Appointments — Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Deputy Judicial Conduct CommissionerText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAppointments — Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner[Sitting date: 02 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5072. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]AppointmentsJudicial Conduct Commissioner and Deputy Judicial Conduct CommissionerHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (Attorney-General):I move That pursuant to sections 7(2) and 8A(2) of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act 2004 this House recommends His Excellency the Governor-General appoint Mr Alan Deans Ritchie as the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and appoint Kathryn Mary Snook as the Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner each for a term of 5 years having noted that the Attorney-General advises the House in accordance with sections 7(3) and 8A(3) of the Act that the Chief Justice has been consulted about the proposed appointments. I wonder whether members would like to make more noise on exiting the Chamber.Mr SPEAKER: Order! The Minister is making a reasonable point. Would members exiting the Chamber do so with less interference to the Minister speaking.Hon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: Thank you. The Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel Act 2004 provides for the Office of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and sets out a statutory regime for dealing with complaints about the conduct of judges. If appropriate the commissioner or the deputy commissioner may recommend the appointment of a Judicial Conduct Panel to inquire into any matter about the conduct of a judge. The Act establishes processes that recognise and protect the requirement of judicial independence and natural justice. It is not a function of the commissioner or the deputy commissioner to challenge or call into question the legality or correctness of any instruction direction order judgment or other decision given or made by a judge in relation to any legal proceedings.The positions require persons who are of high standing in the community with demonstrated integrity. The proposed appointees must be familiar with the role of the judiciary the principles of judicial independence natural justice and procedural fairness and be highly competent communicators. In my experience I think I can say it is a very difficult job because although there are some people who may have a genuine complaint there are also others who are vexatious and malevolent and complain frankly just to be unpleasant and it is the role of the commissioner and the deputy commissioner to deal with all complaints expeditiously and justly sometimes in very very trying circumstances.I have consulted with the Chief Justice as required under the Act on both appointments. Mr Ritchie has been Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner since 2011. He was admitted as a barrister and solicitor in 1971. He practised with Spencer and Ritchie in Ashburton and Chapman Tripp Sheffield Young in Wellington for about 12 years. He was the chief executive officer and executive director of the New Zealand Law Society from 1985 to 2008 and was a consultant to the New Zealand Law Society from 2008 to 2013. He is a member and panel convenor of the Parole Board.Ms Snook is a Wellington lawyer. She was admitted to the Bar in 1991. She was employed by Minter Ellison Rudd Watts as a senior associate from 1997 to 2000 providing commercial legal advice to a broad range of private and public sector clients. From 2004 to 2008 she was employed in the Office of Treaty Settlements before returning to Minter Ellison Rudd Watts in 2008 where she remained until 2010. In 2011 she too was appointed a member of the Parole Board and in 2013 appointed a panel convenor.The terms of appointment must be for not less than 2 years and not more than 5 and it is proposed that both Mr Ritchie and Ms Snook be appointed for terms of 5 years. The commissioner and deputy commissioner are remunerated at a rate set by the Remuneration Authority.Can I take this opportunity to say something about the retiring commissioner Sir David Gascoigne. He was appointed in 2009 and did not seek reappointment. I want to place on record the Government’s appreciation and gratitude for the professional and conscientious manner in which Sir David has carried out his duties over the past 6 years. In the course of his career he has given a great deal to New Zealand. He was one of those who founded the Film Commission. He served on the boards of Te Papa the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council and many many other cultural organisations. He is a fine New Zealander who has served his country very well.Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour):I rise to take a brief call. Can I begin where the Attorney-General left off and add my thanks on behalf of the Labour Party for the service that Sir David Gascoigne has given across a number of Governments over a long period of time both in important regulatory roles such as this but he has also given a lot of service to the arts at his own cost and also commercial service including as chair of Transpower for a while.In terms of the appointment Alan Ritchie is well-known to most lawyers in New Zealand having been the chief executive officer of the Law Society for a period of more than two decades which was long service indeed. I am sure he will be a very very capable Judicial Conduct Commissioner having served already in the role of Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner. I know less well the person who is being appointed as the deputy Kathryn Snook but I accept the Attorney-General’s recommendation and acknowledge that he has consulted with me in respect of both of those appointments.I will not take a lot of time. I will say that we do have to be careful that we do not allow vexatious litigants to be the bane of judges’ lives. The Judicial Conduct Panel is not an appeal body. It is not a way to relitigate decisions that litigants are dissatisfied with. I think that there is a worrying tendency for some vexatious litigants to take things too far. I see in the latest annual report of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner that there is an increasing incidence of judicial review of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner’s decisions. So not only have litigants had their appeals finished in the judicial system; they have had a complaint to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and that has gone against them as well and not satisfied with all those steps they are now starting to take judicial review proceedings against the Judicial Conduct Commissioner’s decision. It can go too far in those situations.Sometimes I feel that some of those litigants are themselves being used by interest groups within society that favour longer sentences for example or that are all too willing to challenge bail decisions that occasionally have adverse consequences even if the bail decision was right. The only way to avoid some bail decisions going wrong is to have no bail which of course causes other injustices by having people who are not guilty of crimes lose their liberty. It would also of course put a huge cost on taxpayers to be locking everyone up on remand rather than having people getting bail.It is a difficult job that the Judicial Conduct Commissioner faces because the people who are complaining are sometimes very distressed. They are sometimes right but more often they are wrong—as the statistics show—as to the outcomes of most of the complaints that are made. Most complaints are not upheld and most of them do not get to a panel and I think that that is the right outcome.So with those brief comments I endorse the Attorney-General’s recommendation of Alan Deans Ritchie as Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Kathryn Mary Snook as deputy.DAVID CLENDON (Green):I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Greens in supporting the Attorney-General’s recommendation for the appointment of Mr Ritchie as Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Ms Snook as Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner. Clearly Mr Ritchie is very well qualified for the role having been deputy commissioner; having served as has been noted for over 20 years as chief executive officer of the Law Society; having had a long legal career in his own right; and having been a member the Parole Board. He would seem eminently suited for what is undoubtedly a very demanding task. Equally Kathryn Snook has nearly two decades practising law in both the public and private sectors. She has served in the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Ministry of Justice and has been a member of the Parole Board so again she is eminently suited to the task.The Office of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner has been with us for about 10 years. The purpose of the commissioner is to “enhance public confidence in and protect the impartiality and integrity of the judicial system.” It is critical. It is clearly very important that we maintain such integrity. However as Mr Parker noted in his contribution the commissioner cannot and indeed must not challenge the legality or correctness of any judge’s decision in relation to any legal proceeding.All too often critique of our judges our judiciary is with regard to sentencing decisions and very often they are claimed to be at one end of a spectrum—either excessively lenient in their sentencing their judgments or excessively harsh. Sometimes these accusations are extremely aggressive. They roll over into accusations of incompetence unsuitability for office—those sorts of things. The judges have very little available to them to remedy that. I would suggest that we in Parliament do have access to a mechanism in the form of the Sentencing Council.In 2007 this House passed legislation enabling the creation of the Sentencing Council the purpose of which would be among other things to produce guidelines around sentencing and parole to promote consistency in sentencing practice between different courts and judges to ensure transparency in sentencing policy and to promote consistency and transparency in parole. Sadly this legislation has sat on the statute book for some 8 years without being implemented. We think it is unhelpful that we do not exercise or put into action that mechanism which could deflect take away some of the critique—often unfounded critique—of the judiciary.With those few comments I would simply reiterate that we are confident about the Minister’s nominees for the role and his recommendations that those people will fulfil the functions and duties of their office. We would also add that the establishment of the Sentencing Council would be a useful ancillary step towards maintaining and enhancing public confidence in the judiciary and the justice system. Thank you.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First):New Zealand First is very happy to support the motion for the appointment of Alan Ritchie as the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Kathryn Snook as the Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner. They are clearly both very well qualified for the roles and I am sure they will perform them very well indeed. I would like to actually take this opportunity to congratulate them both on their appointment and to thank them in advance for the valuable work they will do. It is certainly not an easy job.The Judicial Conduct Commissioner in his most important role has to look at which complaints brought to the commission are actually able to be investigated and need to be investigated. That requires quite a lot of sifting-out work because as I think we all know some people make an application to the commissioner simply because they are dissatisfied with the result of their case. That does not mean they have a genuine complaint that should be taken through the process. But where there is a genuine complaint against judicial misconduct or at least an allegation of it then it is important that the country has a means by which people can work through that. Without the Judicial Conduct Commissioner there would be no such avenue. So it is an incredibly important role and it is one that I think these two people will carry out very well.It was not so long ago that the Justice and Electoral Committee actually spoke with the Judicial Conduct Commissioner—the then commissioner—and we all took a great deal of interest in what he had to say on that occasion. One of the things I remember was the sheer volume of work that the commission had to undertake and the difficulty in carrying out that sifting process I mentioned. One of the things that is very important is the appointment of a deputy and that is one of the things that we are doing in this motion today.So for those reasons New Zealand First is very happy indeed to see the appointment of both the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and the Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner. We are particularly pleased that these two people have agreed to accept their appointments because I do think that they will make a very very good job of it. We should all be very proud of the way in which the commission has so far operated and the way in which I think it will continue to operate in the future.JACINDA ARDERN (Labour):I want to join with my colleagues in supporting this motion of two very experienced members of the legal fraternity who are taking on two very important roles. As my colleague David Parker has done I just want to acknowledge the tough role that they have. The Office of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner was established in 2005—based on legislation passed the year prior to that—with the very explicit role of enhancing public confidence; in fact that is one of its stated roles. One of its other stated goals is to protect the impartiality and integrity of the judicial system. I think that sometimes you hear the statement: “Who judges the judges?”. Making sure that we have transparency and oversight of judicial conduct is one way that we can add a greater layer of integrity to our criminal justice system. That is something that I think is to really be applauded. That we have I think good consensus across this House on roles like this is also to be applauded. So to have systems like this only adds weight I think to our judiciary.As has been said though this is not a group that plays any role in contesting the decisions of judges; that is a role for our courts and the appeal processes within our judicial system. This is solely about conduct. And we know the importance of this role. We have had high-profile cases in the past—Justice Wilson for instance in the Saxmere case where the Judicial Conduct Commissioner played a very important role in looking into whether or not there had been an issue of conflict of interest and he took a strong stance on that. That was a very important thing to occur.I do want to join my colleagues in thanking Sir David for the role that he has played since his appointment in 2009. It was due to finish in 2014 but he continued on. He had of course taken over from Ian Haynes who was our first commissioner.The workload of our commissioners is reasonable as well. There were 235 complaints in the year 2013-14. In the first year it was 223. We have seen fairly consistent rates of complaints. I think that consistency probably speaks to the fact that we have had a consistent level of performance. Only four of those complaints were referred to the head of bench so quite a few of those complaints were dismissed. As my colleague mentioned they will be sifting through vexatious complaints. But the fact that there has been a fairly steady rate—and yet we have seen some escalated—shows the worth and the value of this role.Also I want just to point out that there has been not one complaint—not one complaint—about the Youth Court since 2005. I think we should acknowledge the fine role—Hon David Parker: Voiceless youth.JACINDA ARDERN: Well it is either the voiceless youth or it is doing a good job. You could take a glass half-full or a glass half-empty approach on that one. I do want to note though that there were 95 cases unfinalised from the previous year. There was a note from Sir David about the pace that needed to be maintained in order to process complaints. It is always useful for Parliament to keep a watchful eye on whether or not we are adequately supporting the commissioner to do the work that they have been tasked to do.I want to finish though by acknowledging the role that Alan Ritchie is taking on in conjunction with Kathryn Mary Snook. They both have an extraordinary amount of experience—both have had roles on the Parole Board for instance. In the past Alan Ritchie has stood in for the Judicial Conduct Commissioner and his extensive experience with the New Zealand Law Society bodes very well I think for New Zealand’s justice system and for the role that he will now take on—equally with Kathryn and the role that she has played both in private practice and also in her role within the Office of Treaty Settlements for instance. I think the commission is in very good hands and I thank the Minister for his recommendation.Motion agreed to.