Williams Poto: Register of Pecuniary Interests of Judges Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Poto: Register of Pecuniary Interests of Judges Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 03 December 2014. Volume:702;Page:1138. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]POTO WILLIAMS (Labour—Christchurch East):Helpful as ever you are Mr Assistant Speaker Mallard I like the previous speaker Jono Naylor have just gone through my notes and disqualified a few of them. So rather than being the last speaker tonight there may be one or two people who follow me. But thank you very much for assisting me in learning how to take a call in the House.We are speaking on the Register of Pecuniary Interests of Judges Bill and I do acknowledge the work that you have done Dr Kennedy Graham on this bill. It is important when members’ bills come before the House because they come with the hard work and all the emotional attachment that goes along with wanting to have a specific piece of legislation in your name passed by the House. For reasons that I will go into shortly we are not supporting the bill. There are many reasons that we did support it through to the first reading but through the submissions made to the select committee it has become apparent that there are many things that are problematic with the bill that require us not to be in a position to support it.The purpose of the bill is to establish for the judiciary a register of pecuniary interests requiring them to make returns just as Cabinet Ministers and members of Parliament currently do. There are some key principles that underpin this bill and they are principles that I want to speak to. One of the principles is the confidence that is required in the judiciary through the transparency under which they operate. My colleague Jacinda Ardern talked about transparency when she spoke a little earlier. It is interesting to note that we have slipped in the world ratings around transparency. It is something that we had first place in and now we are second.It is an important issue I think because it speaks to the heart of what has been a lot of the discussion in this House in recent months around how we conduct ourselves around the ability of the public of New Zealand to have confidence in its executive and its members of Parliament and through this particular bill its judiciary.One of the other principles that I want to talk about is the reduction of the possible conflicts of interest or the perception of those conflicts of interest. Thirdly one of the key principles I think that supports the development of this bill is about the accountability to the New Zealand public.Just getting back to the principle of transparency in this respect it pertains in particular to the issues of financial or pecuniary interest. Nothing undermines public confidence in a nation’s institutions and procedures more than the suspicion—and especially proof—that a public servant has suffered a conflict of interest arising from the pecuniary interest in a particular dealing in which he or she has been professionally involved. So it is where the public loses confidence in a member of the Public Service or where there is a perception that this has occurred. It is a principle of conflict of interest or the perception of such—and I just have to go through my notes here where I have had to put the marker pen through.Kris Faafoi: Can I have a go?POTO WILLIAMS: You should try to have a go.The other principle I allude to is about accountability to the New Zealand public. When someone who is employed and paid from the public purse uses resources paid for by taxpayers the New Zealand public have a right to know how their taxes are being spent and if it is to the benefit of New Zealanders.I just want to refer to some of the issues that the submitters raised during the select committee process. They were concerned that this bill may limit the ability to recruit and retain judges and we have heard a little bit of discussion about that in the House tonight. They were also concerned about the impact on the privacy of the judiciary and their families. I believe that the member from the other side of the House Jacqui Dean made a really valid point that often people come to court and appear in front of the same judge on several occasions and that familiarity—when people have a judgment against them that they are not entirely happy with some people do tend to take matters into their own hands. When people have the knowledge of where someone lives and of their assets it does put them at some risk and it does put their families at some risk.The submitters talked about there being a potential for the misuse of that information and the harassment of the judiciary by disgruntled litigants. They also made the point that the automatic disclosure of conflicts of interest could lead to delays in the court process. Delays and the workload of judges in the court system are things I have some experience of. I am aware of District Court judges for example who were concerned over the volume of cases that were presenting before them in a specific family violence court in west Auckland and the amount of work they were having to deal with in the case that I know of—up to 65 cases in a day which is an extraordinary workload.Those Family Court judges and those District Court judges had applied pressure to the ministry and to the court process to allow for changes to the prosecution guidelines that the Solicitor-General put in place to raise the level of evidence that was required to get a prosecution in the first place so that—I will get to the point Mr Assistant Speaker—the level of evidence that was required meant that a prosecution had to be fairly certain of being secured before an arrest could be made. What that did was it reduced the number of arrests thereby reducing the number of people going through the courts. I am drawing a fairly long bow here but what I am saying is that District Court judges—Brett Hudson: It’s a very interesting bow. It could be expanded upon this bow.POTO WILLIAMS: Thank you. There are only a couple of minutes left to go so I will see us through to the end here. What I am suggesting is that we have already got District Court judges who are under some pressure in terms of workload. The possibility is that this process of requiring judges to state potential conflicts of interest could add potential delays to the court process.Considering that we are getting close to the end of the evening I shall take the opportunity to just summarise some of the key matters concerned with this bill. The Law Commission did not recommend changes to this particular process. The potential impact on the privacy of judges and their families has got to be taken into consideration. There is the potential to add time and delay and therefore costs to the court. It is not a process that is known throughout similar jurisdictions around the world and really there is not a widespread concern that this process should be adopted. So with very few cases where this has been an issue—Saxmere Company Ltd and others v Wool Board Disestablishment Company Ltd seems to be the one that is cited—there is little evidence that this is a widespread or even a minor concern and it does appear to be inconsequential. In that regard I just reaffirm that we are not supporting this bill. Thank you very much.Debate interrupted.