Finlayson ChristopherADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE (REFORM OF CONTEMPT OF COURT) BILLFirst ReadingHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I move the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider the bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry those aren't the correct words. Can you—Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I said them.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): That it be now read a first time".Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I move That the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill be now read a first time. This is a neglected but incredibly important area of the law. The word "contempt" is perhaps misleading but there's probably no better term to describe just what exactly the law of contempt seeks to do. First as the explanatory note says it seeks to ensure that court hearings are not disrupted; secondly that trials are not unfairly prejudiced by an excess of publicity; thirdly that jurors decide only on lawfully admitted evidence; and very importantly that court orders are enforced.The other aspect of the law of contempt—and I'm going to spend a little bit of time on it this afternoon—deals with ensuring that the judiciary is protected from abuse and as I will say time and time again that does not mean that judges should be mollycoddled. It's very important in our system that judges are able to be criticised and that their judgments can be criticised. So we're not talking about encasing the judges in cotton wool but ensuring that they are not subject to unfair and excessive abuse.Let me begin by explaining the history of this particular area because as is tolerably clear what I have done is pick up the draft bill which was appended to the Law Commission's report on the law of contempt and I have introduced that as a member's bill. It may be regarded as a somewhat cheeky thing for a member to do but I need to explain why: because for 10 years I have been very involved in trying to get this issue resolved. Shortly after I became Attorney-General I asked the Crown Law Office to start to look at this issue because I was concerned at the increasing abuse of judges and the many cases that seemed to be going to the courts dealing with suppression orders being broken and so on. The Crown Law Office engaged Professor Tony Smith from Victoria University of Wellington who wrote a report on the subject and then after his report was produced it was referred to the Law Commission. In due course after a great deal of consultation of the general public and of the judges and also of the Law Society the Law Commission published a report and appended to it a bill.Because I strongly believe that this is an issue which calls for very careful consideration by the Parliament I decided to put the bill in the ballot and I was fortunate that it was pulled out. It constitutes the most important reform of the law of contempt in our country's history. It draws on much of the work which has been done in other jurisdictions like England and Wales and what it seeks to do is put into one single piece of legislation all relevant issues relating to contempt. So for example the bill proposes the abolition of the common law contempts of contempt in the face of the court publishing information that interferes with a fair trial contempt by jurors disobeying court orders and what they call scandalising the court while preserving the inherent jurisdiction of the court to deal with any novel issue that may arise.There are numerous parts of the legislation that I know some of my colleagues are going to address but in the time available I want to go straight to the part of the bill that deals with the publication—this is Subpart 6 "… the publication of untrue allegations or accusations against Judges or courts".When this bill was drawn out of the ballot there were a number of newspaper articles on it and there was a critical editorial in the New Zealand Herald which of course broke my heart—which basically said that I was seeking unnecessarily to protect the judges. I've always agreed with what the Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales said just at the end of 2017 and I quote what he said because I think it hits the nail on the head: "judges must earn … respect and should not be immune from criticism for their decisions; but fair criticism is different from abuse. By this I mean those cases where judges face a torrent of personal abuse for decisions they have made—increasingly online and in social media—and a growing number of cases where judges are threatened and physically abused. Some is calculated to intimidate judges individually or collectively. Such abuse is capable of undermining the rule of law. Judicial independence and impartiality is at the heart of the rule of law."So I don't want to sound like a litany but I want to emphasise the point that this legislation is not about mollycoddling judges. Of course there must be criticism but it is about protecting them from the sort of abuse that we've read about in New Zealand newspapers recently where there are various groups that are actually standing outside judges' homes and yelling and screaming at them and it's even got to the stage of physical jostling. But judges have to not be too precious and there must never be an overreaction; there must be a proper and considered reaction in accordance with the legislation.I recall many years ago someone wrote a story about a disgruntled litigant in Salisbury in 1631 who threw a brickbat at a judge and missed. What's not quite so well known is that the litigant's throwing arm was promptly amputated and nailed to a gibbet in the court. And the judge must have received a considerable fright because to underline his sense of outrage the prisoner was then hanged from the same gibbet. A century or so on a 19th century judge was in court and he had a dead cat thrown at him and he simply remarked "I'll commit you for contempt if you do that again." So apparently it was OK to throw one dead cat at a judge but to throw two was regarded as unimpressive. [Interruption] No I'm not talking about dead cat jumps or this Government; I am talking about throwing dead cats at judges.So the point of the matter is that of course there is going to be criticism and what is certainly not intended in this legislation is as I have said wrapping judges in cotton wool and protecting them from any criticism because that would be totally antithetical to the sort of system that we have. Other members as I see it are going to talk about various other aspects of it. I have spoken to the Minister of Justice about this matter. I have indicated to him that I am happy for him to take over the stewardship of this legislation because it is quite properly a Government bill but that I wanted to do the first reading just to get the show on the road as it were. But I have every confidence that the Minister of Justice is going to deal with this matter very carefully because it is an important matter and I indicate to him that I am very happy to work with him and the select committee to ensure that what comes out of the select committee and what is ultimately enacted by Parliament is an appropriate and proportionate response to some of the problems that we seem to have growing in this country in this very important area. So with those words I thank honourable members for their interest in the legislation and I commend it to the House."