two, odd appointments. She does not want this new court to be dealing with her baby, the employment law. She does not want them re-examining Judge Goddard’s findings, until a year or two down the track we find that that Supreme Court is starting to get on it the people that she is appointing at the lower level.

That is a postponement, because she knows she will get to stack the court through the appointments at the lower level. A court that starts off like that is not a celebration of nationhood. It does not give us pride. It will make our law process a nonsense. As the Leader of the Opposition, Mr English, said, this is a day for shame. As Mr Peters said, this is the worst kind of start, or birth, for a new court.

Labour members, and their proxies in the Greens, in their arguments also talked frequently about a court for the fat cats. Did the patient in the Bottrill case think she was a fat cat when she got the Privy Council to overturn the establishment view in New Zealand and allow her to challenge the decision that she could not sue for the negligent cancer diagnosis? Is she one of the Labour Government’s fat cats? What about the more recent case concerning the man who cannot be named, who took on theChildren, Young Persons, and Their Families Service because the New Zealand Court of Appeal said that negligent investigation of an abuse case cannot be a matter for litigation in the New Zealand courts?

Antonia Fisher came before the select committee because of the experience she had had acting for the women in the Bottrill case. Mr Chris Sygrove told me it took only $60,000—and every dollar of it well spent—for the man who had been so badly treated in the child abuse investigation by Children, Young Persons, and Their Families Service.

And there is more. In the Taito case, Mr Tony Ellis and Mr Shaw went to the Privy Council to get the legal aid appeals decision reversed, and it took $25,000. They considered that every dollar of that was well spent. Of course, because they won, it was reimbursed by legal aid. If this Government were really interested in access to justice, it could send every person who goes near the Privy Council to London and back in a private jet. The amount the Government is spending for this new court, works out at $150,000 per extra appeal. Appellants could go backwards and forwards in a private jet two or three times—unless they were Mr Tamihere, who wrote in the newspapers that it had cost his folk more than a million dollars for their appeal, and they failed. Of course, they failed; the rich are Mr Tamihere’s urban Māori.

💬 Ron Mark: Mr Tamihere is one of them.

That is right, the fat cats! The venom of Mr Tamihere is probably because the real fat cats lost.

What is the outcome? What will happen? We will have a court born in this state because the Attorney-General made absolutely no attempt to get consensus. She never approached any member on this side of the House, as far as I am aware, or even the Government’s friends in United Future, to discuss a way of appointing judges that might reassure people it was not part of an agenda to stack the court. As Mr English suggested, she did not even bother to deal with the first appointments as a separate matter. She did not bother to get the retired judges, who were making silly observations about there never having been political appointments, to consider the situation across the Tasman.

I asked the Parliamentary Library to look at the appointments to the High Court of Australia, and when I stopped at Lionel Murphy’s name, which must be the high point of appointments to the highest court, 17 of the first 33 Australian High Court judges had served as politicians. Why would New Zealand be different? It has not been a stacked court in our appointments, to date, because it simply has not been worth incurring the political cost. What Government would bother to stack a New Zealand court, when we can appeal to a patently impartial, independent set of international referees? Of course, it would not. But the past is no guide to the future. Because the Minister rejects our past, rejects tradition, and wants the future to be different, we are going into this with absolutely no protection against a stacked court other than the assurance that the Solicitor-General—the Attorney-General’s chief employee—and Sir Paul Reeves will be giving her advice.

What a shambles the Government had made of this proposal. We have a Privy Council that is in decline and, as I said in my second reading speech, I would give it 5 years before it needs replacing. We need to replace our right of appeal to the Privy Council. The Supreme Court proposal put up by the Government was generally a good proposal. The only problem is that the public do not want it. The Government’s response to the public’s opposition to it is: “Stuff the public! We are going ahead anyway.” Support for the Government drops further, and slowly its buffer zone whittles away. So let us have a post-mortem. What went wrong for the Government? It all comes down to marketing. For marketing, I would give the Government a D minus. Simply, it did not sell this proposal to the public. It was a constitutional issue, it needed the public to be onside, but the Government failed to get public support.

What were the errors the Government made? Firstly, there should have been a select committee inquiry into whether the Privy Council should be abandoned in favour of a Supreme Court, based on a specific discussion paper that was effectively a shadow bill. Instead, the Government tabled a Supreme Court Bill, and said: “Well, here it is. Now we will discuss it, and then we will pass it.”, and the public felt it was a fait accompli. The issue needed to be taken on a gentler basis. The issue of whether the right of appeal to the Privy Council should be abandoned in favour of the Supreme Court should have been fronted up directly to the public—not just through a consultation paper that asked what would replace it, on the assumption that it would be replaced, and not based simply on private conversations with selected people. There should have been a discussion paper, because then there would have been public ownership of this issue. The public would have said: “All right, we have been asked the question. These are our views.” Those views could have been discussed, and the public might have come onside.

Secondly, the Government should have said to the public: “The Privy Council is in decline. What are we going to do to replace it?” We know that countries have left the Privy Council, and we know that only three countries, apart from New Zealand, now actively participate in the Privy Council. The public do not know that. It has been too little and too late for the Government to now sell this bill on that basis. The public needed to know that fact a long time ago.

Even recently, I have been getting emails from people, saying: “If it isn’t broke, why fix it?” The fact of the matter is that if the Privy Council is not broken now, it will be broken shortly, but the public do not realise that, and that is the Government’s fault. Even in this House there are people who did not know that the Caribbean countries are leaving the Privy Council, and they make up 40 percent of the caseload of the current council. They did not know that England is to set up a new Supreme Court, which would take 20 percent of the caseload away from the Privy Council, leaving New Zealand and those other small countries. The lack of education within this House, let alone outside it—and I am talking about Labour MPs here—has been abysmal.

It is only in the last week that the Government has finally started arguing that this is a necessary bill because the Privy Council is going into decline. However, the Privy Council was probably not in demise 2 years ago, when the Government actively started this process. The Caribbean departure has occurred over the last 12 months, and the Supreme Court proposals in England have really taken place this year. The Government’s initial approach was to do this as an ideological drive, so its timing was out. If the Government had been a little bit more patient about this bill and taken a little bit more time to get the public onside, then the events we have seen in the last year would have helped it achieve the goal it felt it needed to achieve.

But once the Government realised the public was not onside, it could even then have taken a step back and looked at some degree of compromise that could have resulted in this bill going through. Government members could have swallowed their pride, opened their minds, and said: “All right, we do not have public support. What do we need to get it?” That is the approach United Future took. One way would have been to disclose the names of the senior Court of Appeal judges on the first court. There is no reason why the names of the first court could not have been decided and disclosed before this bill went through. The Government could have consulted as much as it liked beforehand, but that disclosure would have given the public and the business community confidence that the court would not be stacked.

With regard to judicial appointments, clearly there are the beginnings of a worldwide trend—particularly in Commonwealth countries—for there to be an independent judicial appointments commission. As those criticisms arose, the Government should have volunteered a discussion paper and announced that there would be a move to work towards a more independent judicial consultation process. That would have allayed fears among the legal and business communities about the stacking of courts, and the judicial process that has started to arise, particularly on the back of the Australian experience.

Thirdly, among Māori the key argument was that a constitutional review was needed, and that the place of the treaty within our constitution needed to be examined and cemented in. That was the message that came out of the Taupo hui, and it has been ignored. For all sorts of reasons, we are long overdue in deciding what the place of the Treaty of Waitangi in our nation is. Instead, National and Labour have taken the approach of saying that they are too scared to address the place of the treaty, but that they will create “treaty principles”. That has confused the situation even more. We have been wandering around—as Labour continues to do—with no vision of the place of Māori and the treaty within New Zealand for the next 5 to 10 years. We need a clear direction, and that is what Māori are calling for in the context of this bill.

Fourthly, the business community clearly lacks confidence that the Court of Appeal judges appointed to the Supreme Court will be able to decide their multi-million dollar cases in that court. That is not necessarily to say that our Court of Appeal judges do not have competence. They do have competence, but in comparison to the level of support and confidence engendered by British judges and the senior Commonwealth law lords, the business community thinks we will be poorly served.

What could we have done to try to alleviate that concern? Why not arrange that two of the five judges on the initial bench will be overseas judges with commercial experience? In exchange for us withdrawing from the Privy Council, why not ask the British legislature to make two judges available to us—even just during the transition process—in order to get the support of the business community? I am sure the British Government would have been sympathetic to that request, but it was never put. There could have been a transition. We could have looked at reviewing the system in 5 years’ time. That would have allowed the court to begin with the confidence of the public, and to prove to itself and to New Zealanders that our judges had competence. When it was reviewed in 5 years’ time, it might well have been OK. Instead, Labour is seen as arrogant, ideology-driven, dismissive of public opinion, and untrustworthy.

Why are the Greens supporting this bill? According to Green members, they got no concessions. They went into the select committee process wanting three things. They wanted overseas judges, more consultation with Māori, and a clause inserted in the bill to the effect that the bill did not affect the treaty rights of Māori. Have they got any of those? No, they did not get a single one. They said they changed their minds on overseas judges. There might have been more consultation with Māori, but Māori emphatically said “No”, so the Greens ignored them. Is there a clause protecting treaty rights? No, there is not. The right of appeal based on treaty issues has been taken away and put into the purpose clause. One could argue that, effectively, the role of the treaty has been demeaned, not encouraged. So much for that!

The mystery is what the Greens have achieved from it. They have achieved nothing. They have sold out their constituency and New Zealanders who do not support this bill. It will not be the last time they sell out their constituency. They have promised to bring the Government down after the end of the month if the moratorium is lifted. They have said they will not support the Government’s legislation. It will be interesting to see whether they welsh on the commitment they made to the people, as well, and, once again, sacrifice their constituency.

E te kaihautū me te whakaruruhau, tēnā rā koe. Ngā mihi nunui ki te whānui o te motu, kei te mihi nunui ki a koutou. Taku īnoi ki a koutou—e aroha ki a koe, Georgina, aroha ki a koe, aroha ki a koe. Mōhio ki a mātou, aroha ki a koutou. Nō reira, ki a koutou mā, taku īnoi e ngā iwi whānui kia mau te kaupapa nunui, te kaupapa tūturu mō rātou ngā tīpuna. Te mana motuhake mō mātou. Katia te pito mō te Kāwanatanga. Engari, e tū ake au ki te tautoko te mana whenua, te mana mō ngā iwi, kotahi tātou mō te whenua o Aotearoa. Kāre rātou ngā tīpuna e warewaretia e mātau. Takoto tonu, takoto tonu, ā, takoto tonu.

Madam Speaker, I acknowledged you in my opening. As a Māori member, I am privileged to speak on behalf of my colleagues in the Māori caucus, as well as for my full caucus. I acknowledged the people far and wide in this country. Notwithstanding the interjection from the list member of no fixed abode, Georgina te Heuheu, I noted her and acknowledged her interjection. Furthermore, I indicated quite clearly that it is the wish of our Māori members, elected with the constituency vote and the party vote, that our people stand up and wake up. It is our prayer that we cut the tie to Great Britain that they have become dependent upon. It is our view, and our right on behalf of our people to acknowledge—and it was handed down from our ancestors—that we must be independent of, not dependent on, Great Britain. I also acknowledged our ancestors who fell on our behalf, as shown by the memorials carved into the Chamber, and those who have fallen recently.

A wrong perception is definitely held, particularly by a few people on the Opposition benches, that the Privy Council serves as some sort of guardian of Māori treaty rights, and that moving to a New Zealand - based Privy Council—our own Supreme Court—is inconsistent with the treaty. We do not believe that. That perception is inaccurate and unacceptable.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: We didn’t say that.

The member for Tauranga goes around the country saying one thing in front of the Māori constituency, but another in front of the old people in Tauranga. He is an absolute flip-flop.

Settlements progress, and as Māori organisations grow and change, the prospect of litigation also grows. This Government is about positioning New Zealand for opportunity and for the future. That is the direction this Government is going in. The future will see Māori versus Māori cases, not just Māori versus the Crown. Those days are over. Our people have to wake up and realise that we can no longer be dependent on traditions 12,000 miles away. We have to understand our own mana for a change, rather than being suffocated by a Privy Council in Great Britain, or by Mr Peters’ social welfare department. It is likely that the final court of appeal will have to make determinations on matters of Māori tikanga—that is, on matters of fact.

As someone who has been to the Privy Council, it became obvious to me that the council lacked the ability to make decisions on our cases. Its members did not have the knowledge of what makes a Kiwi, or of our jurisprudence, which has been treaty-driven through the Waitangi Tribunal. They did not have the knowledge of our society, in our times, for our things. Not only do I say that, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead said it in the Privy Council. He said: “For some years, their lordships’ board has recognised the limitations on its role as an appellate tribunal in cases where the decision depends upon considerations of local public policy.”

The courts of New Zealand are much better placed to assess the requirements of public interest in New Zealand than their lordships’ board. I concur with that lord. He was honest enough, and the Privy Council was honest enough, to know that they could not handle Kiwi-related matters. They could not apply the facts to the law, because they no longer understood the facts. In 1973, when Great Britain deemed it time to go to the European courts, it was quite clear that it had embarked upon a new form of law. That law was not our law; it was that country’s law—under the European courts. Twenty-five years later, Opposition members sit there and say that is not true.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: No, no.

The member for Tauranga continues to say that it is not true. We know different.

Was it not a joke? We saw the Māori Affairs Committee desecrated yesterday by a love-in by the nancy boys running their own hui—the unholy alliance in our own select committee.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. There was a meeting yesterday. There were no Labour members there, and yet he is referring to “nancy boys”. He should not be allowed to talk about his colleagues in that way.

I am glad the member has come out of the closet. I am grateful for that.

💬 John Carter: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I recall an incident last week in the Committee of the whole House that you were chairing, in respect of which we recalled the Speaker. There was a Speaker’s ruling that there were to be no inferences. The issue arose when the Māori members on the other side of the House were called “the seven gnomes”, and that was ruled out of order. Indeed, the Speaker ruled that no inferences—such as “nancy boys” or anything else—were to be made. Because we had a discussion around it, I ask you to make sure that that rule is constant right across Parliament. That member should not make any inferences about, or references to, anybody that are derogatory.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The Minister should not use language in that way. As the member has said, it encourages disorder.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I am not making a point of order about the fact that what the Minister said is liable to raise disorder in this House. I know he is not talking about members on this side; he is talking about his colleagues, and we all know who they are.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member raised a point of order and I have ruled on it.

💬 Ron Mark: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. Whilst we are taking the point, I would like you to draw to members’ attention the fact that, in his rather derogatory comments about members of Parliament who are still in the closet, the Minister knows full well that many of his own party, for their own reasons, have yet to come out on that issue. To pull them into this debate, which has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the bill before the House, is totally inappropriate.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member will be seated.

When I was talking to my 13-year-old boy last night, he said he saw Huey, Dewey, and Louie on television. I asked him who they were, but I accept that I cannot name them in the Chamber—

💬 John Carter: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. It is the same point. The Speaker was very clear—no inferences or derogatory comments are to be made about any members in this House. It was a Speaker’s ruling, and we had a debate about it. That member should be asked to desist, or else have his speech terminated. It is not a very good one, anyway.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: Yes, the member is quite right. If the Minister is referring to other members of Parliament, he will refer to them correctly.

The arrangement we have proposed in the bill is clearly this: we are elected for our judgment; we will not be bullied, we will not be intimidated, and we will not be stood over. [Interruption] Not by the pinstriped one from Tauranga! That will not happen. Not only that, we will also say that this court is about access for Kiwis to the highest court in their land. It is very simple. The money it takes to go off to Great Britain and trudge all the way through the process means that the Privy Council is no doubt supported by business, which uses it as a negotiation instrument and a tool. The people I represent do not; the rich Māoris, whom Ms te Heuheu represents, do. That is the difference. ACT might want to do that, because it is the party in Parliament to support the big side of town; we over here on this side of the Chamber are looking after all the little fellas. That is the way it goes.

Much is made by members opposite of the fact that we are a small country, and that supposedly means that we are incapable of supplying a sufficient number of high-quality judges to determine what the law of New Zealand is. It means that we are no good at anything, and that we should sell ourselves—as the ACT party would have us do—to be the 51st state of the USA. That would mean a Bill of Rights and going to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. That party would have the Supreme Court of America tomorrow, but it will not acknowledge the mana of its own people in our times. Worse, the National Party would want to make us the seventh state of Australia. They would rather have an Australian Supreme Court rule on us. That is an outrage, and the sooner Kiwis wake up to the fact that this is our time to shape our destiny—our time to grow up and say: “Now is the day.”—the better.

I want to acknowledge something about the Attorney-General. They can intimidate, stand over, and say all of their ugly, nasty little things about her, but at the end of the day, in terms of public service to Kiwi nationhood—whether as President of the Labour Party or as a senior academic at Auckland and Waikato universities—she beats them hands down and spades down. I am grateful that she is a colleague. Even better, I am grateful that she is a mate. On this side of the House, we stand by our mates. We do not sharpen the knife as Ronny Marks does—just behind Winston Peters—because Ronny’s after that. National members would not sharpen the knife because they do not know where to put it. Clearly, they do not have a back to put it in.

In any case, I want to make it quite clear that, in terms of this bill, New Zealand has reached the stage in its nationhood-building where it must reject the cultural cringe and accept that we have the strength, confidence, and expertise to base our ultimate court in our own country and in our own times. Luckily, we have a Government that has direction. Luckily, it has leadership. Members on the other side are barren and bankrupt of leadership.

I say to the member for Tauranga that I do not know the names of his Māori members. No one in the House knows the names of those Māori members. They are no-hopers, nincompoops, and all the rest of it, but I understand they are not bad blokes outside the House. Never have they attended any Māori hui. Never have other Māori members seen them in any Māori hui. They do not turn up; they are as bankrupt as anything.

I will conclude by saying that the Attorney-General and the Prime Minister have got it right. If we cannot run ourselves, who can? We say we can, we say it is our time, and we say that this bill is the best thing that has happened in our court processes and constitution since we arrived.

If one were to summarise that speech, one would have to say that it was characterised by a tirade of abuse. This is a very sad day for this Parliament. We are at the stage of the parliamentary process known as the third reading of this bill. That process is almost complete, and I was saddened to hear the sycophantic applause that came from the Labour benches when the first speech, given by the Attorney-General, was read to the House. This is a sad day, also, for the New Zealand legal system.

I would like to start, if I may, by recounting a story to the House that smacks of both treachery and intrigue. At an early stage of the legislative process relating to this bill—which National opposes, to a man and a woman—I had a discussion with the Green representative on the Justice and Electoral Committee. I asked him what the position of the Greens would be on this bill. He was quite open, quite direct, and quite frank. He said that the Greens would follow the position of Māori on the bill. So it was that he continued, as I did, to listen to submissions made by the submitters who came before the committee. We heard a large number of Māori submitters. Many of those submitters represented iwi interests, and many of them represented Māori business.

💬 Nandor Tanczos: I raise a point of order, Madam Speaker. I apologise if I do not understand the Standing Orders, but I wonder whether it is allowed within the Standing Orders for the member to misrepresent the Green position in that way.

💬 Madam DEPUTY SPEAKER: That is a debating matter.

What was the view of Māori on this bill? They were strongly opposed to it. The Government has rushed on, heedless of that concern, and I suggest that the consultation hui that have occurred have been shallow and meaningless events, given the commitment of the Government to see this legislation through, whatever the consequence. So we have a situation in which there has been poor process, and acrimony. That is surely not a good start to a major constitutional change. The court has been politicised, and I believe that one of the great institutions of the State—our domestic legal system—has been substantially damaged.

National has made its position clear: it does not support this legislation. When National comes to office in 2005 with the centre-right parties, it will repeal this legislation. Those who have been foolish enough to take tenure as judges will lose that tenure, and, in conjunction with the British Government, National will restore the Privy Council link.

I would like to talk about one aspect of the legislation and its process that is of real concern. Probably the best starting point is to refer to that great newspaper, the Independent. On 10 October 2001, the present Attorney-General made it very clear to those people who read the the Independent that the business community must be confident with the outcome relating to the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council. She said: “We need maximum agreement if there is to be any changes.” Her words were “maximum agreement”. A synonym for that is “broad-based consensus”, and that is wholly lacking, as demonstrated by a large number of indicators. Of the submitters who appeared before the select committee, 75 percent of them did not want this change to occur. Has the Government listened to those views? It seems not. Then there was the poll, reported in the New Zealand Herald this morning, that shows that 79 percent of New Zealanders want a referendum on whether to abolish appeals to the Privy Council. Will the Government listen to that? No. Will the Greens take any account of Māori perspectives? No. Is it too late for Green members to do something about that? It would be hard for them, but they could do so. If they stuck to their principles, they could do something. But will they? Probably not.

I would like to summarise, very briefly, the arguments that have led National and, perhaps, other parties of the centre-right to the position they have taken. That position, simply expressed, is that we want appeals to the Privy Council to remain. I think that one of the most telling comments that emerged in the course of the select committee process was that one of the judges, a former Chief Justice of New Zealand who had served on the Privy Council, told us in a frank and an unadorned fashion that the Privy Council is certainly an extremely high-class, polished, Rolls-Royce service. He said that there was no gainsaying that. Why are we doing away with that court of acknowledged excellence? Why are we doing away with a court that has given us such great service for so long, and that remains committed to that end? Why are we going to gut the Court of Appeal, by moving the Court of Appeal judges up to the Supreme Court? How are we going to fill the Court of Appeal, one of the hardest-working courts in our legal system, with competent judges? None of those questions has been properly addressed by the Government.

The second point is that the major users of the Privy Council—which include business interests and Māori, in the way I have described—are opposed to the abolition of rights of appeal to the Privy Council. Clearly, their views must be worth something in this argument, but has the Government given them any weight? No, none at all.

The third argument, which has been put to the select committee by a number of submitters—not many, but a few—is that as a matter of national identity, New Zealand should no longer defer to an overseas jurisdiction. It is an argument, I guess, about sovereignty, and about giving sovereignty away. But the reality in the modern world is that many countries, including New Zealand, have ceded sovereignty in a number of ways. The classic example of that would be the international agreements that New Zealand and other countries have entered into. But the more significant point is that it is a global trend for countries to look outside their territorial boundaries to have disputes determined. What is the highest court in the United Kingdom? It is not the House of Lords. There are now rights of appeal that extend into Europe, to the European court of justice and the European Court of Civil Rights. So whereas we have countries looking outside their boundaries for the resolution of disputes, the plan for New Zealand is, apparently, for us to draw ourselves inward. I have argued—and I believe it is correct—that justice transcends nationalism. New Zealand is following a contrary course by abolishing the right of appeal to the Privy Council.

I would like to talk about investment interests, and their impact on New Zealand. There is little doubt—and it may be that some Labour members do not like this—that we are significantly dependent on the free flow of capital into New Zealand, reflected in investment in New Zealand business and New Zealand infrastructure. Those offshore investors—the majority of whom, I suggest, are highly responsible, and whose investment capital we want—will look, before they enter a country, at the stability and strength of any particular legal system. I know, in the context of my own experience as a lawyer, that it is sufficient for them, as they embark on the due diligence process that leads to an investment decision, that the Privy Council is our highest court. It is certain that they will have qualms about this new regime, in the context of their investment strategies.

National has said—as other parties of the centre-right have said, too—that issues of substantial constitutional substance should be the subject of referenda. But I think there is an equally worrying aspect—and it is an issue that National’s leader, the Hon Bill English, spoke about—which is that the judges of the new court have the potential to shape the legal and social landscape of New Zealand in a significant way. It is wrong that they should be appointed through a limited political process.

On 28 August 1939 Great Britain declared war on Germany. On 3 September the New Zealand Cabinet did the same. That decision was taken by Cabinet—not by Parliament; not by the people—as was the constitutional convention of the time. Michael Savage, the Prime Minister, went on radio, and his famous words were: “with gratitude for the past, and with confidence in the future, we range ourselves without fear beside Britain. Where she goes, we go. Where she stands, we stand”. He spoke within the terms of a constitutional convention of the time that the Prime Minister could declare war. We have moved away from that constitutional convention, and recently, when an illegal war was declared against the people of Iraq, New Zealand refused to take part. Moreover, the Government took soundings with the Parliament and the people of New Zealand. It had moved away from the constitutional convention whereby, wrapped up in that constitutional convention, we would allow our decisions to be taken by a foreign power. Thank goodness, in the context of Iraq—where mendacity has been proven on the reason for the war and where there has been an absolute breach of international law—we have moved away from the basis of the constitutional convention that led to the view that where Britain goes, we go.

In the history of this country there has long been a move—and it has been the parties of the left that have led that move—to make sure that decisions affecting our people are made in New Zealand. In 1937 the New Zealand representative at the League of Nations was to make a speech on behalf of the people of New Zealand, calling for the invocation of clauses of the League of Nations covenant that would give support to the embattled democratic republic of Spain against the attack of General Franco, who was supported by the fascist powers of Italy and Germany. When he rose to give his speech, he found there were blue lines through the parts that were critical of Great Britain. The British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden—later to be Sir Anthony Eden, who led the world in the infamous episode of the attack on the Suez Canal, which was the property of the Egyptian people, and the attack on which was also supported by the National Government at the time, although it was illegal—had put blue pencil lines through the speech of the New Zealand representative. Who would dare to do that today? The only people in Parliament who would like us to be in such a subservient position in our foreign policy are in the National Party, which wants the American Ambassador to make our decisions on whether we are nuclear free, or not, and in the ACT party, which believes that if we go to war that decision must be made by Britain and the United States—and I say we could put the inappropriately named, in this case, New Zealand First Party in that camp, as well.

This legislation is a step to expand the rights of New Zealanders. Therefore, I do not understand how it is a constitutional outrage. It would be an outrage if a right was being taken away—certainly. But here we have an expansion of the right of access to justice for New Zealanders. I am a barrister and solicitor, and have appeared a number of times in front of the Court of Appeal in New Zealand. But I have never had the funds myself to travel to the Privy Council. I have never had clients who could fund a case to the Privy Council. I now know that my fellow brothers and sisters, the lawyers of New Zealand, will be in a position to practise in front of the highest court of our country.

Some people know that I have Australian birth. I am always reminded that one of the heroes of Australia, Ned Kelly—he certainly was a hero in my family—would probably not have been hanged if we had not, in Australia, hung on to some of the constitutional proprieties of the British justice system. I am certain that an Australian court, with Australian-born judges, would not have hanged Ned Kelly. I am not arguing that we set up a court that would, perhaps, allow people like Ned Kelly just to be dealt with through restorative justice and released into home detention. But the point I am making is that all countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and other countries that were colonies, began the process of moving away from dependence in all areas of their affairs a long, long time ago.

It should be remembered that New Zealand took a long time to move to the position where it would accept the Statute of Westminster. It was passed in 1931, and it was not until 1947 that we let go of our Dominion status. We are a cautious people. In this case, as well, we are cautious. Canada and Australia ended appeals to the Privy Council a long time ago, and the Caribbean countries beat us to the punch. When we pass this bill today we will be ahead of the Caribbean countries in establishing our judicial independence. Our Court of Appeal has a good reputation in terms of its jurisprudence and the ability of the judges on it. But it should be remembered that it came into being as a constitutional change simply by a vote in this Parliament with regard to the Judicature Act 1908. It added a level of appeal that we did not have in New Zealand. Until that time appellants could go only to what was then called the Supreme Court, the equivalent of our current High Court. The Court of Appeal inside New Zealand added a tier of appeal in New Zealand, and on top of that was the Privy Council.

Those levels of appeal are important. What is happening in New Zealand is not that a level of appeal is being taken away. No, we are replacing the level that was formerly in Great Britain—and was off-limits to those New Zealanders who did not have the funds to take a case there. As well, we are expanding the legal areas for cases to be heard. We will give rights to people who never before were able to take a case to a level of appeal such as that of the Privy Council. What is wrong with that, if one is a fan of access to justice? I say, nothing.

We should focus on the fact that we have already abolished many of the links to the Privy Council. It is a rare step to be given leave to go to the Privy Council. Most areas of law have long been scrapped where people could go to the Privy Council. This bill restores many of those. The one written constitutional document that most New Zealanders know about, the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, at section 25(h) states that there is the right, if convicted of an offence, to appeal according to the law to a higher court against the conviction or the sentence, or against both. In criminal cases in New Zealand it is rare to have leave to appeal to the Privy Council. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act, and now this legislation, enshrines that fundamental right, if people are fighting for the belief that they are innocent, to go to our highest court of appeal.

To the argument of the Opposition, the conservative parties, that we do not have the legal talent to staff this court, I say it has been a long time since people believed that they needed just 50 or 100 classically educated English men—not women—from Eton to go out into the world and rule the savages. It was the belief that those men could rule the Hindus, the Chinese—using the terminology of the 19th century—and the people of Africa, and that it needed a small number of them. What is the difference between them and those who now say that they should be our legal elite? Where does the Privy Council draw its judges from? It draws them from a very, very narrow pool—not the millions who live in Britain—of people, mainly educated in the elite colleges. What will we do? We have 4 million vibrant people. We do not put barriers in front of people—men, women, and people of different cultures and religions—becoming judges in our country. We have a long way to go; there have been barriers there. But we are breaking those barriers down, and were breaking them down for a long time before the English system began to do so. So within New Zealand there is an adequate pool of people who can provide the highest judicial officers in our country. When we set up the Court of Appeal we had a population of 3 million; we now have a population of 4 million to draw from.

On every front—independence for New Zealand, judicial advancement, and the rights of New Zealand—this bill is a constitutional advance, and the parties with the majority in this Parliament have the courage to vote for it. I am sad that United Future, which was for the bill, has suddenly decided that the blessing of the Business Roundtable is more important than taking the right step to advance the judicial independence of New Zealand. I expected the same thing from the other conservative parties, I am afraid.

The Supreme Court Bill, which abolishes New Zealanders’ right of access to the Privy Council, represents a constitutional change that does not have the backing of the New Zealand public, and National does not support it. Helen Clark herself, in 2000, acknowledged the constitutional nature of this change, because of its relationship to the treaty and the link to the British monarch, yet in the face of opposition from Māori she pushes it, anyway. This is the height of arrogance from a Prime Minister who is happy to fraternise with Māori at their hui on their marae when it suits, but on an issue that they feel strongly about she has closed her ears. Tinkering with the purpose clause has not answered Māori objections one bit.

As for the Government Māori MPs, they will rue the day they allowed our right of access to the Privy Council to pass into history. This they do in the face of overwhelming opposition from their own constituents. But then as the Rt Hon Winston Peters says: “Lions on the marae, lambs in caucus—not a bleat!” What a disgrace! It demonstrates how well and truly under the proverbial petticoats of Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson those Māori MPs are, and demonstrates exactly why, under their stewardship, the existence of the Māori seats has proved to be of no value, whatsoever.

Those Māori MPs also show their complete lack of understanding of the Māori position. Parekura Horomia’s belated statement today demonstrates this. He said that the Privy Council had not been good for Māori. Others of his colleagues say much the same thing when they review the matter in terms of cases won and lost. I say to them, sometimes one should pursue important matters because there are matters of principle involved. But then the Māori MPs on the other side of the House would not know a principle if they fell over one.

Māori value deeply the symbolic link to the monarch, with whom their forebears signed the Treaty of Waitangi. There is no protection in this bill for the status of the treaty, and those Māori MPs on the other side of the House have done nothing to alleviate Māori concerns about that matter. But I say again that sometimes there are issues that Māori regard as so significant that the possible outcome of a case is not as important as the principle, and the right of access to the counsellors who are privy to the monarch is thought important for principles. The te Heuheu case was one such example, and, more recently, the Māori Option was another. Those cases show that even when the odds were stacked against Māori, they took the case anyway, because they considered that there were matters of principle involved that mattered more to them and to their position as New Zealanders in this country. But then why would I think that the Māori MPs on the other side of the House might understand that? [Interruption] I say to the Labour member who has just commented, that her husband knows very well what I am talking about. There is no doubt whatsoever that the independence of the Privy Council, and the exposure of the Privy Counsellors to a greater breadth and depth of humanity, can never be replicated in New Zealand.

However, there is an even more worrying outcome from what has happened here today, because of those Māori members’ lack of will to do the right thing by their people—that is, by their inaction they confirm, in the mind of the Prime Minister, although she probably did not need confirmation, that their support can be counted on in relation to the Government’s unprincipled proposal to deal with the foreshore and seabed issue. On that issue the Māori MPs will get done like a dog’s dinner. By their inaction today they have guaranteed that. They will lie down like lambs, as they are doing today, and allow Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson to ride roughshod over the rights of the people who voted them into this Parliament.

John Tamihere talks of breaking free of our colonial vestiges, but, my gosh, he should look out from under the petticoats of Helen Clark just long enough to walk his talk.

I came into this House, on this occasion, as a member of an MMP Parliament and I took the view, as a member of an MMP Parliament, that the spirit of MMP should be invoked by this House, and that when we make decisions in this House, especially of a constitutional nature, we should do it on the basis of a broad-ranging support. Yet here we have a bill where the number of members voting in favour of it is likely to be about 63—that is, a majority of three members, based on the 120 members of this House. [Interruption] Mr Donald’s party has failed in making its comments, and I suggest he does not breach the Standing Orders by trying to interject over my shoulder.

When Mr Robson spoke he made a very good point. In 1939 the Labour Government and this Parliament decided to go to war, and the decision was made unanimously. That is something that Mr Robson forgot. They made the decision unanimously and they sang “God Save the King”. There is no feeling like that in the House today. Here we have a very, very important constitutional issue and there is no unanimity. There is barely a majority in this House in favour. It is like being in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe today. I know what it is like to be in Opposition in Mugabe’s Zimbabwe, as I stand here and speak in this House. The New Zealand people should have been consulted on this matter.

We have the person who supported the Labour Party, Lord Cooke, trembling at the thought that the average man in the street—the man in Henderson, the woman in Kaikohe, Winton, or wherever—might have the opportunity to give a vote to this issue. We represent those people and they should be entitled, on such a major constitutional issue, to have a say. This bill should be resolved in either of two ways—either by a 75 percent majority of this House, or by a two-thirds majority in a referendum. Instead this bill is being rushed through this House, with a majority of three.

When the bill was introduced into the House last week, we had the second reading and the Committee stage—all on consecutive days last week—and today, the next consecutive day, this bill is being rushed through on the third reading. That is rushing legislation through the House.

Of course, Lord Cooke, who talks so much about not supporting appeals to the Privy Council, is, himself, hearing appeals for the Hong Kong court. I did not realise Lord Cooke was Chinese! But that does not stop him from sitting on the Hong Kong Appeal Court—sort of one law for New Zealand, one law for Hong Kong, and another law for Lord Cooke.

It is often said that the Opposition is not strong enough, or it is asked what the Opposition is doing to try to stop something from happening, or what it is going to do about something. Well, one of the Opposition parties—United Future—initially started off supporting this bill, it had a good look at all the submissions, and, despite initially supporting the bill, it decided that the bill should not go through, and it has indicated its opposition to the bill. That is what one of the minor parties has done. We had another party—the Greens—indicating that it was not going to support this bill, unless the Māori view came out in favour of the bill. We all in this House know that the Māori view opposes this bill. The only Māori view that supports this bill is the view held by the seven Māori members of this House who represent the Labour Party. That is where the only Māori support comes through, and they are doing what they are told, so they can continue to receive the big salaries, the big cars, the houses, and the overseas trips, which they would otherwise never be able to achieve in all their lives.

The Privy Council has been of very good value to New Zealand. The Privy Council has helped Patient A in the Bottrill case, where the Court of Appeal refused to help. The Privy Council has helped Taito and all those Māoris who were not being given support by the Court of Appeal. Today we set up this Supreme Court. In Australia and in Canada there was a gap of 75 and 84 years before the Privy Council was abolished—from the setting up of their High Court and their Supreme Court. We do not wait 75 years, we do not wait 84 years, before we abolish appeals to the Privy Council: we do it immediately. What a disgrace this minority Government is.

The last speaker from National demeaned herself. She said that various Labour members were hiding behind the petticoats of Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson. That was meant as an insult. I reject those misogynist comments. Gender is not relevant to good leadership. I am certainly proud to serve women leaders such as Helen Clark and Margaret Wilson.

I want to focus on a very important issue—that of parliamentary sovereignty. The move from the London-based Privy Council to a Supreme Court based in New Zealand is evolutionary not revolutionary. The small list of countries outside the United Kingdom still using the Privy Council speaks volumes. Those that have already left include Australia, Ireland, Canada, and Singapore—without any referendum! Those that have not yet signalled their intention to leave are the likes of the Bahamas, Brunei, Kiribati, Mauritius, and Tuvalu. We can argue about whether the move from the Privy Council should have happened 7 years ago, as then proposed by National, or should happen in a few years hence, as others propose, but the point is that the evolution of our highest court away from the Privy Council to a New Zealand - based Supreme Court is inevitable.

It does, though, focus the mind on constitutional issues, and my contribution to the debate will be to focus on the importance of protecting the sovereignty of this Parliament to pass laws on all issues, including treaty issues. New Zealand has a single-tier Parliament. Our unicameral Parliament is more like a camel than a dromedary. We have no equivalent of the Australian or US Senates or the UK House of Lords. We have one hump to get over, to pass legislation, not two. As a consequence, our Parliament is able to enact new legislation relatively quickly. This does have advantages. New Zealand can, and does, take important decisions that might be avoided for purely political reasons in some other countries.

We do have some protections. Our select committee procedures are more fulsome than most. We have an MMP Parliament, and coalitions do tend to moderate policies. But perhaps the most important safeguard New Zealand has is the ability to vote in another Government that has the legal right to enact new legislation that can overrule the old, in any area of law—and I mean any.

The importance of parliamentary sovereignty is hard to overstate, and in practice at the heart of parliamentary sovereignty is the relationship between Parliament and the courts. I am a lawyer. I respect legal processes, our courts, and our judges. Our judges are competent, hard-working, and free of political bias. But I also recognise their limitations. My comments today are not an attack on the New Zealand courts, or on any particular judge. But this is an appropriate time for Parliament to remind the courts of the limits of their role. It is proper that the courts critically assess whether decisions made by Ministers or Government officials are within their legal authority. When the courts find that Ministers or officials have been acting ultra vires, they strike down their decisions. We in Parliament respect their right—indeed, their duty—to do so. The executive abides by those decisions.

I also accept that one of the strengths of our common law system is its ability to evolve. But I am concerned when judicial activism goes too far and amounts to lawmaking, which should be left to Parliament. One example in recent decades was the imposition of liability in negligence upon local authorities for inspections by their building inspectors. Although this started with the English courts, its adoption by our Court of Appeal was overenthusiastic. Interestingly, that excess was left unchecked by the Privy Council in the Invercargill City Council v Hamlin case, even after the English tide had turned back. The subsequent retreat by New Zealand councils from meaningful oversight of building projects to limited inspections, in order to limit their liability, and the divergence of New Zealand law from UK law, all flow from that judicial activism. I, for one, believe that some of the problems we have had with leaky buildings have their roots in those well-intended, but misguided, decisions. I thought the activism in the building cases was perhaps a high-water mark for our courts. Our courts have traditionally taken special care not to make new law in politically controversial areas. The vast majority of our judges agree that this is not their role; it is the preserve of Parliament. But just as members of this Parliament err, so, too, do judges on occasions.

A recent court decision, which may be an example, is the foreshore and seabed decision. The five judgments in that case are all intelligent, well-reasoned decisions given after serious deliberation. But for the court to arrive at its decision, it was required to overrule a longstanding part of our common law. It had to overrule the 50-year-old Court of Appeal decision in the Ninety Mile Beach case and a line of prior cases. In doing so it unleashed the highly charged and intrinsically political furore that has since ensued. I reinforce that I do not suggest any bias on the parts of members of the Court of Appeal, as another member has, but I for one am not sure that the Court of Appeal did itself, our courts system, or our nation any favours in that decision.

The consequences of the foreshore and seabed decision are being responsibly dealt with by this Government. Remedial legislation is going to be required, and will be introduced. But members should reflect on this: this is possible only because Parliament has sovereignty over this issue. That sovereignty offers our country huge protection. If the nation believes we have it wrong, it elects a new Parliament. The new Parliament, which will in itself be sovereign, can pass new legislation to change the law. That brings me to my main point. I say to our courts, and in particular to our future Supreme Court, that they should not try to fetter the sovereignty of Parliament by overturning the decision in the te Heuheu Tukino case. To do so would be to usurp Parliament’s sovereignty in respect of treaty issues. The present constitutional status of the treaty in New Zealand has not evolved significantly beyond the principle laid down by the Privy Council in 1941 in the te Heuheu Tukino case. The treaty has the force that Parliament gives to it by statute. Parliament has given it more force in the last decade, but the important underlying constitutional principle remains unchanged.

That has been relatively recently reinforced in the 1992 Court of Appeal decision in the Māori Council case, which stated: “Treaty rights cannot be enforced in the courts except in so far as they have been given recognition by statute.” In the High Court, in the same case, Justice McGechan said something similar, and went on to say: “Lest, however, this seem intellectually lazy, I record a view that matters of such fundamental constitutional importance, with serious implications, should be decided only by legislation.”

So the Supreme Court will inherit the Privy Council’s right to overrule or uphold the Privy Council decision. If the Supreme Court were so unwise as to try to usurp Parliament vis-à-vis the treaty, then the sovereignty of New Zealand’s Parliament would be fettered. This would be outrageous, and I do not think it will happen. For over 150 years New Zealand’s Parliament has exercised sovereignty in respect of treaty issues, and over the last two decades our sovereign Parliament, while it has, through statute, given greater effect to the treaty, has not conceded and will not concede jurisdiction to the courts. I say to the court that it should not play with fire, but should leave lawmaking, including laws relating to the treaty, to Parliament.

This Parliament’s concern to emphasise and preserve sovereignty is an important reason behind the select committee’s addition of the new clause 3, “Purpose”, to the bill. That clause records, in subclause (2): “Nothing in this Act affects New Zealand’s continuing commitment to the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament.” That new clause has the support of this House. I am confident that the Supreme Court will not be politicised when it commences. The risk of it being politicised in the future is remote, and depends completely on the Supreme Court and whether it politicises itself by trying to usurp our sovereignty.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I call Russell Fairbrother.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We seem to have an odd occurrence. The convention of the House is that speakers alternate. Given that we have just had a Labour speaker, it is now the turn of the Opposition to get the call. There has been no prior arrangement or notice that any change should take place. There is a schedule set down, and if the Government did not want to take its calls in order, that is not the Opposition’s fault. As convention has it, the Opposition now should get the next call. That has been the way of this House for years and years.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I do not need any assistance on this matter. I determined the list, in consultation with quite a lot of members, at the start of this debate. I said that this was the last third reading under the system we have, because I have just announced a change to the Business Committee that will come into force as from the next bill. But as far as I have allocated calls here, the Government of course has the right to have its calls, and this call has been allocated to the Government.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I must say this is a strange occurrence. Normally when there are changes made, they are made with the consent of the House, with agreement. For instance, the National Party agreed to have a split speech, and we notified you, and you were good enough to advise the House of that change. In this particular case, given that there is a change taking place—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: There is no change at this stage.

Yes, there is, because under the Standing Orders and Speakers’ rulings speeches alternate. The normal case would be that an Opposition speaker would be the next speaker. It is unusual—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: That is a good argument, but I just refer the member to the fact that I have the list here. After Labour, National, and the Greens, it was then New Zealand First, ACT, and United Future, because I have decided to call all the parties. One of those slots could technically have gone to the Government, but I decided to allow the parties to have their say, because I think that in an MMP environment there is a slightly different way of ordering things. That is what I have ruled, and in fact it has the support of the Business Committee.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I am not changing the rule I have made.

I suspect I have already taken note that you are not likely to change your mind, but can I just say that I was unaware that that change had taken place—

💬 Mr SPEAKER: No, it has not taken place yet. It will take place after this debate. I will announce it to the House.

More important, it would be helpful if, when decisions of this kind are taken, we could please be notified prior to their taking place, rather than after the event.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: The member has made a very good point, and I accept it.

Up and down this country there are people whose most important life is their family life, yet they cannot take their disputes to a level of appeal equivalent to that able to be reached by the commercial companies the Opposition seems to support. There are people up and down this country whose most important asset is their house, yet they cannot take environmental court disputes to the final level of appeal that the companies this Opposition seems to favour can. Up and down this country there are people who rely every day upon the security of their employment, yet they cannot take any employment disputes to the level of appeal that the companies the Opposition seems to support can. Unlike my friend Mr Franks from ACT, I do not deny those people a final level of appeal at the top court.

The top court in this country is, and will be, the Supreme Court. However, it is not a major constitutional change. When Stephen Franks wrote to me on 10 April, asking whether I would support his call for a referendum because the court was a major constitutional change, I wrote back and said that I did not agree with that, for two reasons: firstly, because it denied, not access to anybody, but increased access; and, secondly, because the court sat within our present framework of courts. I got no response. He fought it out in the newspapers, rather than justifying his unfounded allegation of a major constitutional change.

What is the major constitutional court in this country? It is described in section 18 of the Constitution Act of 1986 as the court of High Court judges, the High Court. Incidentally, that Act was passed without a referendum; it is described by all academic writers and leading lawyers as our premier constitutional legislation. The Constitution Act is carried forward to the present bill. Section 4B—in clause 42A—which nobody has bothered to refer to, states: “The Chief High Court Judge is responsible to the Chief Justice for ensuring the orderly and prompt conduct of the High Court’s business.”—that is, under this bill the Chief Justice heads the superior judiciary, which is our High Court. Our High Court is the only court in this land with inherent jurisdiction. Any matter that needs to be argued in the interests of justice can be argued in the High Court. All other courts, including our Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, are defined by statute. Our High Court inherits its powers from the common law, so it must remain our major constitutional court.

That is why those people arguing shibboleths, arguing for referendums, are defeating their own argument, because the strength of the argument we have heard today is exactly why we should not have a referendum. People advance untruths, shades of truth, and downright misunderstandings of the law. That will be the effect on people who rely upon newspapers such as the New Zealand Herald to make their decisions. They will be misled, they will not be helped, and the decision they make will be uninformed, as was predicted by the former Chief Justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum in June of this year, when he spoke to the select committee.

💬 Stephen Franks: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is unclear to me whether the member is suggesting that untruths have been propounded by members of this House or solely by people outside the House. I ask whether you could clarify that.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: I have listened very carefully. At this stage the member has not gone out of order, but if he does suggest that any member in this House tells an untruth, he will be withdrawing and apologising.

Sir Thomas Eichelbaum pointed out to the select committee, and I must say he was unchallenged by any member opposite, that a referendum was an inappropriate way to handle a change such as this, because the people making the decision would not be properly informed, and those with money would have their view advanced in the press better than that of people affected by this measure but without money support.

This is a bill that brings justice back to New Zealand. [Interruption] The irony is that the judges that that man who is yelling chooses to criticise as not being competent are invited to sit on our Privy Council, and the judgments from the Court of Appeal that he criticises, the judgments from the Privy Council that he favours, are often written by our own New Zealand judges, who sit on the Privy Council. Is that a consistent argument? No. Is the opposition to this bill consistent? No, because there is no logical foundation to argue against our Constitution Act, to argue against section 4B in clause 42A of this bill. We must bring justice back to New Zealand.

My friend Georgina te Heuheu complained about the loss of status of the Treaty of Waitangi. The Treaty of Waitangi is not embodied in any legislation that affects the Privy Council, but if she goes to the purpose clause she will see that it is embodied there. That same member ignores the 1964 Privy Council decision that countries that go to the Privy Council have no direct right of access to the monarch. The Privy Council is solely a judicial forum. This myth that Māori are being deprived of access to the monarch, which is being perpetuated in this Chamber today, is a myth not based on fact. Lawyers who perpetuate it are failing to read their own common law—the 1964 decision from Ceylon that has been unchallenged ever since. And people have advanced denial of access to the monarch as a reason for Māori opposing this measure!

Ladies and gentleman, the time has come for this court. As the only practising appellate lawyer in this Chamber—the only lawyer in this Chamber who has appeared before the Privy Council—I say that the Privy Council should have been long gone, and I welcome the Supreme Court. This is a great day for New Zealand, a great day for the man in the street, and a great day for justice. I support the bill.