Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) (remote): Thank you Mr Speaker and it's very good to see you in the Chair. I stand—well I come in here from remote in Auckland to support this bill the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. Nobody would deny the importance of the issues covered by this bill which is to say to try and reduce the amount of interruption to our justice system during the COVID crisis that unfortunately we continue to face coming up to two years since we first encountered it. This legislation does deal with issues through the courts and tribunals in terms of creating a safe and effective operation of the courts to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. It knocks out a couple of legislative barriers to having the courts respond in a way that enables safety but also enables the practice of the courts to continue. So look we're not going to oppose it but we do feel obliged to point out some pretty obvious things the first of which is that this is arriving far too late in the piece for New Zealanders. Now we've heard the Chief Justice in her first annual report referring to real issues in terms of access to justice in this country. We hear of people waiting sometimes two years or longer for their cases to come before the court. That is frankly a dysfunctional justice system in my view. If we have such long delays to justice and this COVID situation has made it worse it was entirely predictable and what we see here with this legislation is that finally in the final sort of Hurrah!" we have a piece of legislation that might come into effect in mid-April at a time when I think most New Zealanders will be hoping and expecting that the vast majority of the COVID restrictions will have been removed. So with blazing trumpets and people waving palm ferns this legislation will arrive just at the moment that everybody's wandered off and got back to their normal lives. Meantime for the past few months we have continued to work through real restrictions and complications in the court system that this legislation if it had been introduced earlier may have helped. Now people might say "Oh that's a bit harsh on the Government. They've been trying to do their best." but I think that any rational review of 2021 would demonstrate that that was the year of missed opportunities. In 2020 New Zealand followed a strategy of buying time for COVID-19 which was to say we would spend an enormous amount of money to secure New Zealand to close the boundaries and to subsidise businesses that were affected by that in preparation for vaccinations and for improving the health system so that we could cope with a COVID outbreak. Then 2021 came along. In the first half of 2021 we waited for everybody else in the world to get vaccinated before we started. The Prime Minister said that other people needed it more than us so that delay was directly attributable to the more than 100-day lockdown in Auckland and the severity of it. Second no progress was made on any more ICUs so we found ourselves this summer with the outbreak of Omicron with the same issues that we had back in 2020 in the sense of a worry that the health system would be overwhelmed and the need to go back into highly highly restricted circumstances notwithstanding the fact that New Zealanders in their millions responded very quickly when they did finally have the opportunity to get vaccinated. So now we are very highly vaccinated: well over 90 percent. We have a higher number of boosters. The health system notwithstanding the limited progress on ICU is able to cope so far and yet we continue to be in what is becoming almost a virtual lockdown with so many families now in isolation. My guess is that public demand for the steady reduction of the restrictions around COVID over the next few weeks will dramatically change the rules. So having this legislation like I say emerging mid-April—hopefully—will be too late from a country point of view but it really does reflect very badly on the Government that they didn't deal with this much earlier in the piece. I would also state that this legislation obviously can't deal with the broader issues around access to justice. If I step back and look at the justice sector more broadly a rational person looking at it would say "Well what are the big issues?" The big issues are a rise in violent crime in this country a 50 percent increase in gang membership and that link to rising crime and a sense of lawlessness in parts of our country. Then secondly I think a big issue is this whole area of the slowness and cost of getting access to justice not just in the criminal courts but also in the civil courts. I do think any Government worth its salt would be focused on those issues. Sadly when we look at the legislative focus of this Government in the justice area that is not where they've put their attention generally and they haven't really dealt with these issues. They make big announcements. Budget 2020 announced a huge amount of money to be spent on the courts. Very little has actually been spent of that fund in the last two years. A lot of talk; not much actual delivery. I understand—I've been told—that only four out of 17 Auckland courts are able to do audiovisual work and are wired up for it. I mean that is an astonishing figure. They've been very slow to get the systems into place that we need to be able to respond. Then we've heard Government speakers referring to the fact that "Oh in Australia they've done this. In Canada they've done that. In Sweden they've done that." All these other countries have done these things weeks months ago and yet we have twiddled our thumbs and thought about it for some time. I do think there frankly are issues in the criminal space about the threshold for jury trials and I think long term we need to think about these things in terms of dealing with the massive delays that we face. So look those are broader issues that I hope that the Government will be looking at over the next few months. This legislation deals with specifics around COVID. It's very much part of the Government's overall response to COVID which is swinging in months too late with some changes that yes make sense but actually most of the country is very rapidly moving on. I do want to finish by paying tribute to the many New Zealanders who work in the court system particularly the judges and—well all the people from security to the clerks and the many people who have been trying to do their best the lawyers defending and prosecuting. I'm not going to thank the criminals but I will acknowledge particularly the victims of crime who have had to struggle with the effects of the delays. Can I just pay tribute to our court workers and the judicial system in the broader sense and encourage them that we understand the difficulties that you face. We do want to do in Parliament everything that we can to enable you to do your job productively and effectively. When you think about justice yes the quality of the decision or the accuracy of decision is critical but equally timeliness and costs are very important as well because it's all very well if you arrive at the perfect judicial decision but if it takes 10 years and is unaffordable for many New Zealanders to access then there is no access to justice. So speed and costliness are important issues and we all need to be absolutely focused on them.Finally I had another point which I have forgotten what it was so I'll leave that for the time being. I'd just say that—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Ian McKelvie): The member's time has expired."