Sio Hon Aupito WilliamCOURTS MATTERS BILLTRIBUNALS POWERS AND PROCEDURES LEGISLATION BILLThird ReadingsHon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Associate Minister for Courts): I move That the Courts Matters Bill and the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill be now read a third time.These two bills are part of our Government's efforts to provide New Zealanders with a more modern fair and effective justice system. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank members of Parliament from across the House for their cross-party support for these important bills and for the hard work of the Justice Committee members in examining these bills.I will start off by highlighting some of the many changes that these bills will make and I begin with the changes that the Courts Matters Bill is making to 16 Acts governing the operation of the courts. The amendments to the Courts Security Act will help to provide the safe secure and orderly court environment that people are entitled to. Court security officers will be able to deny entry to or remove disruptive people whose behaviour is causing distress to other people. They will also be able to detain people who commit minor crimes such as disorderly behaviour wilful damage or the possession of illegal drugs in court or tribunal buildings.The amendments to the Criminal Procedure Act will improve the efficiency and timeliness of the criminal courts. For example the reclassification of offences with a maximum penalty of a community-based sentence as a category 1 offence will enable defendants to plead guilty or not guilty in writing instead of having to appear in court and it reflects the low-level nature of offences.The amendments to the Summary Proceedings Act will enable fines and reparations to be collected sooner. This will enhance their credibility as penalties. Furthermore the Ministry of Justice will be able to use automated decision-making to set up arrangements to pay fines in affordable instalments. This will provide a much more efficient and effective means of setting up several thousand arrangements each year. Most people pay their fines in instalments because they cannot afford to pay them in full.The amendments to the Criminal Procedure (Mentally Impaired Persons) Act will reverse the order of the two judicial inquiries that are undertaken to assess if a defendant is fit to stand trial in a criminal court. In future victims and witnesses will only have to give their evidence once instead of sometimes having to do so twice.The amendments to the Juries Act will provide for people who are not fluent in English with a quick and simple way to defer their jury service.I will now describe some of the changes in the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill. For brevity I'll refer to this bill as the tribunals bill. The tribunals bill will amend 22 Acts governing the operations of tribunals. These tribunals resolve disputes deal with occupational discipline and regulation and review the decisions of Government agencies. Around 40000 people access these tribunals each year.The tribunals bill will improve access to justice for people affected by the case backlog that has developed in the Human Rights Review Tribunal since 2015. I have previously spoken about one of the most challenging issues facing the Human Rights Review Tribunal with that being the unacceptable backlog of cases and the actions this Government has taken to address this issue.The House will know that the Human Rights Review Tribunal provides important services for people who may have had their human rights rights to privacy or health and disability services rights breached. Since 2015 the number of claims filed with the tribunal has exceeded its resources and this has caused a significant case backlog to develop. What we know is that between the 2014-15 and the 2016-17 financial years the number of new cases received by the tribunal grew by 92 percent. This led the backlog of cases to grow by 144 percent from 52 cases as it was at the end of 2014-15 to 127 cases at the end of 2016-17. As of 31 October 2018 there were 124 active cases on hand. In August 2017 the previous Government appointed a second chairperson for a period of 12 months to help with the case backlog but that alone has not worked. Every day people are waiting two years for a hearing and up to three years for a decision. Earlier this year I reappointed the second chairperson for the same reasons.Furthermore and more importantly I took a paper to Cabinet this year to amend the Human Rights Act 1993. This was needed to enable the permanent appointment of additional deputy chairpersons to the tribunal which I know was incorporated by the Justice Committee and I thank the committee members for doing this as it will increase the public's ability to access justice. So the tribunals bill now authorises the appointment of more than one deputy chairperson. The new deputy chairpersons will be able to perform the same functions as those of the chairperson. This will help reduce the significant backlog.The tribunals bill will now also include procedural changes to help further reduce the Human Rights Review Tribunal backlog. For example the chairperson or deputy chairperson will be able to decide minor matters on the papers instead of a hearing being held. The tribunals bill will provide better consumer protection and redress. For example the monetary threshold of the disputes tribunals will be doubled. People with disputes of $15000 to $30000 will have access to a quicker simpler and cheaper process than a court case.The Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal will be able to award monetary compensation of up to $100000 for financial losses arising from a real estate agent's unsatisfactory conduct. At the moment the tribunal can only provide compensation for poor behaviour that meets the higher-threshold misconduct.The Private Security Personnel Licensing Authority will be able to discipline unsatisfactory conduct such as bullying. The authority can currently only discipline misconduct which meets a very high threshold.The tribunals bill will provide 21 tribunals administered by the Ministry of Justice with the tools they need to resolve cases faster and more effectively. More tribunals will be able to strike out meritless cases and decide minor matters on the papers—that is without having to hold a hearing to consider the matter. These tools will enable for example the Legal Complaints Review Officer to significantly reduce the case backlog that has developed over many years and to decide substantive matters more quickly.In conclusion I know this bill may have started under the other administration but the bill before this House is substantially more meatier and with significant changes to address the backlog that has become an issue over the past number of years. So this coalition Government with support from its support partners has moved with efficiency and with as much haste as is humanly possible to move this as quickly as possible through this House.Finally the Courts Matters Bill and the tribunals bill will improve people's experiences of the courts and tribunals system. I commend these bills to the House.