Dalziel Lianne: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 31 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4126. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 The Minister of Justice did not really respond to the question that I raised because we have had a lecture from the chair of the Law and Order Committee about the particular priority that the Government is putting on this particular piece of legislation the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill. 
What I had not appreciated and I have kind of been googling away here which is an extremely useful facility on one’s iPhone and what I have identified what I have found is the actual Cabinet paper that allowed for this particular provision to be brought to the House in the first place. What I discovered was that this particular issue that we have had so much focus on now related to an incident that occurred I believe in 2010 if I am reading this correctly. As a result the Government actually immediately moved into action. It took immediate action and it decided that what it would do is it would make provision for restricting access to jurors’ addresses which is the topic for the debate but which was actually approved to be legislated for in 2010. In 2011 the Government actually reviewed its position because what it had discovered was that it could not put this amendment into the legislation that it wanted it put it into because that particular legislation did not allow for this particular amendment to be included. 
As I understand it—and perhaps the Minister could actually deal with this matter because I think it is worthwhile having it on the record—it originally states: “The amendments to restrict access to jurors’ addresses which aim to further protect jurors’ privacy safety and security were to be included in a Supplementary Order Paper to the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. However the Office of the Clerk of the House advised the amendments were ‘foreign to the objects’ of that Bill.” So “foreign to the objects” of that bill which is unusual language— 
Charles Chauvel 
: The office thinks them out of scope. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yes it was out of scope. So they were not able to include it as a Supplementary Order Paper to the Courts and Criminal Matters Bill. Therefore the Minister of the day back in 2011 before the election decided the most appropriate course of action was to introduce stand-alone juries amendment legislation which is the one we have before us now that would contain a small package of non-contentious amendments. But of course that is when it made the decision to include the elements that we have dealt with under the Part 1 debate. The Part 2 debate though relates to this question of the Juries Act amendment and basically says that this was a matter that had been brought to its attention the year before. I just wonder why the reference has been made to how urgent it is to have this matter addressed. 
I will just refer to the particular decision that was made in the Cabinet paper. Basically it identified that there was an incident where a self-represented accused corresponded with persons whose names and addresses were on the panel for his trial which raised concern about the safety of jurors and it was decided to amend the Act to restrict access to jurors’ address details. It was agreed that all address information should be deleted from the jury panel. Access to the address information would be available to the prosecution and to the counsel for the accused which I think my colleague has dealt with in order to assist with jury challenges. Where an accused is self-represented the registrar would be empowered to appoint a lawyer to represent the accused during the jury formation process and that lawyer would be entitled to the jurors’ address information. It would be prohibited for those who are entitled to access the address information to show it to the accused or any other unauthorised person. 
I think the point we have made is that we accept that that is an appropriate step for the legislation to take. We support it but to have a member of the Government stand in this House and say that this matter is an urgent matter and anyone who wants to debate it is actually standing in the way of the urgency that it has to be given has to accept that these words were written last year and that the case that they were referring to was the result of a decision made the previous year to that.