Kedgley Sue: Supreme Court Bill — In Committee 
Kedgley Sue: Supreme Court Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9056] 
SUE KEDGLEY (Green) 
: 
 I would like to make a couple of brief points. The first is that for 99 percent of New Zealanders justice under the Privy Council is completely out of their reach. In fact the Privy Council is of no relevance to 99 percent of New Zealanders for the simple reason that they cannot afford to fly themselves to England to take their appeals to the Privy Council. In certain exceptional circumstances people can get legal aid but for the bulk of them it is simply out of their reach. People have to hire their counsel fly them business class or first class to England and put them up in an English hotel. These are huge costs that most New Zealanders are not even able to contemplate. If people lose an appeal in the Court of Appeal and have costs awarded against them those costs will probably be about $7500; but if people lose their appeal in the Privy Council the costs awarded against them could be well over $100000. 
I happen to know some small law firms in New Zealand and one in particular that dearly wished to take a case to the Privy Council. When that firm added up the costs of lawyers’ air travel hiring counsel in England and so forth it found it was quite simply beyond its reach. I am talking about a small law firm in New Zealand. Many have argued that all lawyers are in favour of the Privy Council. Virtually all the lawyers I know are passionately seeking an end to the Privy Council because they believe as I do that it is a system of justice that does not provide small law firms in New Zealand let alone average New Zealanders with access. It provides justice for those wealthy corporates that can afford the costs of flying people across to the other side of the world to put their case and that is an infinitesimal number of New Zealanders. 
The denial of access that people are talking about is actually the denial of access to all but a tiny proportion comprised largely of wealthy corporates and of course in a few cases to people on legal aid who can afford to trek to the other side of the Earth to hire legal counsel to put people up in London hotels and so forth. 
The other thing I cannot quite understand is why there should be such discrepancies in terms of access to the Privy Council. Why should people be able to appeal to the Privy Council on civil cases but not on employment cases? Why can people not appeal on environmental court cases? Why is there one set of rules for certain cases of law and not for others? Why should someone who is involved in an Environment Court case not be able to access a final court of appeal? Why should we not have one that can be accessed by whatever class of law it is whether environmental criminal employment and so forth? I cannot understand why we should have a system that seems to be quite discriminatory—that allows certain classes of law to go to the Privy Council and denies access to others. That does not seem to be fair and equitable. Mostly I would just like to say that under the present system most New Zealanders are denied access to this Privy Council because of costs. I know of cases where law firms are not able to access that court because of the costs.