Salesa JennyJENNY SALESA (Labour—Manukau East): Thank you for this short call on the Judicature Modernisation Bill—I had to practise that term several times because I was tripping myself up. Labour supports this bill; however we have some concerns. The New Zealand Law Society made a really considered submission on this bill and one of the key submissions that it made was around the fact that the High Court Rules should not be included in this legislation. In that vein I would like to address Part 1 Subpart 6 which is about Rules of court and miscellaneous provisions".This bill proposes to retain the High Court Rules—a document that is close to about 800 pages in terms of the schedule—which will preserve the status quo under the Judicature Act 1908 but in addition to the submission from the Law Society the Law Commission also recommended that the High Court Rules should be taken out and not included in this legislation but instead be made as regulations. The Government initially agreed with this recommendation which was seen as recognising that the High Court's inherent power to manage its own practice and procedures coexists with the rule-making powers provided in legislation. I wonder whether the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner can explain why the Government changed its mind and changed its position on this issue.The High Court Rules by their very nature will require a lot of amendments and we have just heard from my colleague Mr Su'a William Sio that it took around about 100 years before we got to this stage of talking about this modernisation of this particular bill. It would be fair to say that we probably will not want to see the changes to the High Court Rules taking quite that long. Other than in exceptional circumstances delegated legislation should not be used to amend Acts of Parliament. I agree with both the New Zealand Law Society and the Law Commission that the High Court Rules should not qualify as exceptional situations justifying this approach and that it should be taken out and amended as regulations. Furthermore the inclusion of the High Court Rules in this particular legislation is not consistent with the treatment of the other higher courts. The rules of the Supreme Court as well as the Court of Appeal Rules are not included in legislation. So why are the High Court Rules not treated in the same way? Why the inconsistency? Perhaps the Minister can clarify this for us.This omnibus bill contains changes that are long overdue and I welcome the changes which will enable our courts and our justice system to be easier to understand more effective and that will make justice more accessible to many more of our citizens in our democracy. I would like to acknowledge the Minister who was in the chair earlier on the honourable Minister Amy Adams for all of the work that she has done in getting this bill to this stage—as well as the Justice and Electoral Committee; they have done a lot of work on this bill. More importantly I would like to thank the Minister for agreeing to my colleague Jacinda Arden's Supplementary Order Paper 62. We believe it is crucial to refer in the purpose clause of this bill to a commitment to parliamentary sovereignty the rule of law judicial independence and indeed the Treaty of Waitangi. This was previously a serious omission from this bill and I am glad that it is now included.I would also like to talk briefly about clause 167 which Denis O'Rourke spoke about before and which if introduced would require every final judgment of a senior court to be published online unless there was a reason not to do so. The select committee spent some time discussing clause 167 and there was some discussion that it would in fact be included. However the decision was made to delete clause 167. In this technological age—when most people would expect that when judgments are made and are made available they would be on the internet—it would be great to know from the chair why it is that they decided to delete clause 167. Thank you."