Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Mr Chair. I want to speak to clause 1 the title clause of this bill which will soon become an Act with the majority that Labour has in the House. So this bill is called the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. Now I just would suggest that the Minister could call this the Too Little Too Late Act 2022". I note that the pandemic began at the beginning of 2020. The country went into lockdown in March 2022—that was over two years ago—and it's only now in April and we're in the 13th day of April 2022 that we're in committee stage talking about enacting the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. So I would suggest that the Minister could reconsider calling it the "Too Little Too Late Act". I think back to 2020 and at that time I was working in the courts in Invercargill and sometimes we were connecting by a form of audiovisual link. Everyone was trying to figure out how to make things work in the courts and sometimes we were going into the courts and having appearances with people who were getting themselves in a bit of a strife but everyone was trying to make it work. Everyone has made it work since then to this date but now we're getting to a point where today we're going to orange as the Government has announced—the orange setting in the traffic light framework—and yet we're talking about bringing in a COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill which will expire when the COVID settings expire. So the Minister could also call it the "We Don't Need This Act Any More Bill". I note the contribution from my colleague Paul Goldsmith who talked about the Ruatōria court. I've spent a little bit of time as a child in Tolaga Bay and so I know this area. Horses are still well used and it's cool to see the kids on the horses. But I have heard stories from judges of the horses turning up to court and so it makes me think that the Minister could call this the "Horse Has Bolted Act 2022". It would work perfectly. It really fits this bill—I mean the horse has bolted. The country has moved on. The world has moved on. If you want to be a little more to the point we could call it the "Whoops the Train Has Left the Station Act 2022".Hon Paul Goldsmith: Subsidised at 200 bucks a pop.JOSEPH MOONEY: But we're not talking about subsiding anything; we're just talking about the train leaving the station and suddenly Labour has realised: "Whoops two years have gone past since the pandemic began and we better do something about these courts. What about the court safety? Oh let's just bring in something." Time's over but the train has left the station and the world has moved on. Another name the Minister could consider would be the "Time Warp Legislation Bill" taking us back to the beginning of 2020. But the world has moved on and maybe that would be a good name for the bill just to make it clear to the people in New Zealand what this bill is really about: "The World Has Moved on Act 2022"—it's no longer needed. I note that this is a temporary bill—well that is the way it's framed. It will be temporary. It'll no longer be needed once the COVID framework is no longer needed. So maybe that's what it could be called. Maybe it could be called something to reflect the fact it is temporary—"There's Nothing More Permanent than a Temporary Solution Act 2022"—because if you keep on bringing in these pieces of legislative architecture it becomes more and more difficult to remove them. So maybe that's something that the Minister could consider. But look we're here at a point where the Omicron wave is decreasing. New Zealand is largely getting on with it to the point that the Government has decided to allow Australians back into New Zealand as of today. We're now moving into the orange framework and yet we're talking about bringing in the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill. Maybe another name for this could be the "Two Years Too Late Act 2022". Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): I always attempt to try and address members' questions. I don't think I addressed a question from Chris Penk that he posed in his contribution earlier on where he discussed the issue of tribunals. I'd like to push back on the point that Mr Penk made. There were changes to the operations of many tribunals especially during our level 4 and 3 lockdowns to make sure that they continued to operate whether they did that either remotely or by papers. It was certainly something that we did to make sure that decisions were continuing to be made—the Tenancy Tribunal is one example.I'd like to acknowledge Mr Mooney for his attempt to try and stick to the issues around clause 1 around the title but I also just remind him that this pandemic has been around for two years. For about a year the alert level settings were in place and we are operating under a different situation right now and look in some ways this piece of legislation will be in place for a short amount of time—we hope—in order to give the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice some certainty. But we don't know that for sure and I'm sure that if we weren't passing this legislation and things got worse Opposition members would be crying "Why didn't you do something?" So we've got a framework here in order to make sure that if things do worsen—and we're crossing our fingers that it doesn't—there is a framework in which the Ministry of Justice and the judiciary can work through to make sure that justice can continue to be done."