Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you Mr Chairman. I have a couple of questions for the Minister for COVID-19 Response the Hon Chris Hipkins just to help the House. In respect of the date of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet that was criticised by Opposition members yesterday is the Minister aware that New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vets have to be changed every time the version of the bill changes and that accordingly the date on the final New Zealand Bill of Right Act vet reflects the date of the final version of the bill rather than earlier versions of the bill—not that the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet was as has been asserted by others just sort of whipped off at the last minute?The second issue I would like a comment from the Minister on is in respect of the issue of access to the courts. Now an issue has been raised quite properly by the Opposition about whether we're contemplating using vaccine rules imposed by central government in respect of access to the courts. This is a very very important issue because it's very important that we both maintain public confidence in the court system including the ability of the courts to scrutinise the actions of the executive independent from accusations that they're somehow in league with the executive in respect of the issues of access to the courts and vaccines.The importance of this goes to the integrity of the justice system and the courts being able to hold the executive to account. Members will be aware that in the COVID response Act more generally we have a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act provision there that limits the power of the executive to make COVID orders and it is the courts that are the body to whom citizens who are dissatisfied with executive decisions as to whether they go too far in respect of New Zealand Bill of Rights Act issues—it is the courts to whom they go to resolve those issues—Simeon Brown: What about juries?Hon DAVID PARKER: —and there's been quite a bit of jurisprudence already on some of those issues.Now the issue of access to the courts of course goes further than that because we have to ensure that people can see that justice is done. People have to be able to have access to the courts whether they're vaccinated or not as an accused and there are different and quite complex issues as to who has the responsibility for in the face of those imperatives keeping other people in the court system safe.What do we do with jury trials? Members will be aware that jury trials have been suspended in Auckland for some time and we're way behind in our jury trials as a consequence. If you have an empanelled jury that is a mix of vaccinated and unvaccinated people sitting next to each other for long periods of time what does that do to the ability to get vaccinated jurors to do their work? On the other hand what do we do in respect of unvaccinated jurors? Do we do this at the time juries are empanelled? How do we control access—Chris Bishop: Well what's the answer?Hon DAVID PARKER: Well the answer to these issues is that we're working these issues through with the judiciary in a very careful way because we don't want there to be an implication that it is the executive that is making these decisions.There are some complications where the inherent jurisdiction of the court to control the conduct of processes in their own courts may have been inadvertently constrained by other legislation—not COVID-related legislation—and we're considering whether the better remedy to enabling the court to deal with these issues is to remove those inhibitions on the inherent powers of the court to control processes in their own court.The final point I would make is that there is a difference at law between access to court precincts and access to courtrooms and what occurs in the courtrooms. So I'm interested in the Minister's view as to whether he thinks that the bill cuts across that in any way or whether it is the intention of the Government to allow that discussion to proceed with the judiciary via me as Attorney-General in a way that makes sure that whatever needs to be done in respect of vaccines for jurors for the accused for court staff for the public accessing the courts for journalists covering these proceedings etc.—that that's been worked through outside of this legislation.