Mapp Wayne: New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Mapp Wayne: New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20624] 
Dr WAYNE MAPP (National—North Shore) 
: 
 As my colleague Dr Worth indicated National is supporting this bill although we do so with significant reservations. Some of those have been raised by Mr Franks and indeed by Mr Worth himself. It is noteworthy that we are at the dog-end of the 47th Parliament. I guess we can tell that we are at the dog-end when the best the Government can do is present to Parliament bills of this nature for consideration. Is this the harbinger of its sense of an agenda for the nation? Does this indicate that it has no ideas at all anymore? If this is the quality and nature of the bills the Government is presenting then one would have to say—paraphrasing I think Sir Winston Churchill—that it is time it went. 
In terms of this bill it is important to think about what the bill is not as opposed to what it is. It does not authorise the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting to make the reports. Nowhere does the bill mandate or require the council to make the reports of the Supreme Court. The reason is quite simple—it does not need the authority of Parliament to produce reports. It is a kind of inverse approach if one likes. The bill stops others from producing reports without the permission of the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting. But it then goes on to state that in a whole series of circumstances other entities can make reports so long as it is with permission. 
We have to ask ourselves therefore why this bill is necessary. Why is this Parliament spending up to 2 hours on a first reading debate to say that people cannot report decisions of the Supreme Court? Why on earth would we want to stop them? Why does this Parliament have even the remotest concern about stopping people from reporting the decisions of the Supreme Court unless authorised by the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting? 
Even more extraordinarily section 12(6) inserted by clause 3 states: “the Chief Justice may after consultation with the New Zealand Law Society authorise any person … to publish … decisions of the Supreme Court.” Does that mean that newspapers will require the Chief Justice’s permission to publish decisions of the Supreme Court? When we think about it that cannot possibly be true—at least I certainly hope it is not. Journalists can go along to the court hear a decision and report it. I would have thought that that was known as free speech. I would have thought that any rational Government in New Zealand—and at least for this purpose I include the current Government—would think that was axiomatic. 
I conclude on the point that this legislation is unnecessary. That is why National supports it with reservations. The most substantial comment I would like to make on this is that the Government had a choice today. It could have put forward this New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill or it could have used this valuable House time to continue to advance the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. I suggest that the Law Society would have rather more interest in that bill but the Government chose not to use Parliament’s time to debate it. The Government itself is saying that Parliament has a limited amount of time—not enough time to pass the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill. That is what it is saying. It has said that to the nation at large and to the Law Society. Yet it has put this bill into the face of the Law Society. Now it is saying to the Law Society that there is no time for the Committee stage of the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill—that it could not possibly be done in the time that Parliament has. I do not think that is true. 
Dr Richard Worth 
: It’s not true. 
Dr WAYNE MAPP 
: It is not true. Instead the Government is saying to the Law Society that in contrast it does have time to spend hours and hours of House time dealing with the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Bill—a bill that as I have indicated actually is unnecessary. The council does not need legislative authority to publish the Supreme Court reports anyway. The bill is merely designed to stop others from doing so without permission—as if that were an important thing to do in any event. 
I say to the Government that it has a warped sense of priorities. It is not willing to deal with issues of importance to the Law Society. That is cavalier treatment in fact. It will not allow this House to deal with the Lawyers and Conveyancers Bill—it is denying the House time to debate the Committee stage. My colleague Dr Worth has made it abundantly clear that he is perfectly happy to have a reasoned and reasonable debate on that but the Government is simply saying no. It is wasting the time of Parliament which is valuable by having it deal with legislation that is like this bill in a sense unnecessary. 
Well when a Government has reached the stage in the parliamentary year that the best it can do is put forward before the House a bill of this nature for its first reading then I say to the Government: “Go you’ve used up your time. You’ve used up the nation’s time. Let’s have an election and get rid of you.”