Smith Murray: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Smith Murray: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:618;Page:14350] 
MURRAY SMITH (United Future) 
: 
 There is evidence that the wheels are falling off our justice system. If Mr Goff wants a crisis then he needs to see it in his own portfolio. The merger of the Department for Courts with the Ministry of Justice has demonstrated that and as the ministry takes and assumes the primary responsibility for that sector it is absolutely important that some major changes take place rapidly. 
In the estimates report of the Justice and Electoral Committee it said with regard to Vote Justice that the ministry had acknowledged it had “inherited a range of complex capability issues and risks” as a result of the merger. If we look beyond that to see exactly what it means we find that the ministry informed the select committee that there was a culture clash between the Ministry of Justice and the courts sector and that morale was particularly poor among the courts staff. So we find that problems are arising in the courts and justice ministry that have yet to be resolved and that are hugely problematic. 
The latest example of course has been the row around the Supreme Court and this Government. It is clear that on the issue of the Supreme Court the relationship between judges and the Government is fraught with tension. That should not surprise anybody given the way that the Supreme Court was created. It was created against the tide of public opinion and against the strong opposition of the business legal and Maori sectors. It was created with judges feeling that the politicisation of their positions had reached an intolerable state and now we find the Chief Justice complaining about a lack of operational resources. That tells us less about the operational resources and more about the deteriorating relationship between the judiciary and the executive. The public arm-wrestling between the executive and judiciary for supremacy does neither any credit. When we see reports in the newspapers saying that Margaret Wilson has “snapped back at criticisms of her Supreme Court by the Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias as tensions between the government and the judiciary reach breaking point.” people will inevitably have a lack of confidence in our systems. The Attorney-General is meant to be the independent arbiter between the two; however on one day she supports the Chief Justice’s right to comment in the face of the Prime Minister’s criticism and on the next day she rails against the Chief Justice as again demonstrated in the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 in its report on the issues. It is clear that this Government needs to sort this matter out and it is clear also that at the moment there is nobody attempting to do that. 
Of course the primary issue that surrounds this matter is the court’s right to create law and how far that right extends. I suggest that the move from the select committee to try to put into the Supreme Court Bill some outline of the role that the Supreme Court should have—which the Government squashed—is now something the Government thinks might have been a better idea. 
But the court’s right to create law and the matter of whether the courts should take the social and political consequences of their decisions into account are key issues. They have been issues since particularly 1980 and the Lesa decision—the decision regarding Samoan rights to New Zealand citizenship. The Court of Appeal actually stated that the decision was influenced by political considerations. On the other hand there is the decision in the foreshore and seabed case where the court refused to intrude into the social and political consequences of its decision and left it to Parliament to make a decision. The irony of that is that the Government has taken a contradictory approach. It is smarting over the foreshore and seabed decision where the Government did not look at the political consequences but is also sending warning shots across the bow of Supreme Court judges in particular not to engage in judicial activism. Once again the  
Sunday Star-Times 
 reported: “The set-to comes hard on the heels of Deputy Prime Minister Michael Cullen’s attack on activist judges a thinly veiled reference to government unhappiness at the foreshore and seabed decision.” It is time that the Government took some action in order to do that but the Attorney-General whose unique role is to ensure it happens gives us little confidence so far that she can be a peacemaker in this situation. 
The second issue is resourcing. The Government is struggling in order to resource the justice sector properly. The Chief Justice I must say needs to advocate for all courts not just the ones she sits on. 
Vote agreed to.