Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill

I seek to resume and continue the debate where I left off last time in addressing the House, and it will be a brief call so that we may expedite this through to the third reading. The National Party supports this bill, and when I last addressed the House, I was sharing the experiences that I had had as a practitioner in the court with the contempt proceedings and how the judicial bench delalt with such matters.

Just in summary, as is known, this is a bill that had been put up and drawn as a member’s bill in the name of the Hon Chris Finlayson, now adopted by the Government to advance in the name of the Hon Andrew Little, the Minister of Justice. In saying that the National Party supports this bill, the particular provision that I was addressing the House when the proceedings were last disrupted—and are about to be again—was on the very point around disruption to court proceedings. It appears that this may occur again. I’m going to wrap it up. I would like to share with the House—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise to the member. The time has come for me to leave the Chair.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 6 p.m.