Brown SimeonSIMEON BROWN (National—Pakuranga): Thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. It's a pleasure to be able to take a call on the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill in the name of the Hon Christopher Finlayson. I'd like to congratulate him on being able to progress such an important issue in regard to contempt and to reform an area of law which is in significant need of doing so but also on the pleasure that you'll be giving to many future students of the law who will be able to look at codified legislation rather than having to look up court cases to try and find out what the law is.I'm also very pleased to hear that the Government is intending to adopt this legislation and take this on board as a Government piece of legislation to allow the Ministry of Justice to be able to work alongside the select committee to ensure that this is properly analysed and implemented because it is a large piece of legislation. I think that's also very helpful for the Government to ensure that they've got a slightly fuller Order Paper because it's getting quite light at the moment. I'm sure the Minister of Justice could probably take a few more leaves out of the Hon Christopher Finlayson's book if needed to ensure that we can continue to help progress National Party legislation through this House.The area of contempt of court has actually been an area of interest of mine. When I was at law school I wrote a dissertation around name suppression so I was interested in looking at the way that this legislation proposes to codify some of the principles around name suppression and I think that's something which I would like to draw to the attention of the House this afternoon in Part 2.Name suppression's an important part of the proceedings of the court. It allows the courts to be able to ensure that justice can be done. It is about ensuring that there is a proper balance between open justice and also ensuring that justice is actually done and that requires name suppression it requires suppression of the facts and there need to be proper principles around how that should be done. I guess that was the summary of my dissertation: to ensure that that was to be properly included in our legislation.So I'm pleased to read in Part 2 that these principles have been included in the legislation under clause 15 How court determines whether publication creates real risk of prejudice to right to fair trial—(1) In determining whether for the purpose … a publication creates a real risk … the court must consider"—Dr Duncan Webb: Oh there'll be some good case law on that.SIMEON BROWN: There's plenty of case law on this but this is about codifying that case law to make sure that the following principles take into account "(a) the likely effect of the publication as a whole: (b) the persons or groups of persons to whom the publication is likely to be made available: (c) the medium in which the publication is presented … (d) the character of the publication" and a range of other factors. So I think that's an important piece of progress in our legislation and I'm pleased to see that that will be going through.I think not only does that ensure that we have this balance but we also ensure that there are some teeth to give the courts the appropriate ability to back that up and that there are a range of offences and a range of provisions to ensure that if someone was to breach those offences the courts have the appropriate statutory powers to be able to address those concerns and address those offences.I commend this bill to the House. I think it's an excellent piece of legislation. I'm pleased to see that again as the Government has indicated they will be picking this up and taking this further and ensuring that we have legislation which appropriately addresses not only an important area of law but an area of law which has changed dramatically over the last number of years as technology has developed as society has changed and as the way we interact with our justice system continues to change and develop as well. So thank you very much Madam Deputy Speaker. I commend the bill to the House."