Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Thank you Mr Speaker for the opportunity to commence on this side of the House the debate in relation to the Contempt of Court Bill at the third reading. In my time allotted I will note briefly the history of the bill notwithstanding that the Minister has already done so; go on to discuss the way that the bill was considered at the select committee; and then look to the purposes of the bill and the way that we think that those are very helpful indeed for some worthy objectives within the justice system more generally and the way that that plays out in our courts. Next I will spend a little bit of time on the offence that's created at new clause 24A which was inserted by way of Supplementary Order Paper 289 at the committee stage because that is important to the way that we on this side of the House will ultimately view the bill and then as time allows I will touch briefly on some of the ways in which those purposes that I will have mentioned previously are going to be achieved by the bill. The history of the bill as I say has been described in some detail by the Minister. I won't traverse that fully because he's done so but I do wish to pause to note again as Minister Little has done the contribution of the Hon Christopher Finlayson QC. We regard him as a friend as well as a great legal mind and we are indebted to him for his work in commencing what we have now in front of us essentially as a bill and to those within officialdom prior to the change of Government and indeed since who have also contributed to the passage of the legislation to date. I commend the good taste of the Government in picking up the work that Mr Finlayson had initiated such that this is now a Government bill. So it was that we found ourselves at the Justice Committee considering this bill and so I pass on to that part of my contribution now. At the select committee we had a pretty thorough and I think collegial examination of this piece of legislation. We were advised on aspects substantive and procedural alike and came to some views on some I think pretty minor changes that we thought might be worthily made and that was a very helpful and instructive process. As part of that discussion we formed a view in relation to new clause 24A and the offence that was created around false statements or rather an offence that re-entered the lexicon as false statements"—but again I'll come back to that shortly and in the meantime just proceed to look at some of the purposes of the bill and why we think that overall it is a very good piece of law. The principal purposes of the Act as set out in clause 3 include promoting and facilitating the administration of justice and upholding the rule of law. These are very worthwhile things of course including in relation to maintaining public confidence in the judicial system. That old chestnut that justice must not only be done but also be seen to be done seems relevant to note in this context and we are reforming the law of contempt of the court in this legislation both in the sense of reforming to make it better generally speaking and also to put it in a different form. That is to codify rules that in many cases are already in existence but not so clearly perhaps to the average person who comes before the courts—and indeed some professionals as well—because these rules have developed over time through the common law and cannot be readily found in one place in the same way as they can in the form of a statute passed by Parliament. So that's part of the purpose. That's the codification that Minister Little has referred to already and that in itself is a worthy object and one that we support on this side of the House. One of the purposes that I would like to pick out particularly under the subheading of "make certain orders and impose certain sanctions" as something that the court has the ability to do is the fact that "jury verdicts are based only on facts admitted or proved by properly adduced evidence after free frank and confidential jury discussions"—for the sake of brevity I'll leave it there. That's a very important thing. That's the ability for the public to have confidence and especially the key players within the judicial system to have confidence that it is based on evidence that's properly brought before the court and able to be tested and challenged in our largely adversarial system. So that's appropriate in the way that it essentially buttresses and supports the other rules that we have to ensure that decisions are made in as safe a manner as possible—for example the rules within the Evidence Act. Another aspect that's particularly noteworthy I think under the heading of "Purposes" is affirming the presumption that proceedings are open to the public and the news media and to the public through the news media. This is an important presumption because the starting point again is that justice must be seen to be done and it would offend our principles within a free and democratic society if we did not think that it would be possible to know the goings on of court. But of course that is subject to certain limitations certain exceptions and so the bill does go to the trouble of stating situations in which the law restricts access to the court or the reporting of proceedings and it gives specifically the example of proceedings in the Family Court or the Youth Court. I think that most members of the House would agree that there are particular characteristics of those kinds of proceedings and other "unusual circumstances" to use the language of the legislation that justify such a departure from that usual presumption of open justice. Orders of the court must be enforceable—that too is a worthy aim of the legislation as described under the heading of "Purposes". We could have a jurisprudential discussion about whether a rule that is not enforced or enforceable is a rule at all but perhaps we won't and I'd simply note that it's helpful for us to have something on the statute book that states clearly that the courts are being able to order a certain thing must be done and if not then there must be certain consequences for that if the rule of law as exercised through the courts' jurisdiction to make such findings is not upheld. The common law contempts of disclosing juror deliberations disobeying court orders and scandalising the court are covered to the extent that they are being abolished in the common law rule. So again we'll have in a pretty clear expression in one single place where we can find these rules and I've touched on that purpose of codification before. So I do wish to turn to that one part of the legislation that ultimately we've been unable to agree on on this side of the House in terms of support for this provision and indeed therefore for the bill as a whole. That is the newly created offence or rather the newly expressed offence at new clause 24A namely the "Offence to publish [a] false statement about Judge or court". In the committee stage we discussed that with some level of detail and a certain amount of passion. I don't think it would be helpful to rehearse all the arguments on either side except to just note for the record at this the third reading that on this side of the House we regard the balance that needs to be struck of course between freedom of expression as enshrined among other places at section 14 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act on the one hand and the need to protect the integrity of the judicial system on the other. We regard that balance as better struck by way of the take-down order mechanism that is already in the bill rather than having at first resort the ability of the court to imprison an individual or to fine a body corporate up to $25000. So somewhat a matter of taste I suppose in all human rights matters but the way that we have landed is to say that we don't believe that that's the right balance to be struck. Accordingly we do not support that particular provision and therefore ultimately the bill itself. In my brief remaining time available just to touch briefly on some of the ways that those purposes are achieved within the bill the disruption that can be caused by adverse behaviour within a court proceedings: there the judicial officer is able to cite disruptive behaviour and deal with that clearly as set out for example under Part 2 in Subpart 3. So that's a useful level of detail again. Subpart 4 then goes on to talk about the investigational research of cases by jury. So those are a couple of examples of the way that those worthwhile purposes that we discussed before are able to be achieved. I complete my time by again acknowledging Mr Finlayson his hard work and those who have picked it up and carried it on. But regrettably ultimately we can't support the bill given that one provision that we feel the balance has not been correctly struck on."