Beaumont Carol: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Beaumont Carol: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:671;Page:17968] 
CAROL BEAUMONT (Labour) 
: 
 Greetings to you Mr Assistant Speaker Roy and to colleagues across the House at the start of a long day here. I rise to speak on the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill. Labour will be supporting it initially so I am speaking in support of its first reading. 
Obviously the bill is not what we would call an urgent matter and I want to raise that point. We are in urgency and once again we find ourselves dealing with a whole lot of very non-urgent legislation. If we are going to deal with matters in urgency it would be worth looking at some of the matters that are more urgent. The domestic violence legislation that has been languishing on the Order Paper might be a little bit more significant than this bill the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill—gee that is a long title. There are more urgent matters that we could be dealing with while we are sitting in urgency. I want to put on record my concern about the cuts in funding in the domestic violence area. I think it is an absolute disgrace that we are cutting funding for Te Rito and for child advocates in the domestic violence area. 
The purpose of this bill the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill is as the Minister of Police said to prevent offenders sentenced to home detention from serving on a jury and protects the addresses of juries—though they could be accessed through other means potentially. It provides the ability to excuse people over 65 and people with chronic ill health or permanent disability from jury service. Labour members certainly agree that defendants having access to jury addresses is problematic. However we think this bill has limited ability to protect that situation as defendants who want to find addresses will still be able to do so albeit they will have to take an extra step to do so. 
In terms of the bill itself it is quite a short bill. It is in two parts. It has been determined that there will be no regulatory impact analysis of this bill because the proposals set out are expected to have “no or only minor impacts on businesses individuals and not-for-profit entities.” 
Labour members’ concern is that again we are seeing legislation in the justice area that is part of a very piecemeal approach by this Government. We seem to constantly have very small bills dealing with particular issues that have come up rather than our looking at the real issues of the justice system and issues to do with crime. We would certainly support a much more comprehensive approach towards dealing with things rather than the Government reacting to whatever is at the top of its head whatever comes up publicly whatever it thinks will get it some brownie points. We have concerns about that and I raised those same concerns last night when I spoke on the bill we have just dealt with. 
Under this bill defence attorneys and advisers to defendants representing themselves will not be allowed to show addresses to defendants. However defendants will still be able to see and hear the name in court so arguably they could look up the address in the white pages or on the electoral roll. Therefore as I say the bill will not exactly fix the problem; it will put in an additional step between the two things. 
The issue of juries is one I am dealing with in another forum as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee. It is a select committee that I have to admit is well chaired by Chester Borrows the member opposite. He does a very good job and is well respected across this House. I keep saying to him that he should worry about his reputation because Labour MPs are always saying good things about Chester. But he does a very good job in chairing that select committee which is dealing with the issue of juries in relation to the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill. In that bill we are dealing with issues like the threshold for jury trials. It is a fundamentally important issue. We will have to amend the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act because the bill deals with a fundamental right and that is the right to a jury trial. It will lift the threshold from the current 3 months to 3 years and many many submitters have raised concerns about that. At its essence a jury trial is one element of our system that is about democracy. In the end the people get to decide whether someone is guilty. It is direct democracy. So issues in relation to juries are really important. 
As all of us in this House will know either from our own personal experience or from dealing with the people we see in the course of our job the issues around people serving on juries are complex. For many it is in the end an issue of time and money and if we are going to start to look at juries I think we should look at that issue. In these tough economic times when New Zealanders are struggling in the face of ever-rising prices and static or declining incomes—in other words when people are really struggling to make ends meet—going on jury service in return for a paltry sum is something people cannot afford to do. There are people now who are excluded from their right as a citizen to serve on a jury. So there are far more important issues in relation to juries. We are dealing with some of those issues here and some of them in a significant piece of legislation the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill. Frankly why are we not dealing with this issue as part of that bill? 
Some other matters in this bill are of value and Labour members will be interested to see the submissions on them. The bill allows for permanent exemptions from jury service which seems to make sense if people’s situation will not be changing and it will be equally impossible for them to be on a jury in 2 years’ time as it is now. There is probably some sense in that. Likewise the bill deals with a loophole in the Sentencing Amendment Act 2007 which created home detention as a sentence in its own right but failed to amend the Juries Act—it was obviously overlooked. At the moment people convicted of a custodial sentence of more than 3 years are barred for life from sitting on a jury. This bill bars people from serving on a jury if they have in the previous 5 years been sentenced to home detention for 3 months or more. It deals with a loophole. Clearly it is important to deal with matters such as that as they become apparent. 
Part 1 deals with the issues of jury service and the point I have just made about disqualifying certain offenders from serving on juries. It gives registrars more powers to excuse people from jury service and includes the ability to excuse somebody permanently as I have said. Part 2 is the part of the bill that provides the ability to limit access to the address lists of jurors in order to try to protect them although as we have said we think it will have limited benefit. 
I go back to the question of piecemeal reform. Clearly people such as Simon Power Chris Finlayson and others have talked about the need for drastic reform of our justice system yet we are seeing another bill dealing with a particular issue. Often as in the case of the bill last night it will arguably make very little real difference. As my colleague the Hon Rick Barker said earlier this morning the bill implied that the courts were not taking account of whether the person who had been assaulted was a police officer or prison officer whereas in fact they are. Government members are dealing with things in a piecemeal manner to try to get stripes or brownie points for being able to say to the public that they are tough on law and order and are dealing with all of those issues of crime when what is required is a comprehensive look. People who submitted on the other bill I was talking about before which lifts the threshold in relation to jury trials have said that our Crimes Act in total is very outdated and that we should be looking at a comprehensive review of that legislation rather than dealing with the Criminal Procedure (Reform and Modernisation) Bill without looking at that base document the Crimes Act. 
I leave the House with the thought that although Labour will support this bill and will consider it and although there are some sensible elements in it we believe that reform is being undertaken by the Government in a very piecemeal manner. Thank you.