Prebble Richard: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Prebble Richard: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:627;Page:21980] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 I was not going to take a call on this vote but I listened to Mr Fairbrother who is a lawyer. I too am a lawyer and I can see that Mr Fairbrother is actually incredulous about what has occurred so let me spell it out. 
 Mr Fairbrother is absolutely right. Judges in New Zealand should not take instruction from Ministers. We have a separation. We have the executive we have a legislative branch and we have the courts. What happened in this case is that a member of Parliament quite properly I tell Mr Fairbrother applied for a court record of a case. Now that record does belong to the judge. But the tradition in this country is that we have open justice so judges make court files available. They do not turn a request down because the person who asked for it is as Mr Fairbrother said a troublemaker. Because that would mean that the media for example should not be able to get it. 
To give proof of this Mr Franks has just handed me a paper which is the acknowledgment of the application made quite properly by Mr Franks. What happened in this case was that it was an embarrassing one for the judiciary. It was a particular case where a person took action to protect property and as a result ended up being arrested. The villain who was stealing the property was let off by the police. 
I can see that the judge might have been embarrassed about that becoming public but that was not a reason not to make it public. But what happened in this case was that the registrar no doubt acting on instructions from the judge wrote to the Minister for Courts and asked: “Can I release a file to a member of Parliament?”. That was a direction. Now the question we are asking is what has the Attorney-General done about it? What the Attorney-General Mr Cullen should have done—and he is not a lawyer and perhaps he does not know this—was say to Mr Barker who is also not a lawyer “This letter is quite improper.” He should have asked Mr Barker whether the Minister for Courts was now directing how justice in New Zealand was being run. Because justice in New Zealand should not only be done but it should be seen to be done. 
Instead what we had was a junior backbencher getting up and saying: “These allegations are so outrageous they couldn’t have happened.” Well actually I tell Mr Fairbrother—I realise he was thrown into this matter—if he comes across here he will see documentation that shows that what Mr Franks has said is absolutely correct. He asked for the file—and the registrar of the court instead of making it available wrote to a Labour Minister for Courts and asked: “Can I hand over a file to a member of Parliament?”. That is constitutionally an outrage. 
What is even more outrageous is what happened when we raised this matter in Parliament. Mr Fairbrother gets up and in effect defends the indefensible. Where is the Attorney-General? What is the point of an Attorney-General if he is not prepared to uphold the constitution? I think it is a sign that when one makes the Minister of Finance who is totally overloaded—he cannot even write a decent Budget—the Attorney-General one sees the quality of law in New Zealand the fundamental obligation of the Government being undermined. 
I cannot imagine or cannot think of a former Attorney-General who would not have taken the first opportunity to get up in the House and say that this was constitutionally improper apologise to Mr Franks apologise to this Parliament and then apologise to the people of New Zealand that we now have Mugabe-type justice being done in secret and when the Opposition asks questions they then get directions from a Minister. I say to Mr Fairbrother: “Shame on you for defending such outrageous behaviour!”