Andersen GinnyGINNY ANDERSEN (Labour—Hutt South): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. This is a bill that will enhance public confidence in our judicial system by making some very important changes relating to the responsibility to determine the pay of some of our statutory and judicial officers. It's essentially about the separation of powers.This is particularly important as these officers deal with cases that everyday New Zealanders are greatly affected by. They make decisions about the conditions of living disputes between individuals and also grievances against parties or even a business. So it's very important and does affect the daily lives of people in New Zealand.As a brief background on the bill I'd like to touch on what the Remuneration Authority actually does. It's independent from Government and therefore it's very important that the remuneration of judicial officers and statutory officers with those judicial responsibilities that they have are seen to have and to be independent from Government. That's really at the heart of what this bill is changing.The bill aligns with recommendations that were made by an independent review conducted by Mr Martin Jenkins back in 2018. The really important part of this review was that it concluded that the principal difference between the Remuneration Authority and the Cabinet fees framework was the degree of independence from the Government of remuneration decisions. So it's important to have that distance in place. The review noted that community magistrates disputes tribunal referees environment commissioners and deputy environment commissioners are judicial decision-makers and their pay should be determined independently of the Government by the Remuneration Authority.It also looked at the Human Rights Review Tribunal's jurisdiction and thought that it was comparable to that of a judge because the tribunal has the power to declare legislation to be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act. So this bill transfers the responsibility for determining the pay of the legally qualified members of the Human Rights Review Tribunal the chairperson and also the deputy chairpersons to the authority.Finally I would say that the Government has also concluded that the remuneration of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal and the Tenancy Tribunal also needs to be determined independently of Government by the Remuneration Authority.So consequently what this bill does is it amends the Remuneration Authority Act 1977 and six other Acts to transfer that responsibility for determining the pay for following judicial officers from that Cabinet fees framework to the Remuneration Authority. Those are: the disputes tribunal referees the community magistrates for the District Court the chairperson and the deputy chairpersons of the Human Rights Review Tribunal the deputy chairpersons and the members of the Immigration and Protection Tribunal the environment commissioners and deputy environment commissioners and the Tenancy Tribunal adjudicators.To quickly summarise what happened at select committee although this is riveting stuff and I'm particularly fascinated with the separation of powers evidently not so because we only received four submissions at committee and two of those were ruled out of scope because they didn't directly relate to the bill. But the two submissions that we did receive were in support of the bill which is good news. Subsequently the bill was reported back unanimously without any changes and the ministry did not recommend any subsequent changes to the departmental report.So in conclusion this is a good bill. It helps the Government become I think more transparent; it's clear when decisions are being made and separating out those things from Government where they need to be done. I'm pleased to see this bill progress and I commend it to the House.