Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise on this important bill introduced by—well it was drafted by the Hon Christopher Finlayson and we considered it on the Justice Committee. I think it's fair to say the Minister of Justice has not had an easy time of it with justice bills. This is likely to receive an easier passage through the House which is no surprise because it was drafted by a National member. So we look forward to future justice bills coming once he's negotiated with his New Zealand First colleagues about what he's allowed to get through. But this is a sensible bill.The law of contempt is one of those strange beasts where the law is essentially collected through various statutes and most notably of course collected in the common law. As Parliament likes to do from time to time—Parliament likes to collect together all of the various elements of the law and codify it or put it into a consolidated statute and frankly actually as someone who's studied all this stuff at law school it would have been a lot more helpful for people on juries—Chris Penk: That's right.CHRIS BISHOP: I see my good colleague Chris Penk who was contemporary with me at an inferior but still good law school agreeing with me. It would have been helpful for jury members—SPEAKER: Deliberately misleading is it?CHRIS BISHOP: —ha ha!—and particularly for lawyers if this had been done earlier.Of course I do just want to make a couple of remarks around the process about how all this happened. In 2009 some preliminary work was done into looking at how to bring it into a statute so that everyone knows the relevant rules and of course just like we had the Crimes Act 1961 where all the crimes of New Zealand are collected together so it's possible for everyone to go to look at this particular statute and know that a particular thing is an offence it's possible now with—or will be possible once this bill passes so to bring together the law.There was a first principles review of the law referred to the Law Commission—highly appropriate I think members would agree that the Law Commission does something very technical very legally focused as that. There was an issues paper as the Law Commission always does or often does consultation and then of course there was a discussion document in May 2017—kind of getting to the fag end of the last Government's time in office. But there was a report to the Minister responsible for the Law Commission and then the Hon Christopher Finlayson being his hard-working and dutiful self and I've got to say someone who has a particular obsession with this area of the law he did the hard yards in that transition from Government to Opposition and a member's bill duly made its way on to the ballot paper and he managed to convince the Minister of Justice Andrew Little to pick it up as a Government bill.I was thinking as I was preparing my notes for this how many other Opposition members' bills have become Government pieces of legislation? I cannot—Kieran McAnulty: Two.CHRIS BISHOP: Is it two—is it two?Kieran McAnulty: Oh just guessing.CHRIS BISHOP: See Mr McAnulty you said it with such authority. Clearly the junior whip job is becoming of you Mr McAnulty because you said that with such authority that I just immediately assumed it was credible but we now hear it was a guess but OK. So we don't know it's two but it's in the Hansard as possibly two. But I can't think of another example. I mean I'm a new member as you know. I can't think of another example in my time in the House when an Opposition member's bill has been picked up by the Government as a Government bill. I can think of members' bills that have started life as members' bills on the same side of the House and have become Government bills. I think the civil union bill started life as Chris Carter's member's bill and ended up as a Government bill. I might be wrong about that but I think that's correct. Certainly swapping from one side to the other I can't—SPEAKER: McKelvie—rustling. Rustling recently?CHRIS BISHOP: Oh no—well that became a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) to a separate bill I think. I suppose it's sort of—Hon Member: The rustling bill.CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah but no—that was an SOP to another bill. So it sort of counts I suppose. You're sort of half right Mr Speaker if I may be so bold—if I may be so bold.SPEAKER: Well it's the nicest thing you've ever said to me.CHRIS BISHOP: Ha ha! Aww—OK righty-o. Anyway I may get pulled up for relevance so I'll return to the thing.Anyway so look it is a sensible way forward. It is a tricky issue as the Minister has rightly acknowledged in his speech because section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provides for freedom of speech in New Zealand and of course by dint of section 3 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act the provisions of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act apply to the courts. Of course there would be some on the libertarian right who I suspect would say that you should be able to say whatever you like about what's going on in court but of course we also have the countervailing duties and principles of the fair administration of justice in making sure that actually other rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act are given effect to such as the right to a fair trial which the Minister—Hon Andrew Little: It's called justified limitations. It's also in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act.CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah yeah—well if you'd just let me finish I was going to say section 5 of the Act which I'm very familiar with thank you Mr Little provides for justified limitations. So of course the question is what is a justified limit and where does the balance lie?I do want to draw the House's attention to a particular part of the bill that the select committee is recommending changes to and that is around what we would call in the old language scandalising the court and the Minister has referenced this in his speech to the House. There were concerns by submitters that this could prevent robust legitimate criticism of judges and the courts. Other common law countries cognate jurisdictions that we would regard ourselves as contemporary with such as the United Kingdom do not have such an offence. Other countries have moved to abolish this offence. It's been found unconstitutional in the United States—and I'm not saying that United States free speech jurisprudence should be automatically imported into New Zealand law but I think it is relevant—and of course most notably it's been found to be incompatible with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Of course for those members some of whom were in the House when Sir Geoffrey Palmer was here that of course was one of the models for the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act the Canadian charter in the first place and so I think that is relevant.So I think it's fair to say that Mr Finlayson was very keen on this provision or at least wanted to have it inserted but the committee has considered it with some diligence and some rigour and we are recommending that it be amended. I note the Minister has noted that he'll be potentially considering moving an SOP at the committee of the whole House stage. I think it would be helpful for the timely process of the bill through the House and the pretty collegial way frankly that members on the Justice Committee have actually worked on this bill if that was provided in good time to members.But look this is a sensible bill. Frankly as I said at the start of my contribution it is overdue but good things take time as they always say and we are going to move through this I think and get the law of contempt into a much more accessible and much more principle-based form. I look forward to its passage through the House.