Penk Chris; Sio Aupito WilliamCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Madam Chair thank you very much. I thank the Minister for his opening remarks I think it's helpful that he's given us an overall sense of what the legislation's intended to achieve. I also thank him for the explanation of the Government's amendment the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) no doubt in his name which will make some necessary but small amendments. It's helpful that he set out that these aren't policy changes per se. So I can say as the National spokesperson in the area we will support that SOP as well as continuing to support the legislation as a whole. There's no policy change that's bypassing the select committee process. It seems as though that's a genuine good-faith effort to make sure that all the ducks are in a row to achieve the policy aim which as the Minister said is mostly in the space of allowing independent parts of the Government to be independent.So I'll just take a step back and make a sort of general comment about the legislation if I may as a prelude to a couple of specific questions about provisions within these various parts. We're doing the debate as one whole question so for anyone following along at home we're not going to necessarily constrain ourselves to specific sections in a chronological way. I don't have a lot that I really want to interrogate by way of detail for the Minister he'll be relieved to know as will the advisers no doubt; it's really just a matter of teasing out a couple of explanations about how it all fits together in our tribunal system.So the first thing is just to acknowledge the Remuneration Authority is a creature of Parliament—that is to say it's been created by Parliament under a statute; it's got its own Act. And so you know in this place we needed to set that up—I say we" it was long before my time actually before my time was even born the Remuneration Authority Act 1977. So there we go. Not showing off just saying—no actually I'm sitting near to Simeon Brown who was born even more recently. So anyway. And Nicola Gregg's laughing but we won't go any further.It's been a long-standing convention and indeed the law of the land that the judiciary—people who are making decisions in our courts as opposed to the Government with a capital "G"—get to do that without fear or favour of politicians reducing their pay as punishment for a decision that we don't like or threatening that that might be the case. The Minister has rightly talked about judicial officers and quasi-judicial officers. So there are some who are not judges by name but do judge-like functions and it's appropriate for the same reasons that we protect judges from us and from the perception of any threats that there might be theoretically from this place. It's appropriate to treat them in the same way. So that's really the overall gist of it and that's why we've been happy to support this legislation from the start. It's a relatively minor thing but it's got an important basis in the context of the court system overall which is creaking at the seams to put it mildly—one might say it's fiddling while Rome burns but it's a nice tune so we're going to play along with it. In Part 1 we've got a list of the different tribunals and also the magistrates who operate within the court system and also the Environment Court—also within the court system as the name suggests. I'm just wondering from the Minister whether there were any other tribunals authorities or bodies that he or his officials considered might also be brought within the ambit of this legislation. I'm not asking the question to try and flush out an answer that I think is going to be any kind of "gotcha". I can't think of any particularly myself off the top of my head but just genuinely throwing it out there. Are there others who make decisions that we would want to keep free from the influence again of any threatened punishment by politicians in the same way? So I'll just pause for breath in case the Minister wanted to respond on that point and if he does then I'll allow him to do so. Otherwise I'll move on.Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Associate Minister of Justice): It's been a while since the initial discussions about this to try and get this piece of work here. There was a range of areas we discussed but by and large we're basing this—look as a politician I'm clear that we do need to protect that line of independence well—the judicial and the quasi-judicial. So the advice I got was really these groups and I'm pleased to say that Cabinet colleagues ooh-ed and aah-ed but essentially agreed to maintain the protection of that line of demarcation between the executive as well as those. So there could be more in the future but I don't know.CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi): Sure. Thank you very much Madam Chair. And also thank you to the Minister that's a helpful answer. I suppose if I were to put in a pitch for anyone specifically and I'm not saying this is National Party policy; it's a discussion that's out there in the community and the quasi-judicial community as the Minister is probably already aware and that's the role of judicial JPs. As he knows and he's nodding they perform a very similar function at a level to community magistrates or CMs as they are commonly known. This legislation does deal with the remuneration of community magistrates and it says that they are to be protected. Of course the elephant in the room is that judicial JPs don't get paid. So actually of course it's not that they would be in this bill because there's no pay that they are getting to be protected in this way. But I wonder as a more general policy point if the Minister would contemplate or is contemplating potentially using judicial JPs in a way that is equivalent to community magistrates such as they would also get paid for undertaking similar work often on a weekend and a public holiday as well. And if the Minister would like more time I'm happy to take to my feet.Hon AUPITO WILLIAM SIO (Associate Minister of Justice): My recollection is we did discuss JPs and there was a reason why we didn't include it in this regard. But I can't recall exactly its—but I think that it also has to do with the way that JPs are structured. It is an independent organisation it sits under the Governor-General and therefore there were some complications that the officials still needed to work through before we can make a final decision on this."