Curran Clare: Judicature Modernisation Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Judicature Modernisation Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 18 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1746. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): This is my first speech in the House as the associate justice spokesperson for the Labour Party. In that light I would like to first make reference to my father James Bertrand Kinney Curran otherwise known as JBK or Kinney who began his career in 1945 in Invercargill where he joined the courts division of the Department of Justice as an office boy. His first key appointment was in Lower Hutt as a deputy court registrar and then in Christchurch as the Official Assignee in the 1970s. He ended up in Dunedin as the High Court registrar and ended his career back in Wellington as a courts manager.I suppose the point of this is that I grew up in the courts system and in fact I used to spend time down at the courts waiting for the jury to come out in murder trials when he was the—Kris Faafoi: That’s healthy.CLARE CURRAN: Ha ha! It was an interesting childhood. One of the things though that he did do—and this is the relevance—is that he co-edited the fourth edition of Dobbie’s Probate and Administration Practice which is a weighty tome and still resides on the shelves of most practising solicitors. In that vein in that spirit I hope that I can do him justice tonight.The first point I would like to make on this bill—and I will not reiterate what everyone has said about its size and its weight—is that I want to respond to something that was said by the other side of the House during this debate. It was basically a brush-off around the importance of purpose clauses in legislation. On this side of the House Labour believes that purpose clauses are a very important part in legislation in writing legislation because—and it is pretty blindingly obvious why—they give you a very clear idea of what flows from that legislation.Labour put forward two main concerns about this legislation in our minority report. The first concern is the omission from the purpose clause of any reference to a commitment to parliamentary sovereignty the rule of law judicial independence and the Treaty of Waitangi. Unfortunately this Government has been messing around with purpose clauses in a number of pieces of legislation. We have got a big argument coming around the purpose of the Resource Management Act. We have had changes to the purpose clauses of telecommunications Acts. There is probably a whole list of them that I could name. But the point is that when you remove things or when you change the purpose clauses then the interpretation of the legislation when an issue comes to court is very important. We say that those purpose clauses are critically important and should be noted.Our approach to legislation generally is values-based. We are pragmatic but we are also very thoughtful. We stand for an independent and fair judicial system as being the cornerstone of an important part of our society. Therefore the purpose in legislation even if it is relatively uncontroversial legislation—it is rather large legislation but relatively uncontroversial—is extremely important. So I do want reiterate that point.Another point is that access to justice is critically important. My colleague Phil Goff referenced the issues around access to justice for people on low wages on the minimum wage and how critical it is that we ensure that. If you are on the minimum wage or even a bit above the minimum wage accessing justice in this day and age is actually quite difficult. We must remain as a Parliament committed across the board to removing the obstacles to justice for people in the community.The other part of this legislation that I want to touch on—it is blindingly obviously important—is around the role of modernisation. I actually curiously want to agree with Judith Collins who made some comments when the legislation was first being introduced to Parliament about the importance of changes to ensure that all written judgments are published online unless there is a good reason not to. Again I think that in this day and age we have to ensure—and this is in regards to access to justice; it is also an access to information issue—that the outcomes of complex issues that are going through our courts are made available to the public at large. Access to the internet and having those judgments published on the internet are very important in order for people to access them; it can be quite difficult otherwise.This legislation places a requirement on the judiciary to publish information on the numbers of outstanding judgments beyond a reasonable time and it also lays out how people can get access. I know myself when I have been trying to access judgments that are of interest to me and my portfolios that sometimes it is not always that easy to get them immediately and this can actually have an impact on how there can be a response. It can have an immediate impact on the public discourse and the dynamics that go on around the public discourse. So I think this is a very important part of the modernisation of any of our procedures in the public arena—that we are making judgments we are making decisions we are putting policy and we are putting all of this information into the public arena and we are doing that in the online environment. We are not just doing it in the online environment; we are making it very obvious about where we are doing it in the online environment.Judith Collins also said that New Zealanders are paying for this justice; they should also be able to access it. The higher courts already publish decisions of interest but the biggest gap is in the District Courts where the bulk of cases are heard. We must work with the judiciary to close this gap and this new bill is a key part of that dialogue. This is an important part of the purpose of this legislation.Actually looking at the size of this bill you would not think that it was that modern. It could maybe have been written in plain English and maybe made a little bit shorter. I hate to think that if anyone would actually need to get hold of a copy of it they would try to print it off from an online environment at home in order to try to come to grips with it. I certainly advise that nobody should attempt to do that.I guess the main other point—and also to reiterate what Phil Goff said around the second concern that Labour has—is around the age of retirement of judges. I am hoping that we are going to have a further discussion about that in the Committee stage. Under the existing Human Rights Act discrimination on the grounds of age is declared to be unlawful and employers may not contract for or otherwise insist on a fixed age of retirement. I think this is an important issue that we should debate.The independence of the judiciary—the importance of not having too much influence on the judiciary—is a critical part of the division of powers within our society. I think this is one issue that we do need to debate during the Committee of the whole House stage.