Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Look the Courts Matters Bill—one of those odd ones with a double s"—is an important piece of legislation. It was introduced by the last Government and it's good to see the new Government—or I hesitate to use the word "new" actually because we're sort of a year in and—Hon Maggie Barry: It's been a long year.CHRIS BISHOP: "It's been a long year." says my colleague Maggie Barry. The Labour-led Government—it's good to see that they are progressing this very important piece of legislation. I was on the Justice Committee that had the privilege of considering the Courts Matters Bill and the cognate piece of legislation that comes with it which is the tribunal legislation. We did a very thorough job of considering it and we're very supportive of it proceeding.I just want to highlight a couple of changes that the bill makes that I think are very important. One of them is in Part 1 to do with the Courts Security Act. It is allowing drug paraphernalia from the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 to be on the list of offences that allow the court security officers to act. We actually had a bit of a debate in the select committee as to whether or not this was already allowed through the Courts Security Act and in the end we agreed with the recommendation of the officials that drug paraphernalia be added to the list of things that court security officers were entitled to search for.It's one of those tidy-up piece of legislation as well—one of those pieces of legislation that the Parliament has to pass from time to time in order to just tidy a few things up. It's not quite a statutes amendment bill—that's the very definition of a tidy-up—but it's verging towards that. For example in Part 1 of the bill it expands the definition of "court" to include any space between the building and the road. Now one would have thought that when you use the word "court" through the Act—the Courts Security Act in this particular instance—that would include both the courthouse but also the bit outside the courthouse before the road which might be a local body authority road. We heard some evidence from a variety of different sources during the select committee process that that was potentially in dispute and that that could potentially be defined as not falling within the jurisdiction of a court and I think it's particularly relevant from memory—and don't quote me on this Madam Chair—that it's to do with the power of court officers to search and security officers. So there's a clarificatory piece of not legislation but a clarificatory clause around defining "court" to include any space between the building and the road—so a parking lot or the path that people walk through to get to the court.There's also clarification that court security officers can exercise powers when directed by the current judge even if that's inconsistent with an earlier judge or when the person is in other custody and the officers may also use their discretion—so again very important clarifications. There are amendments in Part 2 to the Criminal Procedure Act that I know others in the House have previously expressed support for and that are very important. In particular—CHAIRPERSON (Hon Anne Tolley): We're on Part 1.CHRIS BISHOP: I know. I'm just saying that Part 2 to do with the Criminal Procedure Act I know other colleagues may wish to highlight.I want to also highlight for the committee this issue around regulation rather than Gazette notice. We did have a bit of a debate in the select committee around upon what circumstances the Government would be able to add additional courts and tribunals to be subject to the various measures in the bill—whether or not that should be done by regulation or Gazette notice. It is arguably a finely balanced point but we decided in the end to retain the power to do it via regulation. It's a slightly more formalistic process that the Government goes through when passing a regulation. It goes through Cabinet rather than Gazette notices which go through a different process."