Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to speak in this debate. We're about to if we get to it—the next bill to be debated is around the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and parliamentary processes for debating decisions made by the court in relation to that and this debate that we're having here is another example of those processes that have been introduced to the way that Parliament operates to ensure that decisions made by the Government have consequences in the House and they're forced to explain themselves. So what we've got here is this Government wanting to rush through some legislation in response to COVID-19 and not having the normal amount of time that you have at select committee looking at a piece of legislation.The point of a select committee process is to allow New Zealanders from all walks of life to submit on the bill and on what is proposed recognising that the 120 MPs and the hard-working and very focused ministry advisers in Wellington don't always know everything and they miss things. They misunderstand things in draft bills. When a bill is introduced into the House very often if enacted it would achieve the exact opposite of what they had set out to achieve or it would have all sorts of unintended consequences and so very often public feedback on legislation allows New Zealanders to point out: Hang on a moment you've got this wrong you've got that wrong." or "What about this?" and "If you do this this is what's likely to happen." So in our wisdom when Governments do propose to rush through legislation with a shorter select committee process they have to have this debate to explain themselves.Now Mr Michael Wood the Minister gave the explanation at the start of this debate and his justification seemed to be in essence that it's a terrible thing that justice has been delayed because of COVID restrictions under Omicron fears that people have around the spread of the disease and that this is having a material effect and possibly seeing trials delayed for as much as a year because of delays in the process. So this is a terrible situation that we face. It's an urgent problem therefore we need to deal with it urgently. Ultimately we are prepared to support this speedy process and this legislation. Partly we support the speedy process because if it was even longer then the bill would be enacted even later—even more months after most New Zealanders will have moved on and want to get on with their lives—and it will be even more redundant than it would be if we had got on with it in a quicker time span.But the point I was making though was his arguments for urgency really just underscore how disappointing the whole thing is in the sense that it would have been much better if the bill had been introduced earlier so that we could have got ahead of the issues that have been raised. My colleague from the ACT Party Brooke van Velden pointed out of course that the courts on their own bat have made a number of changes already. There are a few legislative issues that we're trying to deal with here. It's probably not going to be the end of the world but it may be helpful at the margins and it would have been helpful if it had been brought in sooner particularly when the Government introduced the red light process legislatively back before Christmas when as we pointed out they'd missed a whole lot of things.So look unfortunately we've had a pattern over the last couple of years now of a Government responding on the back foot to a whole lot of things that were eminently predictable and likely to happen relating to COVID-19. Everybody jumped up and said "Watch out this is going to be an issue in the courts." They do nothing about it until very late in the piece and then rush legislation through Parliament. Quite often as a result of that they're getting it wrong and having to come back with more legislation and further tweaks and then in the meantime the poor people who are working in the system—in this case in the judiciary and in the justice system or the court system—suffer the consequences for that. But they have to go with that. So we will with some regret support this truncated process. We understand the urgency; we just do wish that this bill had been introduced much earlier in the piece."