Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill.

That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

💬 Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO: I move, That the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill be now read a second time.

I want to thank the chair and members of the Justice Committee, Ginny Andersen and all the parties involved in that. I acknowledge that this bill received cross-party support at the select committee, and I want to thank the parties for their constructive participation in the consideration of this bill. I also want to table my acknowledgment of the submitters who took the time to express their view on this bill.

This bill enhances public confidence in our judicial system by changing responsibility for determining the remuneration of some of our judicial and quasi-judicial officers. Judicial independence is a core pillar of any democracy, and an independent judiciary protects people from the arbitrary use of power by the State. Security of remuneration is one of the measures that enable judicial officers to discharge their duties free from undue influence from the executive.

There are currently two mechanisms in New Zealand for determining the remuneration of judicial and statutory officers. One is the Cabinet fees framework administered by Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission. The framework classifies judicial and statutory officers into categories and prescribes a range of fees for each category. The responsible Minister makes the final decision on the fee to be paid to each type of officer within that fee’s range. The other mechanism is the Remuneration Authority, an independent statutory body that determines remuneration for judicial and statutory officers, such as judges and ombudsmen, that need to be and to be seen to be free from external interference in their decision making. The Remuneration Authority Act requires the authority to take into account a range of factors when determining remuneration. These include the requirements of the position, the conditions of service, and a range of other things—and the committee of the whole House will be able to delve into—and, lastly, fairness to the person whose remuneration is being set, and to the taxpayer. These factors are very similar to the assessment criteria set out in the Cabinet fees framework for the determination of remuneration for each category of officers.

The key difference between the two remuneration-setting mechanisms is the degree of independence from the executive and their decision making. Ministers make the remuneration decisions under the framework, and the Remuneration Authority Act requires the Government to implement the remuneration determinations of the authority for officers specified in that Act.

I understand and endorse the principles that underpin the Cabinet fees framework. It ensures consistency of fees-setting across a broad range of judicial and statutory officers, as well as other bodies in which the Crown has an interest. Some of the judicial and statutory officers administered by the Ministry of Justice will continue to have their remuneration determined under the framework. I consider these officers require a lesser degree of independence from Government than the officers that this bill is transferring to the Remuneration Authority. I consider judicial and quasi-judicial officers who make decisions in courts, and in directly comparable bodies, need to be, and to be seen to be, independent from any potential for interference in their decision making by the executive. Similarly, officers who hear appeals against decisions of Government Ministers need a greater degree of independence from the executive to ensure that they are, and are seen to be, independent of the Government and unable to be influenced through their remuneration to favour the Government.

This bill amends the Remuneration Act and six other Acts to transfer responsibility for determining the remuneration of six groups of judicial and quasi-judicial officers, administered by the Ministry of Justice, from the Cabinet fees framework to the Remuneration Authority. These officers are disputes tribunal referees, tenancy tribunal adjudicators, community magistrates of the District Court, commissioners and deputy commissioners of the Environment Court, the chairperson and deputy chairpersons of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, and, lastly, the deputy chairpersons and members of the Immigration and Protection tribunal. This transfer will enhance public confidence in the integrity and independence of these courts and tribunals.

The disputes tribunal and the tenancy tribunal hear cases that would otherwise come before the District Court. They have had significant increases in their monetary threshold and the legal complexity of their cases over the past couple of years. This warrants a greater degree of independence from the executive. Disputes tribunal referees hear property disputes of up to $30,000. The disputes tribunal is a division of the District Court and hears most of the substantive cases in this court’s civil jurisdiction. Tenancy tribunal adjudicators hear disputes between landlords, including Kāinga Ora, and tenants of residential properties of up to $100,000, and disputes relating to unit title developments, such as apartment buildings, of up to $50,000. The tribunal enforces the healthy homes standards and can impose pecuniary penalties of up to $50,000 on non-compliant landlords.

Community magistrates hear lower-level criminal matters in the District Court that would also otherwise come before a District Court judge. Environment commissioners and deputy environment commissioners sit in the Environment Court, either with an Environment Court judge or alone, to hear appeals about the contents of regional and district plans, and appeals rising out of applications for resource consent. The Human Rights Review Tribunal hears claims relating to breaches of the Human Rights Act, the Privacy Act, and the Health and Disability Commissioner Act. It has the authority to declare an Act of Parliament inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. The Immigration and Protection Tribunal hears appeals against decisions of the Minister of Immigration and Immigration New Zealand relating to residency, deportation, and refugee or protected person status.

To implement these transfers, the bill creates new, permanent legislative authorities in the legislation governing these officers. These authorities will enable the Remuneration Authority determinations to be implemented without a specific appropriation from Parliament.

In conclusion, I consider the transfer of responsibility for determining the remuneration of these six groups of judicial and quasi-judicial officers from the Cabinet fees framework to the Remuneration Authority is necessary to reinforce their independence from Government and to maintain public confidence in our courts and tribunals. Again, I thank the chair and members of the Justice Committee and the submitters. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Minister has ended by thanking the Justice Committee and I’ll pick up where he’s left off; adding my thanks to that august body. It’s known as the second-best select committee in Parliament, like every select committee other than the Regulations Review Committee, of course! But the Minister is right to acknowledge that, and I do acknowledge that he has also pointed out that there was bipartisan support for the bill at select committee, as, indeed, there had been at first reading, and from National’s perspective, nothing has changed in that regard.

We’ve heard about some of the particular changes that are being made. We’ve heard about some of the reasons behind them. Those are the reasons that we share, essentially, so I’ll just touch on a couple of those as we go through and just add a couple of other comments about how we see this fitting into the broader context of our court system and its relationship to Government, and so on.

I mean, it’s worth noting, I suppose, at the risk of sounding churlish, it’s a relatively minor matter and it’s not going to change the world in any great way, in any major way, but as far as it goes, it’s a worthwhile exercise for the Government to conduct, and, as I said, we support it for various reasons.

To separate the branches of Government, the executive branch, which is of course, roughly speaking, the Cabinet, and I’m just gesturing vaguely in that direction, and I’ll return to the role of Cabinet in setting fees and salaries in a moment.

But it’s appropriate to separate that from, of course, the judicial branch of Government, which we often think of as “the Courts” with a capital C. Of course, there are court-like bodies—or judicial-type bodies staffed by judicial-type officers who perform a similar role and for similar reasons should be kept separate from the executive branch of Government. One is just that theoretical separation—which every law student knows from 101 onwards—but also in a practical sense because, as the Minister has referred to, we don’t want a scenario whereby Government Ministers could use their ability to reduce the salaries of judges or judicial officers in retaliation or by way of threat and the chilling effect for decisions that are made reviewing Government decisions. So it’s appropriate for both those reasons, in terms of the branches’ relationship—sort of theoretical but also practical reasons that this move be made.

There are a number of different groups of officers that are affected and, again, the Minister has mentioned those. I won’t spell them out in detail, but I think it’s worth noting, as the legislative statement has done, that they actually have three different categories, I think it’s probably fair to say.

The first of those is the group of community magistrates, disputes tribunal referees, and environmental and deputy environment commissioners. Those are judicial decision-makers, says the legislative statement. Judicial decision-makers is a bit of a tautology, of course, because a judge is one who makes decisions for a living. But the point is made that they should be remunerated in a way that’s independent of the Government. And for the reasons we’ve discussed, that seems appropriate.

In passing, I will note, at the risk of straying too far from the scope of this bill, that National has proposed previously that community magistrates be given more responsibility, more of a caseload in terms of the types of cases that they can hear; we think that would be appropriate, certainly as a way of reducing the backlog and processing time for court cases. Similarly, with the disputes tribunal, we think that its jurisdiction could be expanded to take some of the pressure off the rest of district court jurisdiction. That’s another story for another day, but it’s consistent at least with what the Government is looking to do here, in terms of treating them in the same way as District Court judges, for example, that additional responsibility should be given to them.

The next category—well, it’s a category of one, but—the Human Rights Review Tribunal. I suppose it’s a bit of a special case. The legislative statement notes that it’s appropriate for those deciding matters in front of the Human Rights Review Tribunal to be regarded in a way equivalent to judges because they, like our senior courts, have the ability to declare that rules are inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.

That’s been the subject of quite a lot of the discussion already, of course, this week within this House in relation to the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Bill, which relates to those courts rather than this tribunal. But again, it all just fits together and I think it’s a matter of consistency, as the legislative statement points out, that those who are making decisions at that level and in that way should have the status of judges and the protections that go along with it.

The final category is where we say in relation to a couple of particular tribunals that the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal also need to operate independently of Government. I think that this is sensible because these two bodies not only decide matters, as does any tribunal or court by definition, but these are quite political and often politicised areas of public policy. Immigration, of course, is hugely important to the way that a country operates, and a Tenancy Tribunal—often, you know, these matters are characterised in a way that’s quite political. So in making those decisions and setting precedents and interpreting the law, and to the extent that they’re filling in gaps, even making law, it’s appropriate for these tribunals to, again, enjoy that separate status, they’re independent, and that acknowledgment of their role in our constitutional set-up and its separateness, again, from the Government of the day.

The mechanism by which this is to be achieved, if it’s not to be the Government and it’s not to be the Cabinet fees framework that’s employed to make these determinations, we have a Remuneration Authority, which is also used for setting the salaries of members of Parliament, a subject dear to the heart of everyone in here who’s listening to it—probably not anyone outside here who’s listening to it, but I think it’s probably a reasonably small issue at this time of the week. Anyway, but, of course, MPs don’t set their own salaries for reasons of what would be otherwise a conflict of interest. So for slightly different reasons, it’s appropriate that the Remuneration Authority operates in that space, and they do a bit of other work as well but we need not go into that for now.

So there is the authority, but there are also what are called PLAs, which is not the People’s Liberation Army in this context, but the permanent legislative authority. That’s created as a mechanism or as a vehicle for making these payments. That will apply to all these bodies that are going to be determining funding, with the exception only of community magistrates, because, I have learnt from reading the legislative statement and I did not know before, it’s not required in relation to these magistrates because they’re already funded through a PLA, a permanent legislative authority, in the District Court Act 2016. So there we go; we’ve learnt something, haven’t we, all of us today, and we’re all much the better for it.

So the Cabinet fees framework: obviously “Cabinet” being synonymous with Government, and in these troubled MMP times—I say “troubled” because we’re not currently the Government, but, you know, in these MMP days, Cabinet isn’t exactly a synonym for Government but, roughly speaking, it’s controlled by the Government of the day. So whereas that has been used, but now more appropriately determined to be in the remit of the Remuneration Authority, again we say that’s appropriate.

I don’t know if there’s much more that I need to say; I’ll just check my notes. Actually, one other point I did want to make, and I might not use all my time, unusually—[Interruption] But I think I’m being encouraged—I think I’m being encouraged.

💬 Hon Member: No you’re not!

I’m not.

💬 Hon Member: We were listening!

Oh, you are listening, thank you. Thank you very much. And now I don’t have anything to say—no, just kidding. I didn’t have anything to say nine minutes ago either; it didn’t stop me.

No, the other point I did want to make was one that the Minister sort of touched on in passing, and he said that the officers who have been named need to have, and be seen to have, independence from the executive in performing their function. I think that’s an echo of that notion that justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done. It’s that idea that we need transparency, we need confidence, we need open justice for the system to work overall; not only a lack of corruption, but an apparent lack of corruption. And it is, I suppose, again a similar distinction to perceived versus actual problems, for example, in relation to conflicts of interest. But that really is a bit further out. So I won’t dwell on that point any further, but I thought it was worth making, at least to that extent.

So, with that, on this side of the House, I emphasise that we do continue to support the bill for these reasons and look forward to its further passage through the House.

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. This is a bill that will enhance public confidence in our judicial system by making some very important changes relating to the responsibility to determine the pay of some of our statutory and judicial officers. It’s, essentially, about the separation of powers.

This is particularly important as these officers deal with cases that everyday New Zealanders are greatly affected by. They make decisions about the conditions of living, disputes between individuals, and also grievances against parties or even a business. So it’s very important and does affect the daily lives of people in New Zealand.

As a brief background on the bill, I’d like to touch on what the Remuneration Authority actually does. It’s independent from Government, and, therefore, it’s very important that the remuneration of judicial officers and statutory officers with those judicial responsibilities that they have are seen to have and to be independent from Government. That’s really at the heart of what this bill is changing.

The bill aligns with recommendations that were made by an independent review conducted by Mr Martin Jenkins back in 2018. The really important part of this review was that it concluded that the principal difference between the Remuneration Authority and the Cabinet fees framework was the degree of independence from the Government of remuneration decisions. So it’s important to have that distance in place. The review noted that community magistrates, disputes tribunal referees, environment commissioners, and deputy environment commissioners are judicial decision-makers, and their pay should be determined independently of the Government, by the Remuneration Authority.

It also looked at the Human Rights Review Tribunal’s jurisdiction, and thought that it was comparable to that of a judge because the tribunal has the power to declare legislation to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So this bill transfers the responsibility for determining the pay of the legally qualified members of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the chairperson, and also the deputy chairpersons, to the authority.

Finally, I would say that the Government has also concluded that the remuneration of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal also needs to be determined independently of Government, by the Remuneration Authority.

So, consequently, what this bill does is it amends the Remuneration Authority Act 1977 and six other Acts to transfer that responsibility for determining the pay for following judicial officers from that Cabinet fees framework to the Remuneration Authority. Those are: the disputes tribunal referees, the community magistrates for the District Court, the chairperson and the deputy chairpersons of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the deputy chairpersons and the members of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, the environment commissioners and deputy environment commissioners, and the Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators.

To quickly summarise what happened at select committee, although this is riveting stuff and I’m particularly fascinated with the separation of powers, evidently not so, because we only received four submissions at committee, and two of those were ruled out of scope because they didn’t directly relate to the bill. But the two submissions that we did receive were in support of the bill, which is good news. Subsequently, the bill was reported back unanimously without any changes, and the ministry did not recommend any subsequent changes to the departmental report.

So, in conclusion, this is a good bill. It helps the Government become, I think, more transparent; it’s clear when decisions are being made, and separating out those things from Government where they need to be done. I’m pleased to see this bill progress, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m not going to filibuster on this bill, like the previous speaker did. It is a very simple piece of legislation allowing the Remuneration Authority to set the remuneration of a number of people in the system—the Human Rights Review Tribunal, a few magistrates, and so forth, and that makes sense.

I look around the country and I see the rise in violent crime, I see the rise in gang membership, I see the ram raiders going on everywhere, I see the huge delays in the court system—and the Government’s making very little progress on that, very little legislative focus on that. But its focus is on this bill, the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill. I suppose they need to have something at the end of three years to point to in terms of their justice area. What have they done? It looks as though when we pass this bill, they will have done that, and that is, I suppose, small mercies for this country.

I don’t see any point in dwelling on it any further. It makes sense, let’s do it, but please—please, I say to the other side—let’s make some more progress on the things that really matter in the justice space, to keep New Zealanders safe, to keep them safe from the rise in violent crime, the increase in gang membership, the ram raids that are going unchecked in our cities, and also the huge delays in the court process. And while we’re at it on justice, we could also focus on equal voting rights for all New Zealanders, which has been lost over the last little while in Canterbury, and we need to restore that to this country. But I’m getting a little off the topic, Madam Speaker, so I won’t go any further in that direction, other than to say that the National Party supports this bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I’m very tempted to go down the garden path as well, like my colleague Mr Goldsmith, and respond in terms of what this Government is doing, actively doing, purposefully doing to address community safety. But, Madam Speaker, I won’t; I will speak to the bill—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Thank you.

—this afternoon. I won’t speak to much of the detail, which has been traversed by the Minister and by colleagues across the House, but I will speak just to what I believe to be the core of the bill and its purpose.

There was a former US Supreme Court Justice, Sandra Day O’Connor, who drew on an analogy to describe the importance of the independence of the judiciary. She talked about the importance of having an “impartial referee at a basketball game”, which is an easy concept to grasp: it keeps the game controlled, it ensures an objective eye in controversial decision-making, and allows the fans to feel the outcome is fair. So the analogy is, of course, to the limbs of our democracy. Courts and judges often perform that referee role. Often, it’s Government and Parliament who set the rules, but sometimes Government is one of those players; it’s at those times, in particular, when independence is really critically quite important.

The Supreme Court Justice who I referred to didn’t just recognise the importance; she also recognised that “Judicial independence doesn’t happen [all] by itself.” In fact, she said, “It’s hard to create, and it’s easier than most people imagine to damage or destroy it.” So that’s really why it’s important for us to periodically consider whether the architecture we have in place that protects that independence is still appropriate or whether the threshold, the radius which that independence covers at the moment, needs to be shifted. That’s essentially what’s happening here, with the six categories of decision makers moving from the Cabinet fees framework to the remuneration authority.

My colleague across the way Chris Penk made the comment that this is not a bill that will change the world, necessarily, but I suspect that perhaps—we both agree that it’s got a bit of a constitutional flavour about it, and it’s always a pleasure to speak to bills with a constitutional flavour like this, which are significant in terms of protecting our democracy. I commend this bill to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The Green Party supports the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill and I’ll be taking a very short call.

Mr Goldsmith should not be so cynical. The judiciary is independent because we act constitutionally to protect that independence. This is a small bill, but it does protect the independence, because the Cabinet fees framework is controlled by the Government and that fees framework does classify judicial and statutory officers into broad categories. And then it allows the Minister responsible for those statutory officers, or the decision of the whole of the Cabinet, to set the fees for the category of work that they do depending on the nature of that work, the expertise that’s required, and the extent of the decision-making powers.

So this bill, with those six categories of officers, including Environment Court commissioners and deputy commissioners and referees of the disputes tribunal, ensures that the fees are not set by Government but are set by the Remuneration Authority, which is independent of Government, and there is a permanent legislative authority which provides a permanent tranche of funding which Ministers don’t have any discretion over. It is a small but important mechanism in ensuring that the judiciary is independent of Government and ministerial decisions cannot influence the salaries which in a corrupt Government could be seen as Ministers or a Government wanting to reduce those salaries to impact on the work of the judiciary and the referees of the disputes tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators and others. So it is a good step forward and the Green Party supports it.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to once again support this Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill. It’s a straightforward bill that transfers the responsibility for determining the remuneration of some judicial and statutory officers away from the Cabinet fees framework and to the Remuneration Authority. The Cabinet fees framework was first introduced in 1997 and is administered by the Public Service Commission. The commission give guidance to agencies around setting fees that are not set by the Remuneration Authority or by the fees methodology managed by Treasury. The bodies that are covered by the Cabinet fees framework include Crown entities; some trust boards; advisory boards; royal commissions; public, Government, and ministerial inquiries; some statutory tribunals; and other statutory bodies not covered by the Remuneration Authority, and some subsidiary bodies.

What this bill seeks to do is to remove some of the judicial and statutory remuneration settings away from the Cabinet fees framework and into the realm of the Remuneration Authority. Those being transferred from the framework to the authority include referees of the disputes tribunals, community magistrates of the District Court, the chairpersons and deputy chairpersons of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, tenancy adjudicators of the Tenancy Tribunal, and the environment commissioners and deputy environment commissioners of the Environment Court. This bill will also create five permanent legislative authorities, which are needed to determine the remuneration of those affected by this change. This doesn’t mean that they get an immediate pay rise or a drop; in fact, their pay will remain the same in the immediate future, at least until the authority makes its first determination. The Remuneration Authority Act 1977 itself actually prevents a pay drop, citing that at the very least, any of the officers transferred to this new authority from the framework must retain their current level of remuneration.

We only received four submissions on the bill, as has been canvassed. Two supported the bill and two made recommendations that were outside the scope of the bill but did raise some pretty good points. Mr Baker suggested that we should also be running courts at night, to clear the backlog of minor infringements. With the backlog we are experiencing in our courts, that does, on the face of it, actually sound like a great idea. But, sadly, it is outside the scope of this bill. But it does go to show, however, that people are putting their brains into gear, trying to figure out how to ensure access to justice is timely, utilising all the avenues that they can to get their points across that our justice system is breaking, if not already broken, in many of our towns and our centres. But this bill is about removing remuneration settings from Cabinet and to the authority, and, unfortunately, not about how we improve timely access to justice.

There is a constitutional principle that our courts are and should be independent of the executive so that we can ensure impartiality in our judicial systems. This principle also depends on institutional independence. Independence of the judiciary is a founding principle of democracy, and thus is of the utmost importance. Moving the responsibility for setting the pay of these judicial and statutory officers away from the executive is justified and, in our view, a positive move. And with that, we do support this bill through the House.

Tēnā koe, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise on what my colleagues have called a straightforward bill, to be able to make a short contribution about why it’s so important to have public confidence in our judicial system and our justice system as a whole, and how this bill improves that public confidence. Because it is the Government’s responsibility to determine a system and a framework for maintaining the independence between the executive and the judicial branch, and this bill will put in place those criteria which distinguish the group of officers being transferred to the Remuneration Authority from the Cabinet fees framework through this bill.

I also just want to touch on my colleague Vanushi Walters’ comments about Justice Sandra Day O’Connor of the American Supreme Court. It reminded me of how we should not take for granted in New Zealand the independence of the judiciary and all of the constitutional framework that goes with that, because there are democracies around the world with very different systems of appointing judicial officers and of determining the way and the conditions that they operate under. That is a very different judicial system to our own, and I think New Zealand’s system can be admired for the way that our justices practise completely independently. What this bill does is it continues that degree of arm’s length independence between the Government and these judicial officers. And so for that reason, I commend this bill to the House.

The next call is a split call. I call on Joseph Mooney.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in regards to the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill at its second reading. This is an omnibus bill that amends the Remuneration Authority Act 1977, and six other Acts, to transfer responsibility for determining the remuneration for a number of judicial officers from the Cabinet fees framework to the authority. Basically, the purpose of this is to ensure that the remuneration of those officers will remain the same until the authority makes its first determination. However, if the Remuneration Authority determines that any of the officers should be paid less than their current remuneration, the Remuneration Authority Act 1977 requires that the remuneration remains at its current level. These officers would be: the chairperson and deputy chairpersons of the Human Rights Tribunal, community magistrates of the District Court, environment commissioners and deputy commissioners of the Environment Court, members and deputy chairs of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, referees of the Disputes Tribunal, and tenancy adjudicators of the Tenancy Tribunal.

Maybe I should just touch, a little bit—briefly, I have had the pleasure of appearing before community magistrates of the District Court from fairly early in their tenure in the District Court. They were brought into place to take some of the workload away from the District Court judges, who, in a number of courts around the country, have got a huge workload and struggle to deal with simply the volume of work coming through. I remember, for example, in the Manukau District Court, the massive volume of work coming through, with a lot of excess breath alcohol charges and other lower-level offences that the community magistrates deal with on a daily basis. They deal with a lot of the work that the duty lawyers see when they’re coming through the courts and are able to deal with those lower-level offences, which are a very, very significant volume. I, obviously, saw it in the Auckland District Court, I’ve also seen it in the Tauranga District Court, and also it’s been brought in more recently to the Southland and Otago District Courts. They perform a really valuable service and it’s good to see that recognised, as well as the other authorities in this bill.

There is an important principle at play here: that this adds an additional layer of political neutrality to the remuneration of judicial officers, which these are. It’s an important principle of our democratic framework in New Zealand that we have this political neutrality in respect of the remuneration of judicial authority officers, who make decisions that are important in terms of their impact on people’s lives in this country and in that there is confidence that it’s not only seen to be the case but it is the case that these officers are independent. This is important for our constitutional framework. For example, here in the House, in which I’m speaking now, there are particular constitutional responsibilities that we have, but the judicial officers are independent of the members of Parliament and make decisions independent of Parliament. They are not connected to or influenced by the decisions of members of this House and the decisions that they make. So bringing this additional layer of political neutrality to the remuneration of those judicial officers, to ensure that they are seen to be independent and are independent of Parliament, is important and it’s a good step forward, one I am pleased to be able to support on behalf of the National Party.

At its core, this is a straightforward and useful change which will move the decision making from the executive to the Remuneration Authority. This is especially important given that Government decisions are often examined by the courts and also by these various bodies that these judicial officers perform their functions in. The remuneration system will certainly be less susceptible to any perception of ministerial influence, as it sits with the fair and independent Remuneration Authority, which performs an important constitutional role in our system. It also provides more consistency to the remuneration of officials, as the Remuneration Authority is already responsible for determining the fees of various officers, including judges, those who sit on the Supreme Court, coroner’s court, District Courts, and the High Court, amongst others. So I am pleased to commend this bill to the House.

Members, this debate is interrupted and is scheduled for resumption next sitting day. The House stands adjourned until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 30 August 2022.

Debate interrupted.

The House adjourned at 4.57 p.m.