O'Rourke DenisDENIS O'ROURKE (NZ First): New Zealand First supports the work of the Law Commission and of the officials who worked for so long to modernise and improve New Zealand's system of judicature. It is legislation that has been a long time coming and I think that overall New Zealand First has no difficulty with anything that it provides except for one thing that I will come to later. I do want to pause just at this time to say as others have that there is one major glaring issue that the legislation does not cover and is outside its scope but nevertheless I think I will take just a few seconds to reiterate that a really big issue for the justice system in New Zealand is the cost of it and therefore access to the system by ordinary people who simply so often cannot afford to pay for justice. We have all had people in our offices talking to us about that and most of us have tried to help people through the system only to realise that the cost is the real barrier. Therefore what I have often asked this Government to do—and I ask it once again—is to have another look at the legal aid legislation and improve the thresholds so that a far wider section of the New Zealand community can have access to legal aid because in the end that is the only way that we are going to tackle that major problem of the cost of justice and therefore access to it. New Zealand First will not be voting in favour of this legislation not because we do not support most of what it says at all but for only one reason and that is the requirement for the compulsory retirement of judges at the age of 70. That for us is a deal-breaker. That means we cannot vote for the legislation even though we support 99 percent of the rest of it. The reasons why we think this is so important are firstly that this is just plain simple ageism. The Government should be ensuring that people capable of working beyond the age of 70 are given as of right the opportunity to do so. The Human Rights Act itself is very clear that age as a means of discrimination is unlawful. Employers cannot do it. Why should the State be doing it when it comes to judges? Thirdly it is utterly unnecessary for there to be a requirement for retirement at age 70. Few people who find themselves unable to perform their duties after that age—or even before it for that matter—would wish to continue to do so and there is no reason why the Chief Justice should not intervene and talk to people who are in a position where they should be retiring. But the real reason is that age 70 is not so late in life these days that very able people should not be able to continue to carry on and I have appeared before judges well over the age of 70 who were very very astute indeed. In fact their experience should not be taken lightly because that experience is of huge value for the judicial commission and the community. And if there really are issues about the competency of judges then they arise at all ages. There is nothing magic about the age of 70 to determine whether or not somebody suddenly becomes not competent. So if there really is an issue about competency then why are judges not on a 7-year appointment basis renewable for those whose appointments should be renewed and not renewed for those whose appointments should not be? That would be a far better and fairer and more effective system than this arbitrary choice of the age of 70. We are voting against the legislation for that reason alone. But I also want to place on record New Zealand First's strong objection to the failure of the Government to legislate now for the publication of all District Court judgments. We do not mean those minor pronouncements that are made orally but fundamentally all District Court judgments. We were told that the reason why the legislation no longer requires that publication is resourcing issues and yet we were told this by the officials: The Chief District Court Judge is advancing work to enable significant District Court decisions to be published and the ministry is working closely with her to establish this publishing capacity from next year." So this is imminent—obviously there are resources being made available—so I do not see why the legislation should not now provide for the publication of those judgments even if there is to be a delay before it is actually done. As far as I am concerned this Government is simply reneging on its responsibility—and its undertaking in fact originally—to see that the District Court judgments were going to be published. The original bill itself sets out to say that one of its most important purposes is the transparency of the judicial system. That comes right down to the publication of judgments through all of the court system. So it is very strange that a bill that sets out to be transparent is actually now not providing full transparency as far as District Court judgments are concerned. Remember the District Court now has jurisdiction of up to $300000 so that by itself is one good reason why those judgments need to be published. What we saw in the original legislation was this in clause 167 and I think it should have been retained: "(1) Every final written judgement of a senior court"—excluding the Family Court the Youth Court and the disputes tribunal—"must be published on the Internet as soon as practicable unless there is good reason not to publish the complete judgment." Then it goes on to say: "(4) …final written judgment means a written decision that determines or substantially determines the outcome of any proceedings and is either—(a) a written reserved judgment; or (b) an oral judgement transcribed by an official transcription service." Why on earth are we not seeing that preserved in this bill? Of course it should be. The argument for resourcing is a vacuous one. We can see from the officials' own advice that resources are being made available and that it will be possible to publish District Court judgments next year—at least the significant ones. It is a small step further for the legislation to provide for the publication of all such judgments with the exception of those that it is simply unnecessary to provide for. New Zealand First members would not have voted against the legislation because of the failure to require publication of District Court judgments but we cannot vote for legislation with such an objectionable provision in it as to require the compulsory retirement of judges at the age of 70 years. That is a disappointment to us because we think that this is otherwise a very good piece of legislation that we would have preferred to support. But that provision is so objectionable that it means we have no choice but to vote against it. For that reason only you will hear our vote against the bills. Otherwise I do want to make it clear that New Zealand First does support the work that has been done by the Law Commission and by the officials to bring forward legislation that will update and improve New Zealand's judicial system in the way that is proposed in the bills. So I am sorry to those who would be looking forward to our vote for the bill. Unfortunately because of the provision for compulsory retirement of judges at age 70 our vote has to be against."