Estimates Debate — Vote Justice

As chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee I say that the committee was pleased to review the estimates in this sector and engage with the Minister of Justice.

I note that the work programme covers four specific areas: improving the function and the efficiency of courts, addressing the drivers of crime across a number of portfolios in a wide spectrum following on from the very successful Drivers of Crime seminar at the beginning of this term, and achieving electoral and constitutional reform. It was noted that there had been some movement in amalgamating the various electoral agencies since the beginning of this term, with the last piece of legislation in respect of that having been completed recently. Also I note the preparation for electoral reform, after cross-party negotiations in terms of the electoral finance legislation. Finally, the fourth area of the work programme was to improve the response of the sector to the victims of crime.

It was interesting to note a number of gains that the Government has had over this term, which it hopes to complete within the next year. We were pleased to note, for instance, that the offender levy programme had collected $3.4 million since it was introduced in July 2010. That has launched 13 new support initiatives for victims. Many of those initiatives are for victims of sexual violence. The Minister told us that the new police safety order initiative was working well, with 3,600 police safety orders issued since March 2011, and only 244 breaches. That puts a lie to criticisms that these safety orders would not be abided by and would result in many more appearances before the court.

We are interested to note, too, the changes to legal aid. We note that the change in folding legal aid into the Ministry of Justice is already effected, but there are also legal aid initiatives within the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill, which the committee recently processed. We note the changes that bill will have to legal aid in respect of some things that are contentious but are widely approved across the broader sector of legal aid providers—albeit there are some who are complaining about it. We note the expansion of the Public Defence Service, which is allowing high-quality lawyers to be made available to people appearing before the court in major centres around New Zealand. We look forward to the further expansion of that.

The committee was very pleased to hear of work that was being done in respect of child victims or witnesses. We note with some concern that there is on average a 15-month gap between an incident occurring and a child having to testify before the court. The Minister is taking initiatives to lessen that time. Some new ground is being covered in terms of the way that that evidence is taken, to lessen the stress on a young child who has to give evidence before the court. Thank you.

I am happy to take a call on the law and order debate, and the justice system, if no one else from the Opposition has a view on that. I am certainly happy to take a call and just outline how the estimates process before the Justice and Electoral Committee went. I know this is not strictly within the Standing Orders, but I remember this vote being a very volatile debate under the last Government during the estimates debate. Obviously the Opposition is reasonably happy with where we are heading, so perhaps I could just highlight some of the matters that have gone OK up until now.

Actually, one of the most interesting things that we will be heading into at the general election this year is the MMP referendum. Recently I was asked to appear at a public meeting in Auckland to explain the referendum and the various systems available for the public of New Zealand to choose from at the time of this year’s general election. I decided that the only thing I could do was to use the information the Electoral Commission was using to explain the different systems, in order to avoid any perception that I might somehow be influencing or leading the debate in a particular direction at that meeting. As I said the other day, I am probably the only member of Parliament who really should not have a view about which electoral system we should have in New Zealand, because I have to make sure that the process is as untainted as possible. I tell members that the information provided by the Electoral Commission, and the way that its television ads explained the four systems and MMP, was actually really good. It was a really good piece of work.

💬 Sue Moroney: You have to say so yourself.

Well, no. It was the Electoral Commission, I just said, that did it, not me. That was the whole point of the speech. I was talking about the fact that I was using information from the Electoral Commission, because otherwise I would be seen to be tainting the process.

💬 Sue Moroney: You’ve run out of things to say now.

Well, I just got offended, actually, that the member Grant Robertson turned his back on me, contrary to the Standing Orders. But, anyway, as I was saying, the point of this particular yarn was that members of the public at the end said to me that the systems as explained by the Electoral Commission were not as complex as many of them had thought. We ended up in a reasonably lengthy discussion about which system did what to Parliament. The only advice I really gave the public meeting was to think about what shape voters would like to see Parliament and work backwards from there. In other words, they should not pick a system and then try to determine what Parliament would look like. Voters should perhaps decide what they would like Parliament to look like, and then pick a system that would deliver that type of Parliament. It was quite an interesting process to work through.

One of the figures on police safety orders that we used at the estimates hearings was in the late 3,000s. I am happy to update the member on that number now that we are in the Chamber. As I understand it from numbers that were put in front of me prior to appearing on The Nation in the weekend, the number of police safety orders is now 4,660, which is a remarkable thing, for two reasons. The first is not so good; the second is quite good. The first reason, which is not so good, is that it tells us we still have much work to do in the area of domestic violence. In other words, the fact that these orders are being so well used is problematic. But the second point is that they are available. The police safety order is a mechanism for the police to de-stress an environment without having to bring charges. It allows women and children in particular to carry on in the home they are in, in a reasonably safe environment, having had the alleged perpetrator removed without arrests being made. It avoids the hassles of the court process, and allows a cooling-off period for the alleged perpetrator. Actually, I think the process has worked extremely well.

One of the things that interest me continues to be the issue of how the court system interacts with the people in it—in particular, with children. We talked at the select committee about an inquisitorial model in this part of our justice system; in Austria it is called an accusatorial model. On that basis, I think that Parliament could expect some announcements in this area relatively shortly, meaning that more decision-making on legislation is likely to make its way to this House prior to a date that is creeping up pretty quickly.

Vote agreed to.

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