Estimates Debate — Justice

Thank you. I rise as deputy chair of the Justice Committee to give a quick overview of the Estimates that we heard through 16 to 19 June. We heard from a number of the Ministers—the Hon Paul Goldsmith, the Hon Nicole McKee, the Hon Karen Chhour, the Hon Mark Mitchell, the Hon Casey Costello, and the Hon Judith Collins. We had Votes in Vote Serious Fraud, Vote Police, Vote Parliamentary Counsel, Vote Justice, Vote Courts, Vote Corrections, and Vote Attorney-General. As you can see, it’s a very busy committee.

The one thing that came out of that scrutiny week that we sent back to the House—I’ll just touch on a few of the main topics and the main points. As we heard through the Corrections Estimates, some major issues were raised around infrastructure, around the front-line staff, and around remand. These were the main topics that came from there. In the Courts Estimates, we talked around timeliness and, again, infrastructure projects. We heard through the Police portfolio that the big concerns there were around meth use and around investing in the beat teams that we’ve now got on the front line around the country. We heard about recruiting issues and also the $480 million of additional funding through the Budget for front-line policing efforts. Within Justice, we heard about the response to retail crime and about the electoral reforms.

I might just kick off a question to the Minister. The biggest issue there was around legal aid. It’s the largest single item in Vote Justice. Legal aid is allocated over $328 million for that appropriation, which was a 2.3 percent increase on the previous year. Probably, my question to the Minister is: why is legal aid so important, and why is the Government funding increased levels?

Thank you, Mr Chair. Since the Associate Minister of Justice is in the chair, I actually want to start by asking a question to the Minister around court timeliness, particularly around some of the latest data coming out of the High Court regarding the time for scheduled trials. When we’re looking at various parts of the country, Auckland’s average wait time is 486 days, and then in terms of some of the measures for court timeliness, we’re also seeing that High Court and criminal trials in particular are not performing particularly well or meeting those targets. I just want to check with the Minister: in the Budget, what areas is she prioritising, or what areas are actually being funded to ensure that we do see that being reduced?

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the deputy chair of the Justice Committee, thank you for your introduction.

Legal aid is at $328 million in there, and why is it important? It’s really important that people are given access to justice. It also means that they have the ability to get representation and also advice, especially when they go through a court or a justice system. It doesn’t matter whether it’s criminal, whether it’s civil, or whether it’s family. We need everybody to be able to access the courts, to be able to get the right information, and, where necessary, also the right representation, and we want to make sure that there is an ability for people to be able to access that. But that has gone up recently, and in response we, in turn, have increased the volume of money that will be going there towards legal aid.

To the member from the Green Party, when we’re talking about timeliness in the High Court, yes, I think what is important to note is that for the first time our timeliness measures are actually being put in place around the courts. For example, in the District Court, District Court Chief Judge Taumaunu has for the first time implemented some timeliness in the District Court. Now, I know that you’ve asked about the High Court, but we are making some improvements.

For example, with category 1 cases, we expect 90 percent of those cases to be disposed of within six months. With category 2, we are also looking at 90 percent of cases to be disposed of within nine months. Category 3 has the judge-alone trials, and 90 percent of those cases are to be disposed of within nine months, and for category 3 jury trials, they expect 90 percent to be disposed of within 15 months. These are quite high aspirational targets for the District Court, but I’m pleased to note that we are getting there.

When it comes to the High Court criminal cases, the number of new cases has actually increased by 10 percent over the last year, and at the same time as we have completed over 12 percent, the average trial took one day longer than one year ago and four days longer than five years ago. It means that the court’s workload has increased, even if the total numbers are currently similar—that is, 3 percent. I’m kind of happy with where we have landed with the High Court criminal cases, because while we have an increase in cases, we are still disposing of them, although we can always improve.

With the High Court civil cases, there was a 10 percent increase in the number of new cases that have been filed over the last year. Timeliness has improved, however, suggesting that the increase in new cases is driven by short-turnaround cases like, for example, new insolvency cases, which were making up 30 percent of new cases over the last year.

We are tracking what’s happening in the High Court and also looking to put those targets on the District Court, and the timeliness improvements are slow but demonstrable. We’re getting there.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Seeing as we have the Associate Minister of Justice in the chair, I thought I’d follow on, on the theme around stresses on the court system. I do this against the background of a couple of documents. One of the most critical ones is the Chief Justice’s report, which outlines some quite strong concerns around resourcing for the courts. It does it in essentially two themes.

One is it, essentially, points out that the workload of the courts has gone up along with the New Zealand population, but judicial resource hasn’t. I’m aware of recent moves to increase—by a very small amount—the number of judges in New Zealand, but it may be that the Minister wants to address whether we need to have a substantial increase in our appropriation for the judiciary.

The other thread in that report is the inadequacy of the court infrastructure—noting, I think it was, Whangārei, which is a busy court but has one courtroom. The bottleneck there isn’t judicial resource as much as simply having the courtroom available to both administer remands and what have you and run trials. Obviously, there’s been some deferrals—Waitakere and Rotorua courts, which are both recognised as not fit for purpose and in states of severe dilapidation, and what’s going to happen there? This is a resourcing of the courts problem, which is a justice issue.

The second document, which I think has been relatively recently released, is the Cabinet paper on the basis of which Cabinet approved the development of new offences, including coward punch, slavery offences, and some shoplifting stuff as well. But it’s those serious offences that I’m interested in, because one of the challenges that justice officials pointed out is that with things like three strikes, coward punches, sentencing reforms and so on, this is actually going to increase pressure, particularly on the higher courts.

I think this is the really important point about the justice sector—that there are interlocking pressures which come together: judicial pressures, resource pressures, and legislative reform. I guess I’m really interested in the Minister responding in terms of how the system as a whole will address these resource constraints.

Thank you. Thank you to the member for your questions. There was quite a lot in there. I’ll try and cover what I can, but please ask me if I miss one out.

Yes, we are looking at an increase in what’s happening in our court system, who’s coming through. The increase is going to come about by the amount of law and order initiatives that this side of the House have implemented to hold people accountable for their crimes and their actions against our communities. In order to address this, we have already looked to implement different changes in personnel by increasing certain areas of staffing to assist. An example of this will be the Family Court Associates that we implemented and have increased in volume. They have made a huge difference in what’s happening in the Family Court. Their initiatives and what they can help judges with is actually enabling judges to get back some of their judge time.

This is also seen across some of the other courts that we have made changes in. One of the proposals that’s currently at the Justice Committee is to implement three more additional community magistrates. That, in turn, is expected to free up at least, I think, 5.2 fulltime-equivalent judges’ time. When we talk about community magistrates—who not do not necessarily need to be qualified lawyers—we’re also ensuring that there is going to be a Chief Community Magistrate that ensures that the community magistrates are trained and rostered to the appropriate cases. That will be led by a judge once it goes through the system. We also have two extra District Court judges coming in for sentencing changes, and we’re actively considering what else might need to be done—where we should put more emphasis or more personnel and where it’s needed. We’ll be still taking advice on that, and there may still be more to come there.

In answer to the member’s questions about if we increase the workload in the courts, how are we going to utilise or increase those within the courts to do the work, the judicial resource has gone up both in the High Court and District Court with the community magistrates and Family Court Associates. We’ve also got the coroners’ assistance, which is making a massive dent in the timeliness in that we are in the process of reducing those times.

The member also asked about the courts and what we are doing to help or to make things go faster, because some of those delays are quite large. We made some legislative changes for audiovisual links (AVL) and we currently have just received a report on the AVL system, and we’re looking at what we need to do to implement it, to make it work. This is work that we’ve done with the judiciary as well, because they’re the ones that are going to have to utilise it. We’ve got to make sure that when we implement it, fund it, and get it in there, it’s done in such a way that the judiciary can use it—as well as Corrections and Police where necessary as well. There’s that work going on in the background there.

You spoke about the Waitakere courts and the Rotorua District and High Court and Māori Land Court. Yes, we are prepared and ready to go. We need the funding. We did go to the international investment summit, and we promoted Waitakere and Rotorua courts. We got some really good feedback there. We are open to any form of funding with the Government, and we’re looking at different ideas. We need to go back and have a Budget bid in future Budgets to help us with this, but, ultimately, it’s actually going to come down to what is going to be the better way to invest that’s going to be certain for those communities and have a really good outcome. We’re still working on that. However, from our view, we feel that we’ve got a really good case where we’re about ready to go. We just need to get some partners on board, and we have been talking with some in that respect.

If there’s anything else, I invite the member to ask me some more.

Minister, in this Budget, under capital spending, there is more money allocated towards building more prisons, when you look at how many people are serviced within our corrections system, than there is money going into new hospitals and hospital upgrades and into new classrooms and new schools, despite the fact that healthcare and education are far better methods of reducing and preventing harm in our communities. So how does the Minister and her Government justify continuing an endless pipeline of people into prisons when recidivism rates show that sending people to prisons does not result in safer communities?

Well, as much as I can answer that, because corrections isn’t the justice portfolio; it’s under the corrections portfolio—well, no, it actually has its own portfolio and its own budget as well. But what I can say is that this Government makes no apologies for holding people to account for bad behaviour. We do not believe that people going about doing whatever they want when it’s criminal, when it’s violent, when it’s taking other people’s property—it’s not right. To say that we shouldn’t invest in making sure that people are held accountable, we on this side of the House think that is wrong, because showing accountability actually can change attitudes. It can say to people, “We don’t accept the fact that you can come out here and take what you want that you didn’t earn from people that have worked hard and there be no consequence.” A consequence, if necessary, will be prison, especially if it’s recidivist. Quite frankly, if people who are recidivist offenders—especially violent recidivist offenders—are not out in society creating more victims but are in corrections, perhaps getting rehabilitated, then that is also a positive outcome.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I actually just want to pick up from the question my colleague Tamatha Paul asked, and I’m interested in the Minister’s answer, because in Aotearoa New Zealand alone, data from the Department of Corrections as well as the ministry itself says that about 44 to 49 percent of released prisoners are reincarcerated within three to four years, with high rates among young male Māori and repeat offenders. It also says that there’s very little evidence that suggests longer sentences—they fail to deter repeat offending and may even increase risk of creating a criminal learning environment. This data is backed up by Australia, Canada, the US, the UK, Ireland, to name a few. Some of the things that have consistently shown improvement to recidivism are through community-based rehabilitation. We also see factors like court delays, overcrowded prisons, and insufficient rehabilitation further undermine the deterrence and rehabilitation effect of longer sentences. That is not just what we think; that is the evidence that is being produced by our own ministries and by international experts.

My two questions to the Minister, then, are, number one: why, then, have we seen an increase in funding in the tough on crime approach, which has no evidential backing, empirical or anecdotal, rather than putting in additional money and resources into community-based rehabilitation? Instead, what I’ve seen in this Budget is a reduction in funding for some of the community-based rehabilitation providers. That’s my first question to the Minister, and I may have a follow-up question.

It’s quite simple, really. If you lock up violent criminals who repeatedly victimise people in the community, then they’re not in the community re-victimising people. It’s as simple as that. Locking them up to make sure that they are not in our communities creating harm is what this Government is committed to doing, because the people on the street have had enough. They’ve had enough of being victims. They have had enough of people like that member over there telling them that we don’t need the New Zealand Police, that we don’t need any sort of law and order—we just let them all run loose! That’s why we’re in Government and you’re not.

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the Associate Minister of Justice, I have a few questions in regard to the proposed changes to electoral law, which also have appropriations implications going forward. I might actually just start with the question that I was going to end with, which is just around the logic of changing the law to facilitate very serious offenders being able to vote if they’re held in a mental health facility, and what the logic of that was, sitting directly next to the complete ban, should those individuals be in prison facilities. That’s one question.

I did also want to say that of course this is a significant change, in that New Zealanders for decades now have been used to being able to register the day before the election, and more recently on the day of the election. This is a really substantial proposal to change to our electoral law, and, just as the Attorney-General’s report said, changes to that are very serious. If there are other options in terms of getting to the Minister’s objective, which was to have the vote counted within 14 days, then that ought to be the preferred option.

My questions are whether the Minister considered simply funding the Electoral Commission to the amount that they would need to adequately count the votes within 14 days, as opposed to the current, which is around 26 days—noting also that the Electoral Commission has been quite diligent in raising the fact that it’s been drawing from reserves of late and hasn’t been able to hold its operational budget. I do have another question attached as well, but perhaps I’ll let the Minister respond to those as a start.

Thank you. I was talking through that, so please ask me again if I don’t hit the mark with the answer to your question. The Government’s view is that it’s reasonable to require people to enrol before voting begins. Enrolment is compulsory in New Zealand, and the Government considers there’s plenty of advance notice ahead of an election for people to organise their enrolment. The change was relatively new, and the issue that we had, which was found after the—sorry, I’m jumping here, but what we found after the election was that the time taken to count those votes meant that we had to also ensure that the caretaker Government was extended as a result of that.

We’re basically saying we’re going to go back to what it was but actually not as far back as what it was, and we think that we have found a good area there. The Government believes that allowing enrolments up to and on election day has removed the incentive to get enrolled before the election, and the Minister had expressed his view that New Zealanders are capable of adapting to earlier deadlines. It’s quite reasonable for them to do so. Please, if I missed something there, ask me again.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Just in terms of meeting that objective of having the votes counted more quickly, has the Minister of Justice received advice that, actually, it may not be the case that the votes are counted more quickly? There would still be a substantial number of special votes. Indeed, people may attempt to cast a special vote without having registered, and that vote would still need to be processed and potentially discounted, so it wouldn’t necessarily shorten the period of time.

The other question I have is: no doubt the Minister received a number of proposals of alternative ways of shortening that vote count period. Was there any assessment that those other proposals cumulatively could address the need to reduce the period to 14 days so that the Minister would not have to touch that enrolment period at all?

Thank you. My apologies for reading off this. I am standing in for another Minister and was not over this part. I will be—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Oh, you’re much better!

Hon NICOLE McKEE: Thank you. I’m going to be reading for this one. The enrolment deadline would need to be at least 13 days before the election day to enable enrolment processing to be mostly completed by the close of polling. Any shorter period will make it less likely that enrolment processing can be completed in time to enable the official count check to proceed immediately after election day. When looking at the enrolment deadline in other countries, in Australia, the enrolment closes seven days after the issue of the writ for federal elections—for the 2025 election, anyway. This deadline was 26 days before the election day. In the United Kingdom, enrolment closes 12 working days before election day. In Canada, the enrolment is allowed when people vote, including on election day. In Ireland, enrolment applications must be received at least 15 days before an election. We feel that we have found that sweet spot there.

Just what I spoke to earlier—people were able to enrol up to and on election day for the 2020 and 2023 elections here in New Zealand. Prior to that, the enrolment deadline had been midnight the day before election day since the 1996 election. Before 1990, the enrolment deadline was 6 p.m. on the writ day. We want to make sure that when people have actually made their vote, they get the Government that they have voted for and they get it quickly so that that Government can then start implementing their policies, regardless of whom it is. Looking at what the international comparisons were, we figured that where we landed was a good place.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I do want to talk about the electoral reform, but I just want to pick up on the question that I asked the Associate Minister of Justice previously. While I appreciate that the Minister may need to get things off her chest, the volume of voice doesn’t necessarily materialise the evidential basis of a Government policy.

My question around that is, then, from what I’m hearing, in terms of from the Minister: is what we’re looking at, the purpose and the policy direction of Vote Justice and Corrections, in this case, to lock more people up, as opposed to reduce crime in our communities? The evidence that I’ve quoted doesn’t equate with what the Minister has mentioned. That’s my first question.

Now, on to electoral reform—I do have two questions for the Minister. The first question is in terms of some of the other jurisdictions the Minister mentioned before. Could I ask the Minister how many of those jurisdictions have automatic enrolment at the age they’re entitled to enrol? Something like automatic enrolment would make a simple and reasonably low-cost and effective way of ensuring that people are enrolled to vote. Yes, what the Minister quoted undoubtedly is what those jurisdictions are doing, but I do want to know from the perspective of automatic enrolment.

My next question is: what evidence and what consultation has the Minister or the ministry done in terms of overseas New Zealanders’ voice when it comes to enrolment? For overseas New Zealanders, it is sometimes incredibly difficult for them to enrol on time because of the limited locations and availability for them to enrol, as well as to vote.

Those are my two questions. The first one is around automatic enrolment. The second one is around consultation with overseas New Zealanders.

Thank you, Mr Chair. To the member, in talking about my volume of voice, when I am being barraged, I will speak to be heard. Your leader is a good example of using her voice.

You asked me a question about whether or not it is this Government’s intention to just lock people up. No; it’s our intention to hold people to account. It’s our intention to keep our community safe. It’s our intention to protect our front-line police. It’s our intention to protect our children. It’s our intention to protect New Zealand society. If that means we have to lock people up because they continuously misbehave or they create violent crime, so be it. We make no apology for that, because people need to learn that when you live in a democratic society such as New Zealand, we all want to live happily, healthily with each other. The social experiment that was held by the previous Government did not work, so we are taking the most appropriate action and holding people to account.

When it comes to your enrolment—and, if I don’t answer this, please, come to me again—this is one that I’m not really over. I will try to answer in the best way that I possibly can, and I hope that this does it. Automatic enrolment updates—the benefit of the policies that we’re going to make is that the automatic enrolment updates will smooth the peaks of high resource demand for enrolment processing immediately before the elections by keeping the electoral rolls more up to date between elections. Over time, this should result in fewer hours for issuing and processing special votes, with associated cost and time savings. This proposal should make it easier for the public, particularly highly mobile communities, to stay enrolled at the right address, which supports participation, but we think that this is probably going to take about two further elections ahead to get it into a state where it’s going to show some good results for us.

Oh, thank you very much, Mr Chair. I was actually finding the Associate Minister of Justice’s answers really interesting, but I don’t think members opposite are the same. Tim Costley could be potentially watching Netflix or even listening to Taylor Swift. I wonder if he’d like to take his AirPods out and join us here in the Chamber and pay attention.

My question to the Minister is regarding methamphetamine and the increase—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Sorry, Ms Andersen, I just wasn’t quite sure; I didn’t pick it up. Was that an accusation that a member wasn’t concentrating?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Yes, it was. He had AirPods in and I wondered if he needed to remove them to be in the Chamber.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I’d say let’s just stick to the topic, shall we?

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: All right.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): If it comes to the attention of the Chair, then we’ll do something about it.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: I mean, he might want to listen to Taylor Swift. That’s fine with me.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order—point of order, Mr Chair.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Can we just carry on.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Maybe you confirm.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): I would hate for the Chair to be interrupting when someone is not concentrating 100 percent on what’s going across the other side of the Chamber. I think I could be on my feet rather a lot. Now, let’s just carry on with the question.

Hon Mark Mitchell: Point of order—point of order, Mr Chair.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: My question to the Minister is not about Taylor Swift; it’s about methamphetamine—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Sorry, point of order, the Hon Mark Mitchell.

Hon Mark Mitchell: My point of order is quite simply this, Mr Chair. If I had AirPods available to me, I’d wear them while that member was speaking as well.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Mr Chair, it was when the Minister was speaking, not when I was speaking, that he was listening, and that was the point.

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): Bordering on frivolous, Mr Mitchell. But let’s just all carry on and calm down.

Tim Costley: Mitchell—one; Andersen—zero.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: Tim Costley—minus 10. My question is in relation to—

CHAIRPERSON (Greg O’Connor): There’s an hour to go, people.

Hon GINNY ANDERSEN: —methamphetamine. We know that there was no specific funding in Budget 2025 to account for the sharp increase that New Zealand has seen in methamphetamine use, particularly over the last 12 months. We’ve seen a spike that’s gone up by 97 percent. That spike is disproportionately impacting potentially—well, it is impacting—lower socio-economic areas. We know that from the waste-water testing. We also know that that use will have an increase in the incourt time, as we potentially see more prosecutions. It will potentially see also more inmates who are requiring addiction treatment, even mental health treatment, if they’ve been users of methamphetamine for some time. It also could potentially result in more violence within our prisons if people are accessing methamphetamine or going through withdrawal of methamphetamine when incarcerated.

I’m interested to know what the Minister has in place looking forward, given that sharp increase, in terms of how the justice pipeline will deal with that increased complexity as a result of the sharp increase of methamphetamine use that disproportionately does affect our justice system and those people who encounter it.

I thank that member for the question because it’s one that affects all of New Zealand’s society and they were really good questions that you asked.

In response to the recent test showing a doubling of meth in waste water, the Prime Minister pulled together, basically, the justice sector Ministers. He has tasked us with looking to find solutions in tackling meth, not just in the areas of where it’s being sold and the crime that comes from it but also in the addiction, and how do we compel people to get off meth once we find them. There’s a lot of work that’s going on in this space. We’re considering options that have been given to us to address the serious issue. The options need to provide a balance between disrupting the international supply of methamphetamine and strengthening the domestic enforcement, as well as those options to prevent the use and strengthen the availability of treatment around New Zealand.

We’ve started this already by giving police extra powers. We’ve removed the gang patches so that they are not so visible to those that are wishing to purchase. We’ve introduced the three-strikes regime again. We have taken away the discounts offered in sentencing. Those are some of those immediate criminal justice aspects that we can look to while we look at the bigger opportunities that we have here.

Another way to stop repeat offending is to target any profit that these organised crime groups are making from drugs. Inland Revenue, for example, were doing audits, and during 2024-25, 66 organised crime-related audits were completed, with revenue assessed at $34.5 million. We have provided funding in the 2025 Budget to ensure that this good work continues.

Another important response to meth is to disrupt the supply of it to New Zealand before it even gets to our border. There has been significant success in the detection and the seizures of meth, and I do do a shout-out here not only to New Zealand Police but also to our customs agents, who have found quite a bit over a small period of time.

The final piece of the fight against meth must then be to reduce the demand—so stopping people starting in the first place and, if they have started using, getting them to stop and stay stopped. So that’s part of what we’re looking at as our response. You will see something shortly as we pull together all the options that we’ve been given and our plan on how to tackle it.

Minister, in the Budget last year there was resource allocated from the Ministry of Justice towards the Treaty principles bill and developing that legislation and undergoing that consultation process. I understand that it’s the Government’s intention to remove the Treaty from over 28 pieces of legislation, and that the constitutional team within the Ministry of Justice will likely be engaged in parts of this work. How much resource is this Government putting into petty culture wars to erase the history and the foundational documents of this country?

Thank you. We are in a triumvirate of Government. There are three parties, here, where we also have coalition agreements with each other. The reference to the provisions of the Treaty principles within 23 laws administered by 13 Government agencies—and there’s a list of them—is legislation that refers to the Treaty as opposed to the Treaty principles, and they’ve generally been excluded from the review. The exception is sections within the Education and Training Act 2020, whose Treaty provisions were being separately reviewed and have been included in this process for practicality.

To you, this may seem trivial—to the member, and I do appreciate the member bringing it up—but to this side of the Government, we want everybody to unite and to be as one. The coalition agreement between National and New Zealand First spoke to doing this, and that’s exactly what the Government’s going to do, because they have agreed to do so. The cost of it is going to be the cost of it in order to complete the coalition agreement that the Government had signed up to, and we will support them in order to have equality for everybody and make sure that our laws are fit for purpose.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a relatively short point, and it’s actually around the capacity of the Ministry of Justice to undertake the policy work that it has. It’s clearly a busy ministry, and it has been busy under this Government, and will be busy under any Government, because justice is a critical sector. The reason I ask whether this policy ministry and its policy arm is adequately resourced is that I’ve just today received a couple of emails around the Regulatory Standards Bill.

We know that the Regulatory Standards Bill will require any ministry dealing with legislation, whether it be a bill before this House or secondary legislation, to undertake an additional piece of policy work around compliance with those regulatory standards. I’ve got these two documents—and I won’t name them, but they’re from policy analysts with the ministry—which say, “We have concerns about the ability of agencies to absorb the additional work and note this could potentially impact on the ministerial policy and legislative work programme.” That is to say, the Government—any Government—can’t do what it wants to do because of these standards. Then, the other document—this is October last year—says, “The proposals regarding active stewardship, regular review, maintenance, and improvement of legislation administered would have an impact on the policy group’s work programme, etc. This would be felt particularly strongly by Ministry of Justice given the large amount of legislation we administer. The bill also requires retrospective reviews.”

I guess the question is this: is the Ministry of Justice—so that it can remain in its current capacity—going to be given additional resources so that it can also discharge the additional functions being imposed by the Regulatory Standards Act, which is set to come into force next year?

At this stage, the Ministry of Justice is adequately funded to be able to complete their work. Should they need any extra funding, they will no doubt come to their Minister and bid for it.

Two very brief questions to close my questions on electoral reform—they’re quite discrete. One is around costings to implement the changes in relation to restricting registration, and what that costing looks like. No doubt, there’s education, etc., form changes, that will be required, and I’m sure the Minister of Justice has received some advice on that. The second is whether there’s a costing on enabling voting in health facilities, which is a new provision of the Act as well. Just those two very specific questions on costings. Costings to restrict registration is one—what are the costings for that? Costings to allow voting for health facilities is a second question.

Then, just in terms of access to justice, for the Minister, the other concern that I, and many I’ve spoken to, have is about increasing fees in terms of access to courts. On 1 July this year, we saw an increase to High Court fees and fees relating to civil proceedings, including in the Employment Court, which obviously impacts access to justice—and whether there is consideration of how that may impact New Zealanders’ ability to access a remedy where they’re experiencing just some very basic, really, cost of living issues, the things related to their employment, a civil dispute in relation to tenancy as well.

The second part of that is court appointment. I noted that in terms of the Human Rights Review Tribunal, the four deputy chairs were not reappointed, nor were they replaced. It takes the decision makers down from six to two. At the moment, there are significant delays in the tribunal, so I’m just asking what the considerations are, or the projections, for people going through the Human Rights Review Tribunal, given the decision makers have reduced from six to two.

Thank you. I’m getting all this information together for you. Your questions on the electoral system reform—I’ve been told that $80.6 million is being made available, over four years, to improve and modernise the election process. You asked specifically how much is going into certain areas. What I’ve been given is full amounts that are going to specific places. As an example, $7.8 million is for modernising elections—that’s for digital comms. So $7.8 million of that $80 million is to digitalise, $18.7 million is the electoral integrity improvements, and $54 million is for general election 2026 plus implementing changes in the Electoral Amendment Bill. Within those three appropriations for that $80 million will come the costings for what you’ve asked for.

You had asked me about access to justice in courts and the fees going up, and I thank the member for that question. It was a tough one, actually, to look at having to increase the fees, because if I remember correctly, they haven’t been increased for over 20 years. We were getting to a point where it was becoming—not so much unsustainable; but we were not recovering the cost of actually operating the courts, because the fees had not been increased. We have increased the fees, and we’ve made sure that increases in the future will go with the Consumers Price Index so that we don’t have a 20-year gap and then have to do this again, or have a future Government having to do it again.

What’s really important to remember with those people that are struggling—and we do recognise that—is that we have not taken away the ability for the courts to dispose of those costs or to say that a person does not have to pay a filing fee. We have ensured that that is still remaining, so that gives people the option to be able to claim the hardship that they may find necessary to claim in order to be able to get their access to justice.

I’ve just got a few questions around the ministerial advisory group on retail crime and whether the Minister views the advice received from the group has provided good value for money, and, in particular, which of the recommendations made by the ministerial advisory group on retail crime, in particular, she thinks holds merit and will be implemented?

Thank you for the question from that member. Do we believe that there’s value for money? I think so, yes. My reasoning for thinking so is because we have pulled together people from the community that have actually been affected by retail crime and tasked them with finding solutions that they think will work. They have worked extremely hard on this, and they have come up with multiple solutions for us, which we have then investigated and seen what it is that we think that we can advance.

The member has asked me which one of their initiatives, in particular, do I really support, and I’m going to say I support all of them. I think that they will make a huge difference. Some of those ones in the package of reforms will include amending the Crimes Act so that citizens can intervene to stop any Crimes Act offence at any time of the day, because currently you can only do a citizen’s arrest at certain hours. After 9 p.m. and before 6 a.m. is when you can do it, so I’m quite happy with the fact that we’re allowing people to take control—should they feel confident enough to do so—and do a citizen’s arrest themselves. There is clarity around that, as well, which means the moment you do that, you have to ring the police and do whatever they tell you to do. I think that the controls that we have put around those reforms will help keep the public safe, keep the person who’s been detained safe, and also show respect for law in the way that we have gone about doing this.

We’ve also agreed to two new theft offences, which is a new shoplifting infringement offence and an aggravated theft offence, targeting theft at under $2,000. We have seen a lot of theft, and the retailers are the ones that have to stomach it and put up with it in the reduction in their bank accounts. When they come to us and they say, “Look, if you increase the fines, if you have infringements, it may be a deterrent.”, we think that it’s worthwhile having a look at that, and we believe that they have come up with a good solution there. We’re also looking at simplifying the penalties for theft, as well.

There are some other initiatives that they’ve got coming, and we look forward to actually hearing from them about what else we can do to support the retail groups in New Zealand, because they have been so drastically affected by crime over such a large number of years that many of them are struggling. This not only gives them a voice but also gives them an effective outcome.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I just have two very quick follow-up questions on the citizen’s arrest. The first one is that we are already seeing disagreements within that particular advisory group, with some of the members within that group not wanting to push forward with citizen’s arrest because of the harm that it will have for the people who are working in those particular shops. How, then, could the Associate Minister of Justice say, “Oh, look, this is the advice that we have received, and they’ve been working really collegially.”, when clearly there’s disagreement? I just want to check with the Minister how she would reconcile that.

The second question is: like the Minister said, citizen’s arrest is already in the legislation, albeit with limited hours. What evidence does the Minister have that the limited hours of citizen’s arrest we have now is working as intended? Is there a percentage? Is there any form of evidence or record that it’s working as it is?

Thank you, Mr Chair. One of the proposals we made with the citizen’s arrest is that a person actually doesn’t have to do it. If they don’t feel confident, if they’re afraid, they don’t have to do it. This has been a really important point.

You’ve asked me about the disagreements within the ministerial advisory group (MAG). It’s healthy to have disagreements. That’s where you get the debate, and that’s where you come up with outcomes. I mean, we have it even in this Parliament, right, where we don’t agree with things, but every now and again we come up with a healthy outcome on a matter which we can all agree to. Sometimes we can work together, sometimes we can’t, but, effectively, we will still come out with some outcomes. I think where we landed with this, by not making people have to do it, including security guards—they don’t have to do it; it’s up to the individual and their confidence. I think where we got to there is a really good point. I understand, again, the disagreements within the MAG, and as I mentioned, that creates a healthy debate and also means that you look at all different options. That’s what we did when we took on their advice.

The proposals enable more tools, more options to those that are victims of crime. You asked whether or not I had any evidence. There’s a story that resonates.

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: That’s not evidence.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: There will be evidence, but there’s a story that resonates—it was in the paper, it’s in the news, and you can look it up—of some guys who had tried to entertain a citizen’s arrest of a young person who had committed an aggravated robbery on a jewellery store. They held the person down, but because it was in the middle of the day, they were told to let that person go. That person just got away with what they had done and potentially was able to go on and do it again, because there is no deterrence to what they had done. These people chased this person down the street and held him down and had to let him go. What we’re saying is that if you can only do a citizen’s arrest between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m.—

Hon Dr Duncan Webb: That’s not what the law says.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: —and we have some of these occurrences happening in the middle of the day—

Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: I’m asking for the existing evidence.

Hon NICOLE McKEE: —then we will—sorry, I’ve got two things going on here. The time of day makes it clear and consistent for the retailer, by saying that they can defend their property by making sure that they can arrest somebody who has offended upon them.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Look, I’m not entirely happy with that response around citizen’s arrest. There were some inaccuracies in there that the Associate Minister of Justice might want to take some advice on.

I actually want to talk about legal aid, and there’s two strands to it, really. The first is simply a pretty straightforward question about whether the rates for legal aid lawyers are likely to be increased. I recently had an electrician who got paid 25 percent more than a legal aid lawyer would get paid for appealing a Provider Approval Level 1 case. Perfectly happy to pay the tradie that amount, but it does suggest that things have got a bit out of kilter, and it’s no wonder there’s a shortage of legal aid lawyers. I’m interested in whether that is under active consideration with the review that’s going on.

The second one is around section 27 reports and whether the Minister has made special provision in the Budget for funding the three things which are backfilling the absence of section 27 reports. It was reported by Newsroom on the back of written parliamentary questions asked by me on the cost of psychological reports that has more than doubled. Last month was $470,000 a month. What’s that? Five, six million dollars a year, which, funnily enough, is the amount that was being spent on section 27 reports. Then, the trend in alcohol and drug reports, which was, last April, $17,000 a month but last month was $220,000 a month, which is about $3 million a year. These reports are more expensive than section 27 reports because psychologists are expensive, and alcohol and drug experts and medical professionals are expensive.

The other thing—and this is in a ministerial report that the Minister will have seen—is legal aid lawyers are using legal aid time to do the reports themselves. The sort of pitch was that this would save $7 million. I’d be curious to know if it saved any money at all or if, in fact, it’s costing more than the previous regime was.

Thank you, Mr Chair. Currently, for legal aid, we are undertaking the triennial review, and all options will be considered while that review is being undertaken. When it comes to the section 27 reports and the psych reports that the member had mentioned, yes, the psych reports have gone up, but I have been advised that the amount is nowhere near where the section 27 reports actually were.

Thank you, Mr Chair. I have a couple of questions for the Associate Minister of Justice. Potentially, I’d appreciate it, Minister, if I could get some advice as well around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBORA) report and the availability of the NZBORA report, because one of the things we’re seeing is that consistently there is—well, consistently there have been inconsistencies around the timing of the upload of the NZBORA report, both in terms of when the bill is introduced under urgency but also when a substantial amendment has been introduced. I want to check with the Minister in terms of what part of the appropriation, what part of the Budget, has there been to ensure that there is prompt upload of the NZBORA reports to the Ministry of Justice website?

At the same time, are there any considerations or budget in place for consultation work or for urgent NZBORA report work when a substantial amendment has been introduced into the House, particularly during committee stage?

Thank you, Mr Chair. The New Zealand Bill of Rights Act reports—their uploading on to a website is not a ministerial issue. That’s an operational issue for the Ministry of Justice, and my understanding is that they do upload where they can, when they can, as fast as they can.

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