Franks Stephen: Supreme Court Bill — In Committee 
Franks Stephen: Supreme Court Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9065] 
STEPHEN FRANKS (ACT NZ) 
: 
 I am very hopeful that either the Minister in the chair the Hon Rick Barker or the Hon Margaret Wilson can explain something that the Hon Margaret Wilson’s officials were unable to explain in the select committee about the schedules. There is a mystery in the schedules that as far as I can tell is explicable only with some rather sinister assumptions. The mystery in the schedules is that the ability to appeal to the new Supreme Court is extended to people going through the Family Court the Environment Court the Employment Court various courts martial appeals levels and the Maori Appellate Court. That is fair enough it is what the bill is set out to do so why should that be a sinister mystery? 
Simon Power 
: What about the Habeas Corpus Bill? 
STEPHEN FRANKS 
: Habeas Corpus? OK. The Supreme Court Bill also states that such appeals can be on both fact and law. A lot of appeal bodies hear appeals on matters of law only as a way of ensuring that the poor people tangled up in litigation do not have to spend the money that is required when they may have to readdress factual issues. An appeal on both fact and law is an absolute misery. The  
Jarndyce 
 v  
Jarndyce  
case in the Dickens novel  
Bleak House 
 is the archetypal case of misery caused by litigation irrespective of the outcome and appeals on fact and law through three levels cause that. Appeals on fact and law in the Supreme Court are the fate awaiting many New Zealand families in the Family Court many New Zealand businesses farmers and others through the Environment Court and many other New Zealanders through the other courts. 
But there is a very mysterious omission. In all of the other legislation that amends appeal rights that were previously expressed as being on matters of law only there is one omission. What might it be? Appeals from the Employment Court will not go on matters of fact and law. Why would that be? Would we not think that the Attorney-General would want Employment Court appeals on her little baby—employment law—to be dealt with on the basis of being able to get right to the bottom of the facts as every other kind of appeal will? I think there is only one explanation. Officials could not give an explanation when they were asked at the select committee. They did their duty they muttered and mumbled and tried to look as if there were some intelligent reason that perhaps was just escaping me but the reason I believe is inescapable. 
The reason must be that the Minister knows she has been rolled on the matter of whom the new court will comprise. She will not be able to go and select her own toadies to sit on the Supreme Court. She might get a chance to put some of them in waiting at the new Court of Appeal level or put them into the High Court but the Supreme Court will be made up largely of Court of Appeal judges. So she does not want the new Supreme Court playing around with her creation—our employment law—until a little way down the track when she has had a chance to stack the new Supreme Court with new judges more to her liking. 
That mysterious omission of appeals on fact and law reserved only for employment law is more telling than anything else in the schedules about what this bill is really about. There can be no other reason for making a distinction in relation to the Employment Court. It is not because there are already three levels of appeal. That in itself might have been enough to say that Employment Court matters should not be appealed through to the Supreme Court. That gives absolute misery and suffering to many New Zealand employers—when people have their unions financing them all the way through three levels of appeal employers will roll over and concede simply because they cannot face the costs. 
We have something much more telling here in that people cannot take their employment case on fact and law when every other level must. When families go through the Family Court the High Court the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court they have to face an appeal on fact and law. When farmers or business people or developers or just people who want to build a new granny bach have to go through the Environment Court the High Court the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court they have to deal with fact and law. But they do not have to when it is a matter of employment law. The Attorney-General does not want to have Employment Court decisions reopened and Judge Goddard’s curious findings of fact reversed.