Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill

Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. Can I start by thanking you for the opportunity to finally take a call on this Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill at its second reading. It has been on the agenda for several House sitting days now, and my name is there, and it’s getting closer and closer to me, and today, just as I’m about to depart on a taxi to get back to the Far North, it’s finally my chance to make this brief call. I’ll make it brief because my friendly neighbour, flatmate, and neighbouring electorate member here, Dr Emily Henderson, is after me and she has a flight at the same time.

So we are here to debate the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill, which transfers responsibility for determining remuneration of certain judicial bodies and statutory officers to the Remuneration Authority to recognise the judicial nature of those positions. Currently, those decisions are made by the Cabinet fees framework. This bill proposes to transfer those to the Remuneration Authority. The bodies and offices to which this bill is related to are the Disputes Tribunal referees, community magistrates of the District Court, chairperson and deputy chairpersons of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, deputy chairpersons and members of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal, environment commissioners, and deputy environment commissioners of the Environment Court, and tenancy tribunal adjudicators.

This piece of legislation is important, because we believe it will enhance public confidence in our judicial system by making changes relating to the responsibility to determine remuneration of some of our statutory and judicial officers and transferring that to an independent body, which is the Remuneration Authority, thereby enhancing public confidence in the integrity of the independence of these tribunals who make decisions that do affect ordinary New Zealanders greatly.

And so, with that, I just want to acknowledge the Justice Committee. I don’t want to say they didn’t have a huge amount of work, but I do note that they only had four submissions, only two of which were actually in scope—two were ruled out of scope. They were both supportive of the legislation, and the select committee were unanimous in recommending this bill back to the House unchanged. So I want to thank all of those involved, including the officials, and I commend this bill to the House.

E te Māngai o te Whare, tēnā koe. I also rise to take a brief call. My friend, flatmate, and neighbouring electorate MP in Northland has outlined the tribunals. This is a bill which does a small but important job. It takes a number of tribunals, from the Disputes Tribunal to the Human Rights Tribunal, and it takes them out from under the Cabinet fees framework and puts them into the independent Remuneration Authority. It sounds not much, but it is in fact the defence of one of the pillars of democracy, which is the independence of our judiciary. It is incredibly important that our judiciary remain free from political influence. And I say that to all of those who occasionally ring me and ask why it is that our Government has not pushed for certain penalties when judges bring them down. The reason is if we are able to influence the judiciary, then that way lies the demise of democracy, and we see all over the world today the situation where democracy is being eroded because it is too little regarded, too much taken for granted, and that is no way to maintain something.

So for that reason, it is a small but mighty step to preserve the independence of the judiciary, to preserve our democracy. I commend the fierce independence of the judiciary in this country. If you have worked outside this country, if you have worked with academics and lawyers from overseas countries, you will know that is not always the case, and you will have heard stories from them that are, frankly, frightening, about what happens when a judiciary is, in fact, subject to political influence, political insecurity, or economic insecurity. That way lies fascism; that way lies madness. I commend this bill to the House.

Look, there are some good points and bad points. I mean, first and foremost, I actually agree with Dr Emily Henderson and Willow-Jean Prime that we’ve waited a very long time to give our little orations on this bill, so it’s nice to be here. But I do have to take umbrage with this whole “demise of democracy”. I mean, the first comment that she uttered just dripped with political bias—I mean, the continuum of political instability is not a line between communism and fascism, but it’s a horseshoe. In other words, basically, the fascists are the communists and the communists are the fascists—they’re all the same and democracy sits in the middle. I mean, it’s just nutcase stuff. So if we’re going to be talking about this Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill supporting democracy—which it does—we could do without comments like that.

But to add to the point, again, under the notion of what this bill seeks to do to enhance our democracy, there is a dripping irony today that we’ve had to sit through a Labour-sponsored bill around plain language which is setting to define what New Zealanders are allowed to or not to say, and literally in the last hour, I’m picking up news that Local Government New Zealand in its wisdom has decided it will decide, along with its activist groups, which candidates are worthy of being elected or not. So for a Government to stand here and trumpet its bill and how it’s protecting democracy, yet on the other hand wanting to dictate to Kiwis what words they can use and who, rightfully, can stand for democratic election, I find, is a word I’m not allowed to use in the House.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Mr O’Connor, we will dictate at the moment that you will return to the bill, please.

Yeah, probably—probably. So, returning to the bill, it’s pretty—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: No, no, you will, Mr O’Connor.

Oh, very good. We like to follow instruction in this democratic world. Remun—remuneration—I don’t know why I can never get my tongue around that. Basically, it’s moving the authority from Cabinet to an independent authority. Do you know what? That’s a really good thing, and despite having waited weeks to give this speech, I don’t feel there’s much more I need to say.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I, too, have waited some weeks to make a contribution on this Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill. I have seen some previous speakers and listened to their speeches, and there was—in some of the speeches—a bit of a lack of enthusiasm about this particular bill. But that is not a sentiment I share. I’m incredibly enthusiastic about this Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill for the main reasons that it fundamentally supports the notion of separation of powers and also enhances judicial independence.

The main issue that I wanted to cover in my short contribution today is really that currently we have the Cabinet fees framework, administered on behalf of the executive, paying, essentially, the salaries of people who are part of the judiciary working on tribunals. Now, a lot of the members of the public won’t necessarily know the difference between a tribunal and a court. To them, they are impartial decision makers and they have integrity, and it’s important that that’s upheld. So the move, then, to make the payment of salaries of some of these tribunals more independent is incredibly important. So I support the move to make the independent Remuneration Authority the one who is charged with paying these particular salaries.

Two particular examples that I want to mention quickly. I think it’s particularly important for immigration, where the Minister can hear appeals at the immigration tribunal—I think it’s particularly important to make sure that that is seen as independent. The second example is the Human Rights Review Tribunal, which of course can make declarations of inconsistency with pieces of legislation. It’s also particularly important that that tribunal—which also shares that power now with the courts, following another new piece of legislation that this Labour Government has brought before the House—are seen to be, and are, independent. So I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.