Barker Rick: Third Readings — 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Barker Rick: Third Readings — 
[Sitting date: 04 October 2011. Volume:676;Page:21652. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the third reading of the legislation arising from the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill in the name of the Hon Simon Power and to note to the House that the list of legislation arising from this one bill covers the length of a whole page of the Order Paper. That is one indication of the complexity of this legislation. The second thing is that some of the Acts being amended are from as long ago as 1947. These are old statutes and this legislation is all-encompassing to help improve the administration of justice. 
I am happy to claim some responsibility for this legislation. As a former Minister for Courts I could see that the lines of people going through the court system were getting longer and longer. Despite the fact that we were appointing more judges and building more courts the lines were not diminishing at all. The reason for this was that our criminal justice procedure the administration of justice was out of date. It was unnecessarily complicated and difficult. What should happen is that a person should be charged they should appear before the court the day after or 2 days after they have been charged and they should know what the charges are. The only other time they should go back to court is when the trial begins. That was not the case. There were all sorts of hearings sub-hearings call-overs and other procedures that had to be undertaken. It was a paper-based system that was unnecessarily complex and unnecessarily bureaucratic. 
If we are to improve the administration of justice the statutes that underpin the administration of justice need to be updated. It is a substantial task and anybody who cares to look down the list of bills that are being amended will see that it is a very complex task. It had been started before on a number of occasions the Law Commission had written reports on it and when I came across it when I was Minister for Courts it had simply fallen into abeyance because it was too difficult. But with the pressure on our courts system I gave it a nudge and I am very pleased to see that the Hon Simon Power has completed the work. 
Yes people have made comments about the need for cross-party support in this and I agree with them but this Parliament needs to get its head around the fact that it cannot afford to allow statutes to sit for 60 years virtually unamended and then expect that the systems that are administered by 60-year-old legislation will keep pace with the changes in expectations within our society. This Parliament will have to be seized with the notion that it has a responsibility to constantly update the administration of justice and the legislation that underpins it even if it is difficult complex and hard. If we continue to allow the administration of justice to languish unattended and unamended for a long time it will fall into disrepute in the public’s mind as the system of justice did because of the way this Parliament had ignored its responsibilities. 
There are many controversial things in this legislation that others have canvassed and I do not intend to do that but I want to leave on the record a simple point that it is Parliament’s responsibility to update the administration of justice. Yes it is legislation that is initiated by the executive but select committees can do their work in this area and the Justice and Electoral Committee and the Law and Order Committee can put pressure on administrations now and in the future to have these pieces of legislation updated. It is as much Parliament’s responsibility as it is the executive’s. It is a role that should include the judges the judiciary and people who are expert in the administration of justice such as court registrars people who are at the Bar and lawyers who use it. It should include all groups including parliamentarians so that we get a general consensus on what needs to be done to improve the administration of justice because if justice is not administered properly fairly and efficiently it will fall into disrepute and the decisions that are therefore administered from that will be in disrepute as well. This is Parliament’s responsibility and I am pleased to see that it has taken it seriously on this occasion. I commend this legislation to the House.