Adams Amy: Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel (Deputy Commissioner and Disposal of Complaints) Amendment Bill District Courts (District Court Judges) Amendment Bill Judicature (Judicial Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Adams Amy: Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Judicial Conduct Panel (Deputy Commissioner and Disposal of Complaints) Amendment Bill District Courts (District Court Judges) Amendment Bill Judicature (Judicial Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Volume:661;Page:9644] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am delighted to take a short call on the three bills that have come from the Judicial Matters Bill. I will start by commenting on the speech of the member who has just resumed his seat the Hon David Parker. I agree with a great deal of what he said and I want to touch on one of the points that he made on the desirability of extending the number of Associate Judges of the High Court. Until Mr Parker’s contribution I had not heard that proposal discussed a lot in this debate. The flipside of that I guess is the desirability of moving away from having a large number of temporary warrant holders. Mr Parker quite rightly spoke about the number of those judges who have retired and been given temporary warrants. I would also highlight that in that category there are a number of judges who are at the other end of their career. As there has not been the legislative capacity to appoint more associate judges there has been a need to bring in judges as temporary judges to fill the void. We have not had the legislative mandate to appoint them as associate judges and I am sure there has been a desire to do so. I know that the temporary associate judges who are in that category are left in somewhat of a void. 
I take on board Mr Parker’s comments although I would hate to think there is any suggestion—and I am sure he did not mean to imply it—that those judges would operate their warrants in anything other than a very objective fair and impartial manner regardless of their temporary warrants. I think we owe it to those judges where there is an intention for them to be associate judges for the long term to give them that certainty. Certainly by moving the threshold from six to nine judges we now have the capacity to be far more clear when we appoint associate judges as to their real expected tenure rather than having to use an inappropriate mechanism to allow that void to be filled. 
The only other point I wanted to touch on in my contribution to this debate is in respect of the additional power given to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner to take no further action on complaints. Obviously it is very good—and I know it has been spoken of extensively in this debate—that there will now be a deputy commissioner. The element of the extra power for that officer in terms of dealing with complaints is an important step. 
I want to reflect that we have an excellent judiciary in this country and I think one that we can all be rightly very proud of but it is not a given in every country. I have just been reading in the latest  
LawTalk 
 about Kenya’s judiciary which is in a very perilous state. We have an excellent judiciary in New Zealand but none the less we need to have an effective process whereby people feel that if they have a complaint it will be heard. But equally the history of this office has shown that although there has been a significant number of complaints—certainly enough to justify the office of deputy commissioner—the vast bulk of those can be disposed of reasonably simply without significant steps having to be taken. I think that adding “no further action” to the statutory remedies provides a good mechanism for dealing with those complaints. People can still feel they have been heard there has been a good independent review but it ensures that we do not have to take up too much of that office’s time with complaints that can be dealt with reasonably simply. 
I just wanted to make those two small contributions to the debate. It is very good to see this legislation progressing it is good to see the support it has around the House and I add my voice to commending the legislation to the House. Thank you.