O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Madam Deputy Speaker I stand to speak in support of this bill and while I congratulate the Hon Chris Finlayson on the bill I won't try to talk up his virtues as others have here. I know that as an ex - head prefect of mine he can talk up his own virtues far better than anyone else in this House could ever so I'll refrain from doing that. He did though—Hon Christopher Finlayson: You've never forgiven me for putting you on detention.GREG O'CONNOR: It was only smoking. I was only smoking. But I will refer to one anecdote. Sometimes when we are talking about contempt there's always around the edges the grey area of where the threshold lies. Perhaps a good case we might like to consider—if you can imagine a defendant standing in a dock somewhat dishevelled quite a character; an equally character judge—I believe it may have been Judge Carruthers who was on the bench one of the best judges I ever appeared before. He was about to sentence him and he was going through quite a lengthy discourse about the seriousness of the offending and it was quite clear it may be some sort of a serious sentence that he was going to be subjected to. At that stage he pulled out his phone and said Beam me up Scottie I'm in the crap." Whether that would under the law or whether that Mr Finlayson would actually be contempt I'm not quite sure but certainly it's good to have real live cases that we can actually judge these things against. I see the three aims of the bill being to promote and facilitate the administration of justice and uphold the rule of law. Of course any piece of legislation—criminal legislation—we consider in this House should be about that very thing. But I'd like to focus on the second part of those aims which is "maintain public confidence in the judicial system" and that's really what contempt is about. Often when people are entering the system at any stage whether they be a complainant a victim or an offender going into the system one piece of warning I always give them is don't expect this to happen quickly. The wheels of justice do grind quite slowly but as someone who's been involved in those wheels of justice over the years I believe we generally get it right. Even those who are quite critical the closer they are to the system—and it's quite often I see that where those who've been highly critical of cases believe that there may be an injustice those who've actually sat through the system sat through the cases—they are often those who become the greatest advocates for the outcome rather than those who are taking their lead and getting the information from headlines books that are written and certainly those who weren't able to avail themselves of all the facts available. So it's important for our justice system that those involved at any level have confidence in that system.I often hear talk about the courts not being very friendly places—they're not comfortable places particularly for offenders or defendants depending on what stage of the trial they're at or the process they're at. Well I don't believe they should be that comfortable because part of that is that many of those who end up there are people who have very little other discipline in their lives and very little else that they have any respect for. But over my years I've seen that people for whom going to court is actually quite an experience they actually have a grudging respect for the system. They have a grudging respect for the rules and you've only got to see what happens when they believe genuinely that injustice has happened—the outrage—to make them understand that generally they have a great faith in the system.So when I look at what is being proposed—prohibiting the publication of certain criminal trial information—that's a good system. For many of those who say "Why shouldn't the jury know everything about everyone that's come in?" I ask them to put themselves in that same situation—whether they were facing a parking ticket if they would actually believe that if they are going to be judged they should be judged on the facts before them. That's not to say there is the opportunity for similar fact evidence which I haven't got time to go into today where a crime or the circumstances of a crime are so proximate are so alike to what's happened before that they can be used. But generally innocence should be the presumption and this certainly ensures that that is maintained.There are many other aspects of this bill that we will have the opportunity to discuss over coming months and certainly being on the overworked—well certainly heavily laden—Justice Committee I look forward to actually being able to do more work on this bill. I recommend this bill to the House."