Ardern JacindaJACINDA ARDERN (Labour): I rise to take a short call just to speak to some of my amendments that I have not had an opportunity to speak to. Before I do that I do want to refer to a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that there was some discussion over during the last period we were able to debate the Judicature Modernisation Bill and that was SOP 62 which on the face of it seems rather simple. It simply states that the amendment would reinsert subclause (2) of clause 3. I say reinsert" because although it was never in the Judicature Modernisation Bill it was in the Supreme Court Act 2003 which is being modified by this omnibus bill and it reinserts what is called the "rule of law" clause. It is an incredibly important constitutional provision and I just wanted to briefly acknowledge that Minister Adams has indicated her support for that SOP and I am certainly appreciative of that. The Minister though while in the chair spoke to another amendment that I want to quickly touch on. Originally in the bill there was a requirement in clauses 167 401 and 544 that would require online publishing of all filed or written judgments. When you listen to the Minister speak about that amendment that we have in my name around the publishing of online judgments you would have thought that we were introducing the idea. We were not. It was in the original bill that went to the Justice and Electoral Committee. It was debated discussed and endorsed. It has since then come back to the House and very recently the decision was made that those clauses would be removed. So it was not a new idea. It was not proposed by the Opposition; it came from the Government. I have some sympathy with the rationale that has been presented. Actually the Minister seemed to question the usefulness of this provision altogether. What was proposed to us at the time when we questioned why it was being removed was simply that the capacity was not available in the court system to put it in place for now and we had some sympathy for that. We know our court system is under strain. So our suggestion via an amendment to the Minister's SOP 197 which simply deletes a clause altogether was to put a time period on it. Let us give it at least a year to make sure we have the capacity to make sure judgments are transcribed and available online. The original rationale for this was that it was an access to justice issue and I do not think that has changed. I have to say that I have had individuals come and see me in my office—two cases in fact—where actually all they have sought is access to a judgment that they were involved in that they had not been able to access in a transparent way. So I do think that there is a call for this for those issues that are not seen as major before our courts and might simply be of a low level within our district courts. Although we have sympathy for the argument that capacity issues exist we think that our amendment was a neat concise way to get around those issues. One of the other amendments that I want to speak to briefly is in the Minister's SOP 197 which amends the use of audiovisual links (AVL). In the original bill there was a presumption that AVL would be used basically in all non-substantive proceedings. I want to thank the Minister for putting in place an SOP that actually removes that presumption when it comes to sentencing. I think having watched AVL in action—you can watch an offender sit in a court process and be completely disengaged from everything. It is a very distant way to deal with someone who is directly affected by what is happening in the courtroom. The idea that sentencing would happen under those circumstances does not sit well with me. So I support what the Minister has said to add a little bit more flexibility there for the judiciary in the way that is managed. Finally in the last 30 seconds that I have remaining we have SOP 61 which removes the presumption that as you hit a certain age as a member of the judiciary then you are immediately required to leave the bench. If there is an issue with performance let us deal with an issue of performance. That is a separate issue to age. That is a separate issue to age and it seems completely arbitrary to us to pick an age when actually performance issues can happen at any point in someone's career. We think that that should be dealt with in another way which is why we have an SOP to remove what we think ultimately is just a discriminatory provision."