Barker Rick: Family Courts Matters Bill — In Committee 
Barker Rick: Family Courts Matters Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:646;Page:15698] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Minister for Courts) 
: 
 I rise in response to the questions raised by the honourable member Dail Jones in respect of Supplementary Order Paper 201. Mr Jones asked a number of questions and I will deal with them in no particular order. Firstly he spoke about the qualifications for the position of senior Family Court registrar. The original proposal from the Law Commission had in it that a person would have held a practising certificate as a barrister and solicitor for at least 5 years and this was to be the qualification. I felt that by putting that qualification in the statute we would fix that provision for almost all time as we do not come back to this sort of legislation very often and if in the future we felt that the qualification was either too high or inappropriate and needed to be changed then we would be locked into that particular qualification. 
The qualifications are now set in the Supplementary Order Paper to be dealt with by regulation. That gives us a flexible way to approach this. I think it is a sensible approach because of all the powers that we want to give to senior Family Court registrars. We might in the future require someone to exercise only one of those powers not the lot and in that particular circumstance we might set a different range of qualifications for that person. Being a regulation it will obviously be subject to consultation and part of the consultation round will involve the bench of the Family Court. It will come before Parliament and go before the Regulations Review Committee and if Parliament feels that the regulations are inappropriate it can say so. So there are lots of checks and balances in this matter. 
The second aspect is that if we set it in terms of a legal qualification as a trained barrister and solicitor with so many years’ qualifications we would then be ignoring the growing trend in the court system—a trend I have encouraged and I wholeheartedly endorse—of the courts training up their own staff over a period of time. It is fair to say that through the past decade a lot of training in the court system has been overlooked and this is to be regretted. The courts are now rebuilding their training capacity and I would like to think that in the future the New Zealand courts will have a training capacity for all aspects of registry work. If in the future we felt that there was someone who had had many years of experience in the registry—it could be 20 or 30 years—and had suitable in-house qualifications we might look to that person and say that he or she was a suitable person to hold the role of senior Family Court registrar. 
The eagle eye of Mr Jones has identified that one of the qualifications mentioned is personality and he highlighted that. I think we would all agree that this is a very sensitive job and we would want to make sure that the person who held it had the appropriate personality. The registrar will have to deal with complicated situations in complicated circumstances and very often with difficult personalities. I should have thought that an appropriate demeanour and personality would be critical to any consideration one would give for a person to hold this job and therefore I do not have a problem with that. 
The last issue raised by Mr Jones related to pay and rations. We have not made any particular specification in the Supplementary Order Paper and it is unnecessary to do so because this person will come under the State Sector Act. The registrar will be a State sector employee; he or she will not be part of the judiciary. He or she will come under the framework of State Sector Act and there will be an appropriate wage and salary-setting mechanism. I am quite sure that I can put Mr Jones’ unease at rest and say that it will be commensurate with the job and its requirements. I have every confidence that the Secretary for Justice will make sure that the person is appropriately paid and is well supported as well. 
Russell Fairbrother as always gave a very illuminating address on the role of wigs and gowns in the Family Court. I found his address very instructive. It was a great trip down memory lane and it brought back a lot of images of the past. I assure Mr Fairbrother that unlike other people in other circumstances we are not racing back to the past. I just emphasise the point of why this provision is here. There has been a high degree of informality in the Family Court. This is to be supported and encouraged and it will continue but the Principal Family Court Judge made the point that on occasion he felt it was necessary to indicate to parties that the court was now at the serious stage of making a decision. With this new change of legislation we can see that the Family Court judges will have a lot of opportunity to engage with parties in judge-led mediation. So a judge may undertake the role of a mediator then sometime later because the parties cannot come to agreement by themselves he or she may want to be able to signal clearly to the parties—and we should give the judges the opportunity to do so—that there is a change of circumstances they are now at the serious end and the judge is about to make a decision and adjudicate. One of the symbols judges can use if they wish to—it is not compulsory or mandatory—is to wear the gown to indicate they are about to make a decision and that this is crunch time. I felt there was no harm in this if it is what the bench wants. I think this is entirely appropriate. That is the simple point of it. Mr Fairbrother has made a very good presentation on the history of the issue and I welcome that. I feel really refreshed.