Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3)

We are talking about the Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3), and the main aim of this bill is to amend the Judicature Act 1908 in order to alleviate workload pressures on the Court of Appeal, and to increase access to the final appellate court, the Supreme Court of New Zealand. I think that the Minister gave a very good overview of the bill.

I have taken a call tonight as I was a little concerned that the previous speaker was casting aspersions on the ability of the Government Administration Committee to hear this bill. I think I know that member’s colleague Lindsay Tisch better than he does, and I assure the previous speaker that even though Lindsay Tisch is in that member’s own caucus, and even though I do not agree with Lindsay Tisch’s politics—frankly, I do not agree with a number of his views on life—I have to say that Lindsay Tisch, as a good Waikato MP, is more than capable of considering this bill.

The role of Parliament is not just to leave that consideration—dare I say it—to members who have a legal background, to members of the legal fraternity. I mean no disrespect, because I acknowledge right now that the previous speaker, in terms of his legal career, is certainly very accomplished. I acknowledge that; I do not take that away from him, at all. I pay his career considerable respect, but I say that lay people should be perfectly able to consider this bill.

Lindsay Tisch is a good example of a lay person, and he is a good example of a solid Waikato person. Even my whip Jill Pettis would agree with that. So I believe that the Government Administration Committee is more than capable—

💬 Dr Richard Worth: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am sorry to interrupt the member, but it is very hard to hear on this side of the House. I would like to know whether the member said that Lindsay Tisch was a great Waikato MP. I think I heard him say that.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): If the member is trying to clarify and get something set in his mind, I tell him that the member indeed did say that.

The definition of Waikato is “great”. Anyone who works in the Waikato is great. Having said that, I say there is no doubt there are greater than the great—that is, Dianne Yates, Nanaia Mahuta, and Mark Burton. They are really super-great MPs,

Because when one comes from the Waikato, one has an appreciation of life. Even the Prime Minister comes from the Waikato. What I am saying, and I mean it with due respect to the previous speaker, is that I do not believe one has to have a strong legal background to grasp the importance of this bill. The Minister has adequately explained its importance, and I think the Government Administration Committee will do a very good job. Having said that, I say in tribute to the previous speaker, Dr Richard Worth, that at least he has made a solid contribution to Parliament and to his constituency, unlike the pretender to the Epsom throne—the leader of the “2 Percent Party”. It will not surprise the previous speaker to know that I am putting money on the fact that he will probably be returned, unless there is a good Labour candidate to give him a run for his money. He will have nothing to worry about with regard to the leader of the “2 Percent Party”. Let me just state it so that it is crystal clear. I disagree with some of the contributions of the previous speaker, but I have to say that as the member for Epsom he has nothing to worry about from his so-called pretender, the leader of the “2 Percent Party”. I commend this bill and the Minister’s speech to Parliament and I assure the House that Lindsay Tisch is more than adequate to the task, along with members of the Government Administration Committee, of giving proper hearing and consideration to this bill.

I am sure that the honourable member made some reference to this bill in his speech, but I blinked and missed it.

💬 Dr Richard Worth: It was a good speech.

Was it? He must have praised somebody in the National Party.

Many of my colleagues in New Zealand First, although we do not like to criticise members in this House, have grave reservations about the Government Administration Committee. It could not work out what an architect was. It did not have a clue. It took a Minister to put forward a Supplementary Order Paper to tell the committee what an architect was. The committee got that wrong big time, so I do not know whether it will know what a judge is. Even the National member who is on the committee says that he has no clue about lawyers and law. Does he know what a judge is? I do not know.

New Zealand First will support this bill going to a select committee. We do not speak from a position that is qualified to know exactly whether we need more judges. I have to be honest—we do not know whether there is an absolute need for more judges, because we are not familiar with the routines of judges. My honourable colleague who is an accomplished lawyer is not available tonight, so I cannot seek his guidance. But we are prepared to support this bill because we know that the justice system needs more people. We know that we need more police and we know that we need more prison officers, so we have made an assumption at this point in time that we need more judges.

💬 Opposition Members: No!

The members say no. A few moments ago I listened to the Hon Maurice Williamson. He was talking about the Oaths Modernisation Bill. It was a good speech. He asked how many times members have been lobbied on the Oaths Modernisation Bill. Specifically, they have not been lobbied terribly many times, but people have lobbied all my colleagues in New Zealand First from time to time on the commitment that immigrants have to make to this country.

💬 Stephen Franks: So why did you vote for it?

Because we wanted to tidy it up. The honourable member has made some very worthwhile remarks, but by voting against it, he will never get it tidied up. By voting for it, we will get it tidied up by public submission.

I want to get back what the Hon Maurice Williamson said about lobbying. As far as I am aware, nobody has lobbied us about having more judges. But they have certainly lobbied us about having more police, and they have certainly lobbied us about a better deal for corrections officers, as more people are being brought in.

The Hon Maurice Williamson will be interested in this. The most lobbying that I personally have received in recent times is about roading. When Maurice Williamson was the Minister of Transport, he withheld the funds for roading. I have been told that Maurice Williamson did not have a clue when it came to administering the Ministry of Transport office. I was lobbied before I became an MP, and ever since I became an MP, on tidying up roads and on the funding for them.

💬 Hon Member: It’s a long time.

But in that time, I have heard Don Brash and Maurice Williamson agree with New Zealand First’s policy. The members may have noticed that I have moved from judges on to roading, because I do not want to miss this opportunity. [Interruption] Members have noticed.

💬 Dr Richard Worth: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am a little concerned that the Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) is really important legislation. Maybe the previous speaker has strayed into the issue of roading, which is not directly an issue in the eight clauses in this bill.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Clem Simich): I accept what you say, but I think he was trying to weave that theme into it. He has referred to the bill a number of times.

The point I was making is that the National Party, through the Hon Maurice Williamson—[Interruption] If the members sat here a little more quietly, they would hear, and they could make a worthwhile point of order. National Party members have tried to establish a criteria for whether or not to have a bill by basing that decision on how many people lobby for it. But thousands—if not millions—of people have lobbied for roading and those members did nothing. So one cannot necessarily base legislation on people’s lobbying.

I do not have the expertise to say whether we need more judges. But the question comes to mind that, if we are short of judges, why the dickens did we create the Supreme Court, which created a need for more judges? It seems a bit ludicrous to create another court to create more jobs for the boys—for judges. But, having done that, and knowing that we are dreadfully short of police officers and prison officers one can conclude that, in all likelihood, we need more judges.

💬 Hon Member: And roads.

I am glad that the roading issue has made an impression on the member’s mind, because we may well receive some positive support from the member.

This is a short bill. I have doubts whether the Government Administration Committee will do it justice, but I guess the committee cannot go far off the track on a bill that is only two pages long. One would hope that its members will apply their talents with some degree of diligence and conscientiousness, and report back a bill that positively addresses the concerns of New Zealand in that regard. New Zealand First will support the bill going to a select committee.

I hope that by getting in before United Future members I might be able to give them a lead towards a policy that would enable them to distinguish themselves from their masters before it is too late; before the election is upon them and they have not done a thing to show people why they exist.

💬 Hon Member: They’ll be gone!

Yes. The polls will tell in the end. The Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) is another strange bill. There is a whole raft of these curious little bills involving matters that—in this case—are not entirely trivial. But it is certainly mysterious that they have come up at this time, when they have been talked about for so long. In fact, I think we were lobbied 3 or 4 years ago to increase the number of the judges for this purpose. We said that we were not necessarily opposed to it but that we did not want it to slide through, either in a provision that simply allowed the Minister to increase the number of judges—that was the first request from the Attorney-General; I think, while the Hon Margaret Wilson was still Attorney-General—or in a Statutes Amendment Bill, as a matter of no importance, which was the second proposal.

In fact, the number of judges is very important. It is constitutionally important that Parliament decides whether to increase the number of judges. Rulers may want to exert executive influence—they may want to put pressure on judges or to decide court decisions—without an open usurping of the judicial role. If too many judges are appointed, and if it is made sure that the chief judge is a mate, then the chief judge can have a very heavy influence on what happens, by deciding which judge gets to decide a case. This “picking horses for courses” is one of the reasons why Parliament should keep control of the number of judges. Parliament gave that up, in the legislation that created the Supreme Court, or in the legislation at that time, because they gave the Attorney-General the power to create a whole lot of part-time judges. Those part-time judges are subject to the very influence that our constitution tried to protect our judges from—that is, the need to please a boss, the need to make sure that whoever is calling the shots on the allocation of cases or work is favourable to them. The problem with part-time judges is that if they want to live off their part-time employment or if it is important to them, they need to be called upon. The problem with the situation that this Parliament allowed to be created, at the request of the Labour Government and supported by United Future, is that we now have the possibility of having a large number of part-time judges beholden to whoever is allocating cases, because of their income needs. ACT said that this was a constitutional issue; the Government and United Future did not.

Now we have an increase in the number of Court of Appeal judges. I do not believe that this is necessary, and I am very glad to have an opportunity to debate the issue in this Parliament. The reason I think it is quite unnecessary is that the judges have not looked at the end point of what has been happening for the last 40 years. In my working lifetime, the number of judges has increased at nine times the rate of the increase in population. This country is consuming itself in lawyers. This country is turning decisions that used to be matters of courtesy or morality, and matters of common-sense decisions by authorities, into decisions that allow lawyers and judges to second-guess endlessly.

Judges have been a big part of that. If we read a modern judgment we see that judges go through pages and pages of facts, hoping that some result will flop out without their having simply to adhere to or lay down the law. When I started in practice, a very long case would have taken a week. These days, a week is the length of time taken for a trivial—or near-trivial—case. I should not exaggerate. Although I know that judges are working very hard, very honestly, and very diligently, I believe that they should be looking at themselves. My concerns about perversion of the courts are concerns about what could happen, not what I believe is happening with our courts at the moment. But I believe that judges should be looking at this issue of overload and asking themselves whether the huge increase in the legalisation of New Zealand society is not something to do with us, as well as something to do with the triumph of the nanny State “we know best” arrogance of the left.

I think that judges are partly responsible. I think, for example, of the Court of Appeal’s workload, and it is the Court of Appeal we are looking at in this legislation. The Court of Appeal’s workload, I think, comprises nearly two-thirds criminal appeals. Well, of course there will be criminal appeals when the Court of Appeal tinkers with sentences. When the Court of Appeal alters an 8-year sentence by 1 year, to 7 years, instead of changing the sentence only when there is a manifestly major fault by the lower court, every lawyer who has a criminal defendant is going to say, in good faith: “We’d better give it a go.” They will tinker, and say: “Let’s have a crack at it.”

Secondly, the Court of Appeal never uses the obvious remedy for overwork, which is to make itself a bit more unattractive. When the judges of the Court of Appeal in Britain or the German Supreme Court get a meritless appeal they let the person who brought the meritless appeal know, by increasing the sentence. They do not necessarily impose a direct increase. They simply hold that the period spent on appeal does not count off the sentence. Now there is an incentive for every lawyer to stop wasting time. There is an incentive for every appellant not to waste the time of the court. If an appellant fails his or her case and therefore the sentence will include the period spent on appeal, he or she will not waste the court’s time. Has the New Zealand Court of Appeal tried anything like that? It has the power to do so. No. In fact, it goes the opposite way. If the judges think a case is so bad they might increase the sentence of someone who has brought an appeal on spurious grounds, they warn counsel that they might be thinking of increasing it and invite counsel to withdraw the appeal. I believe that that is pathetic.

I do not have any confidence that anyone on the Government Administration Committee is capable of sending this bill back to the Government and saying: “Think about it.” With all due respect, it needs brainstorming. It needs half a dozen lawyers. Although the public may be suspicious of lawyers, that is what it needs. This bill should be sent to a committee that can say to the Government and to the Court of Appeal: “Hey, think about why there’s an overload. Then come back and tell us whether you think more judges are needed.” I suspect that the committee will come back and say that more judges are needed.

The Supreme Court, I believe, has had 18 cases so far. Judging by what it costs—and I am not talking about the set-up costs—the annual cost of the Court of Appeal means it costs $350,000 per case, and that is before any lawyers’ charges. When we did the work on the Supreme Court we were told it would be a cheap option, and that it would make it easier for New Zealanders. It has not been. Also, the Supreme Court took the best clerks and the staff, and then sat there for at least half a year, leaving the Court of Appeal working their butts off without the staff, who were sitting, twiddling their thumbs at the Supreme Court.

There has been a whole lot of bad management here, and this Government is responsible for it, just as it is responsible for bad management throughout. Now that we are coming up to an election, what does the Government do? It throws resources at it. Here, we are throwing extra judges at the court without looking at why we are overloaded with lawyers and legalism. We need to look at the law and at the responsibility this House has for cumbersome, unwieldy sentences that do not make sense, and words that no one knows the meaning of, that force people into lodging appeals. We need to look at the way the judges have been using their powers, and not using their powers, in order to cut down on their workload. The 450-odd criminal appeals could easily have been cut probably to a fifth of that number, if judges had simply used their power to say that when some meritless appeal is fostered, whether by the offender or by the lawyer, there will be a cost.

One may well ask why we need more judges, as the ACT member has done. The short answer, of course, is that we have more crime, new crimes, more disputes, and more conflict in our society. The principal reason for all that is the breakdown of ethical standards. There has been a breakdown of community; a breakdown of enforcement of ethical standards, by peer pressure in our community; the alienation of our communities; and the demise of the Church in its role of setting standards. This has come about partly because of abrogation on the part of the Church and partly by the Government usurping the role of the Church in setting standards.

This Government has replaced traditional Judaeo-Christian standards with a liberal, laissez-faire doctrine, and as a result we have seen a breakdown of the family, a breakdown of law and order, and a breakdown of community relationships. It is no wonder that we have more crime.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 10 p.m.