District Court (District Court Judges) Amendment Bill

Members, we were up to call No. 11, and it’s a Labour Party call.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. District Court judges—where would we be without them?

Hon Member: Where would we be?

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: Where would we be? The Labour Party—as I was going to say, discussed last night, but it was in fact this morning because today has felt like a very long day—is going to support this bill, but we do have some comments to make about it.

The primary justification for increasing the number of judges by one is to alleviate the court backlog. That seems like a very noble ambition. Obviously, there would be several other ways in which we might see this Government taking action to try and alleviate the court backlog. We don’t see that, but we do see this before us.

The fact that it’s one additional judge feels like a bit of an oxymoron, really, because we’ve heard this Government go on ad nauseam about the fact that they—well, they talk a lot about being tough on crime, and they talk a lot about all of these measures that they’re introducing to somehow signify that they’re being tough on crime. Yet at the end of all of that, and some sort of natural sequelae—you know, what will that mean on our judiciary and on the pressure on our judges? “We’ll just chuck one extra judge in there and that should do it.” It doesn’t really add up, and it doesn’t feel particularly congruent that all of this tough on crime is going to result in one extra District Court judge. But so be it. We have no objection to the fact that that is what is before us today.

It’s just one of those things where you think, “Gosh, is this a good use of our time?” I suppose it could be worse, though, as someone said earlier. You know, if we’re in this House talking about little things that by definition and technically possibly need to be done as a matter of course, then at least they’re not doing things that actually cause harm, and we’re not spending our time here today talking about that.

When we think about the bottlenecks in the court system and what are the various different ways this Government could have or might have chosen to address those, there are several, but it’s probably outside the scope of this particular bill before us today. It does kind of seem like a bit of a symbolic fix, really. Earlier on, my colleague the member for Ōhāriu, Greg O’Connor, who has a very long history in the justice area—

Tom Rutherford: Animated.

Dr TRACEY McLELLAN: —through various iterations, gave what was recalled as an animated speech with hand gestures, if I remember correctly, and walked us through the realities of what it is to actually be a judge.

To sum that up somewhat—because I’m not going to try and replicate his animism—he wanted us to focus on the fact that the name was written on the tin, and it is to judge. To do so therefore requires the appropriate allowance of discretion—the appropriate allowance of trust, even—the appropriate esteem in which we used to hold our judges in, in so far as taking in the complexities of the situations and the people they see before them. It is a shame that this current Government seems to be quite intent on watering that down and nullifying, somewhat, that esteemed history of judges. But we’re going to get one extra, so that’s something that we should at least be grateful for.

I think that when I say it’s a symbolic fix, it is a little bit ironic as well, given that the aforementioned measures that this previous Government is taking in the justice space all in all, in terms of their endeavour to be tough on crime, is largely symbolic in and of itself. We’re happy that there’s an extra judge. We see no complications in this bill apart from the fact that it feels a little bit incongruent and a little bit unnecessary, but we do commend it to the House.

It really is a pleasure to be the final speaker as we’re ending the third reading for this bill before it becomes law—the District Court (District Court Judges) Amendment Bill, increasing the total number of District Court judges by one to 183. It’s a pleasure because, in essence, as our Minister Paul Goldsmith said earlier, this is part of our wider objective to restore consequences of crime and also support the victims first. I commend this bill to the House.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a third time.