Wilkinson Kate: Judicial Retirement Age Bill — In Committee 
Wilkinson Kate: Judicial Retirement Age Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7647] 
KATE WILKINSON (National) 
: 
 In taking a call on Part 2 which has been more than adequately described by my colleagues I point out that it increases the retirement age of the various District Court judges Employment Court judges High Court judges Supreme Court judges Maori Land Court judges and coroners. The explanatory note is pretty helpful in explaining the rationale and the positive benefits of increasing the age of retirement of judges from 68 to 70. I shall quote from it for the record because I think it is important: “The current retirement age of 68 years causes a loss of valuable knowledge and experience to the judiciary. The current age also presents a barrier to attracting senior practitioners or lawyers who have distinguished themselves in other fields … to judicial office. Experienced practitioners and academics can bring significant depth to the bench. … Raising the judicial retirement age will enable the retention of our most experienced and capable Judges and encourage recruitment of senior practitioners.” I think that intellectual capital—that experience—has already been well mentioned by my colleague Mr Carter. 
Dr Worth mentioned briefly that there is a concern and an issue at the moment in relation to the delay in court hearings. It is hoped that this legislation might go some way to perhaps making those court delays a little less. Some of the figures—and yes I will be selective about the figures to illustrate the point—certainly paint a somewhat horrific picture. I appreciate that not all the delays are due to the lack of availability of a judge but it is certainly hoped that if we increase the ages of judges more may be available and the waiting times might be reduced. It is well known that justice delayed is certainly justice denied. As lawmakers it is important for us to legislate law that provides as far as possible that our citizens have adequate speedy efficient access to justice. 
There is a case in the District Court in Auckland that has been waiting 1179 days for a hearing date. That is unacceptable. As I said it is not necessarily because of the unavailability of judges—it might be for a lot of reasons—but waiting 1179 days for any case to come to a hearing is not an acceptable state of affairs. I will give two other indications. There is a case in the Christchurch District Court that has been waiting for a jury trial hearing for 742 days. Another case in the Manukau District Court has been waiting for 705 days. I think that in anyone’s language 2 years to obtain a hearing date for a District Court trial is not speedy efficient access to justice. 
 In relation even to civil cases there are also delays in many of the courts. For example in the Auckland High Court the median waiting time for a High Court civil case to be heard is 264 days. That is nearly a year and a lot can happen in that year. Whilst people are waiting for their legal problems to be resolved they are caused a lot of uncertainty angst and worry. To have to wait 264 days for a civil High Court hearing in the Auckland High Court is certainly a worry and not good enough. By comparison in the capital the median waiting time for a High Court civil hearing is 231 days which is slightly better than in Auckland but certainly nothing to write home about. 
We can compare District Court jury waiting times—and again it is important that criminal matters are dealt with as soon as possible. There are people like the accused defendants who have been accused of a crime who are pleading their innocence and wanting the matter resolved as quickly as possible. I will just mention some of the waiting times for District Court jury trials and I will mention only those that have run over 300 days. That is the median waiting time but of course 300 days is nearly 1 year. The Auckland District Court has a median waiting time for District Court trials of 321 days whereas in the Blenheim District Court—the worst in the country—it is actually 372 days. I will mention one other figure which is the High Court jury waiting time. In Napier for example the median waiting time is 346 days. Again that is approximately 1 year and far too long for anybody to have access to justice or for the system to be called access to justice—efficient and speedy access to justice. We certainly hope that by increasing the retirement age of judges to 70 there may be more intellectual capital available and we may be able to utilise the skill and experience of our judicial bench. 
Part 2 agreed to.