Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. I rise with great pleasure to commend this bill to the House and I would like to congratulate the member the Hon Chris Finlayson QC for his work on this bill. It's a pleasure to read a bill that has its origins in the work of the profession and is brought by a member of that profession. I enjoyed the origin story of this bill greatly: that the Law Commission after looking into this very complex area—and the justice system is also not only complex but very fast moving. It is great to see this House take direction from those at the front lines of that system to amend our laws and reflect their needs.The piece of work that was done by the Law Commission recommended that the law of contempt be collected in a single piece of legislation; that the language of that law be modernised because it was considered antiquated by the Law Commission; and specifically that the law be modernised to keep up with the digital age. So essentially we were told to bring the laws of contempt into the 21st century and that is in fact what this legislation seeks to do and I think does with great effectiveness.The law of contempt is something that actually is essential to the administration of our justice system. It is something that protects the fairness of proceedings. It focuses the minds of jurors who are laypersons on what is reliable credible lawfully admitted evidence in a proceeding. It protects not only the accused which it does in many cases but it also protects prejudice from seeping into the process against witnesses complainants and victims and essentially marring that process. Simplifying that law and making it knowable to members of the public including members of juries and members of the media is in fact a component of the right to justice itself. The right to justice actually requires our law to make itself knowable—not to be vague; not to be so amorphous as the law of contempt had become—so that contempt proceedings themselves are fair.In fact in New Zealand much of the law defining contempt of court was contained in case law which is very inaccessible to laypersons. To require members of the public to read case law in order to know how to avoid being in contempt of court proceedings is really asking too much. So what kind of activity is considered contempt and at what point and to what degree that activity would have to be undertaken before it becomes contempt was all contained in not only different pieces of legislation but case law where that type of activity had been litigated. That really was unacceptable.So this law—and the parts of it that I do really want to focus on are the parts that focus on modernising in the digital age. Actually defining as part of the law of contempt where juries go off and research material to do with a trial during a trial is enormously useful. This is actually a standard direction that judges give to juries currently in New Zealand criminal trials but it makes it clear that you can't go off on Facebook and judge a witness or an accused person based on what they're wearing or whether they were drinking last night and bring that into a trial. That is what happens now. Defining a publisher as an online publisher as a blog—and most of us get our information from those types of sources—that's essential. And not only that; protecting the impartiality of our courts by protecting judges against that kind of publication online.So I do commend this bill to the House because I know that actually we have been suffering in our trial proceedings from just this kind of thing and courts haven't necessarily been able to hold people to account who do undermine our system of justice in this way but now we will be. Thank you.