Tanczos Nandor: Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) — First Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21118] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I begin by thanking Mr Murray Smith for his intelligent and helpful contribution to the debate and for his comments around the referral of this bill to the Government Administration Committee. I think that that explanation will be quite helpful to members of the public who are listening to the debate. 
The Greens support this bill and we will vote for it. The main aim of the bill is to amend the Judicature Act 1908 in order to alleviate the workload pressures on the Court of Appeal and to increase access to the final appellate court the Supreme Court of New Zealand. The Greens are very pleased to support that straightforward aim. Access to justice or at least to the courts—of course they are not always the same thing—is critical to the implementation of justice. Delay in getting hearing dates increases costs and adds considerably to the stress experienced by the litigants. I am sure that many members of the House will have heard numerous complaints about the effects of delays in terms of judicial proceedings and I am sure that most members will support this bill in order to help address some of those issues. 
Obviously increasing the number of judges on the Court of Appeal will enable that court at least to hear appeals in a timely manner. We consider that that change is long overdue which again echoes comments made by previous speakers. We also support the changes to how judgments in the Court of Appeal may be delivered. It seems straightforward it adds flexibility and it reduces unnecessary delay and we think that those factors are all for the better administration of justice. 
The other matter to address is access to the Supreme Court. We are pleased to see that access to the Supreme Court will be improved by this bill. We believe that current arrangements are a barrier to some people who seek to appear before the Supreme Court where cases originate in the lower courts. We believe that freeing up those appeal rights is beneficial for people and for our nation. 
As Mr Smith has said there are safeguards in that as people need to seek leave to appeal to the Supreme Court only the pertinent cases will go before the Supreme Court. Typically cases include criminal environmental and employment cases and when this Parliament set up the Supreme Court one of the arguments for doing so was that unlike the Privy Council it would be able to hear the full range of cases. Those sorts of cases where the fundamental rights of individuals are often most radically affected by law have the greatest effect on the greatest number of people and that is one of the real advantages of our Supreme Court. It is a final appellate court that is based in our own country and that is accessible to a broad range of people and cases. 
As I have said environmental law employment law and criminal law have huge effects on people in our country arguably more so than the civil cases that made up the vast bulk of cases that previously went to the Privy Council. We believe that those areas of law deserve to be tested at the highest level of our courts. By enabling access to the Supreme Court legal views and interpretations are subject to a series of critical assessments for validity. All relevant issues are raised and tested and we have an outcome that can at least be said to be a rigorous testing of the law available today. This will mostly make for better law. Of course judges will not always get it right but we must at least let it be our most senior judges who have the final say. So the Greens are pleased that the bill will allow for a more fully functioning Supreme Court and Court of Appeal. 
During the debate on the Supreme Court legislation in this House I said that access to the Privy Council was so restricted and the number of cases that got there were so few that the Privy Council was just not able to fulfil the traditional functions of a final court of appeal. On the other hand our own Court of Appeal had so many cases before it that it was also unable to fulfil that function. The Greens noted that right-wing support for the Privy Council arose because it served the rich well but it did not serve the interests of ordinary New Zealanders. The question the Green Party had to address in dealing with that bill was whether we support justice for all New Zealanders or justice for the rich alone and we unashamedly support justice for all New Zealanders. 
The Greens believe that the development of the Supreme Court was an important step towards the decolonisation of this country and the development of the forging of a national identity. That does not make it a step towards becoming a republic and of course many other countries have ended their appeals to the Privy Council and remain part of the Commonwealth with the Queen as their head of State. 
We think it is important that we have this bill which is about increasing access to the Supreme Court. That is why we support it. Many people objected to the Supreme Court in principle when we passed that legislation and will not support this bill on that basis. Many Maori had deep-seated concerns about cutting the tie to the Privy Council. They wanted to see a written constitution developed and the status of Te Tiriti o Waitangi clarified before the Supreme Court legislation was passed. That is a legitimate point of view. 
The Greens will continue to push for treaty-based constitutional change while asserting our continued support for the Supreme Court. In that sense we are supporting this bill which is about increasing access to that court. Suffice it to say that we feel the decisions of the Supreme Court have to date validated our stance and proved wrong those who feared that we would see a bench that had a compliant and submissive attitude towards the Government of the day. If anything the repatriation of our final court has added impetus to the debate on the relative powers of the executive and the bench. [ 
Interruption 
] But as I think Mr Jones is commenting behind me those debates are already behind us. 
This bill is pretty straightforward in its intent and effect and the Green Party supports it.