Goff Phil: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goff Phil: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 22 May 2012. Volume:680;Page:2295. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 This is a relatively straightforward and simple bill so limited in its real impact I guess that no regulatory impact analysis has been done because it has only a minor impact. I think the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill however does some useful things and on that basis is worthy of support.  
The bill basically does three things. Firstly it prevents persons who have served a home detention sentence of at least 3 months from qualifying for jury service for 5 years. It is a limited exclusion of somebody who has broken the law to an extent that they have received more than a minimum sentence of home detention. Secondly it empowers registrars to excuse permanently from jury service people who have chronic ill health or a permanent disability or who are 65 years and over. I want to come back to that point. This is not an exclusion of people on the basis of their age. People over the age of 65 have an important contribution to make. They make it competently. We would be in some trouble if in fact we excluded in an ageing population those over the age of 65 from being on a jury. Thirdly it aims to help maintain the privacy the safety and the security of jurors by withholding their addresses from the accused person.  
Part 1 of the bill deals with the question of jury service. It says that anyone who has committed an offence and who has served a sentence of more than 3 months on home detention will be prevented from serving on a jury for a 5-year period. There is a permanent exclusion I understand if you have actually served a jail sentence. The rationale is I guess reasonably simple: if you commit a crime that is serious enough to earn you home detention then you are not really in a position to stand judgment over another person’s guilt or innocence for a period of time. I do not think that is a big deal.  
The bill also allows people to seek exclusion from jury service on the basis of their disability or their ill health or if they are over the age of 65. The important point here is that those who seek such an exclusion are excluded permanently from service. I said before that the important point is that this does not introduce an age limit for jury service. It is worth considering some of the submissions however that were made to the select committee because a number of groups felt that by introducing a permanent exclusion for those over the age of 65 who sought it we would be stereotyping and we would be reflecting on the ability of those people to stand in judgment of others by being part of a jury. I basically disagree with their arguments but I feel obliged to present the arguments that they made to the select committee.  
The Human Rights Commission for example said it “considers that the proposed amendment has the effect of perpetuating stereotypical ideas about older people’s ability to contribute constructively to society and given changing demographic profiles has the possibility of impacting on the right to trial by one’s peers.” That is the Human Rights Commission. The National Council of Women also said “there are some reservations in regard to the proposed change to the age limit for being excused from jury service permanently.” The New Zealand Law Society did not take a position on the broad policy of the changes proposed in the bill. It simply emphasised and I agree that the fundamental principle that must underlie all criminal justice legislation is that the right to a fair trial is an absolute right. I think it would be a different situation if the decision to exclude was not one that was sought by the individual wanting exclusion and was not specific to the individuals who request it. I think on that basis the permanent exclusion provision is acceptable. 
 I want to now come to Part 2 of the bill which provides protection of particulars of jury list information in order to maintain the privacy safety and security of jurors. It is appropriate that we should protect the privacy of people who serve their community in that way. It would be thoroughly unacceptable to have those who serve on a jury subsequently followed up by the accused by the media or by anybody else and grilled about why they made the decision they made. That would be in contradiction to the basic right of a person who does their duty for their community serves on the jury to maintain the confidentiality of their position and their identity. A party to court proceedings will be able to inspect the particulars of the jurors such as their address only through a barrister or a solicitor. That lawyer in turn cannot disclose to his or her client the contents of the protected particulars. There is a reason why this clause has been introduced and that was a case back in 2010 when an individual who was representing himself as a defendant corresponded with people using his access to the names and addresses of those on the jury panel. As I said before that simply is unacceptable behaviour and we need to protect against it. The bill also for that matter requires that constables who are parties to proceedings should not be able to view those protected particulars.  
Although this is the right thing to do I do not think we can be naive about what the impact might be. It is not a foolproof way of stopping any party to the proceedings being able to track down the addresses of the jurors through other means. It might be by looking up the telephone book; it might be by looking at the electoral roll. The protection that we provide is something that I do not object to—it is worthwhile—but it does not provide a full level of protection to the jurors in that way. It just makes it slightly less easy for somebody determined to find out where the jurors live and how to contact them because they will not be given that information directly. It would help if you were a juror by the name of Smith rather than Tisch Mr Assistant Speaker. It might be rather easier to track you down than somebody with a name that is rather more common.  
In conclusion this is a bill neither with earth-shattering consequences nor one that is particularly controversial. The impact of the changes it makes are relatively minor but I believe they are worthy of support and we will be supporting the second reading of this bill.