Clendon David: Appointments — Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Deputy Judicial Conduct CommissionerText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeClendon David: Appointments — Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner[Sitting date: 02 July 2015. Volume:706;Page:5074. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID CLENDON (Green):I am pleased to speak on behalf of the Greens in supporting the Attorney-General’s recommendation for the appointment of Mr Ritchie as Judicial Conduct Commissioner and Ms Snook as Deputy Judicial Conduct Commissioner. Clearly Mr Ritchie is very well qualified for the role having been deputy commissioner; having served as has been noted for over 20 years as chief executive officer of the Law Society; having had a long legal career in his own right; and having been a member the Parole Board. He would seem eminently suited for what is undoubtedly a very demanding task. Equally Kathryn Snook has nearly two decades practising law in both the public and private sectors. She has served in the Office of Treaty Settlements and the Ministry of Justice and has been a member of the Parole Board so again she is eminently suited to the task.The Office of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner has been with us for about 10 years. The purpose of the commissioner is to “enhance public confidence in and protect the impartiality and integrity of the judicial system.” It is critical. It is clearly very important that we maintain such integrity. However as Mr Parker noted in his contribution the commissioner cannot and indeed must not challenge the legality or correctness of any judge’s decision in relation to any legal proceeding.All too often critique of our judges our judiciary is with regard to sentencing decisions and very often they are claimed to be at one end of a spectrum—either excessively lenient in their sentencing their judgments or excessively harsh. Sometimes these accusations are extremely aggressive. They roll over into accusations of incompetence unsuitability for office—those sorts of things. The judges have very little available to them to remedy that. I would suggest that we in Parliament do have access to a mechanism in the form of the Sentencing Council.In 2007 this House passed legislation enabling the creation of the Sentencing Council the purpose of which would be among other things to produce guidelines around sentencing and parole to promote consistency in sentencing practice between different courts and judges to ensure transparency in sentencing policy and to promote consistency and transparency in parole. Sadly this legislation has sat on the statute book for some 8 years without being implemented. We think it is unhelpful that we do not exercise or put into action that mechanism which could deflect take away some of the critique—often unfounded critique—of the judiciary.With those few comments I would simply reiterate that we are confident about the Minister’s nominees for the role and his recommendations that those people will fulfil the functions and duties of their office. We would also add that the establishment of the Sentencing Council would be a useful ancillary step towards maintaining and enhancing public confidence in the judiciary and the justice system. Thank you.