Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Helensville): Ha ha! Well in his absence I'll have to do my best. It's a pleasure to rise and speak as others have done on the Administration of Justice (Reform of Contempt of Court) Bill or the Contempt of Court Bill as it shall soon be known. Other colleagues have spoken well on the subject of what it is that we're engaged in here. We're protecting the system of justice overall. We're not protecting justices the individuals who sit on the bench although Dr Webb makes some very good points about the fact that criticism must be allowed but should be robust but not unreasonable in the sense of reflecting other than an honestly held belief. In the academic context that he mentions in particular of course he's right that the ideals of freedom of expression are particularly important. The freedom of conscience for our academy is particularly useful to the ongoing development of our country's jurisprudence. So at the Justice Committee we've sought to strike as reasonable a balance as possible between those competing demands. The Minister Andrew Little talked about protecting the system as a whole and I'll acknowledge him for having the good taste on behalf of the Government to pick up the bill that as others have mentioned originally was in the form of a member's bill by the Hon Christopher Finlayson QC. Others have acknowledged his role. He's a former colleague but still a party member in fact and indeed a friend so I'm pleased to be able to acknowledge him in all three regards. He remains active in speaking about and thinking about the law of this land and indeed talking around the globe on such matters. He hopefully will be pleased to know that we continue to progress this bill albeit that there have been some changes along the way at select committee and we've had foreshadowed by Minister Little the fact that there may yet be one more put forward at the committee stage in the form of a Supplementary Order Paper.I'm relatively newly arrived on the Justice Committee so I didn't have the benefit of hearing all those submissions that others have referred to. I'll just acknowledge that certainly in their written form they were compelling and we had a veritable galaxy of stars of the legal and judicial system and those were very helpful in allowing us to think about the different rights that were engaged indeed to balance those as others have mentioned and to come to a view that we hope will provide some manner of protection for the system against attacks on what would be the integrity of the system while of course maintaining that freedom of speech that others have referred to. Like my colleague Chris Bishop as a law student I would have been grateful for a clearer expression of the law around contempt of court which exists as it has until this point primarily in the common law. So to be able to codify it will be helpful to that particular subset of the legal profession. But for New Zealanders more generally those who are in our courts it's important to allow them the right to know that they have at least some manner of clarity about the way that the system will operate to constrain their freedoms if they should overstep the mark. So that's an important point that was made very clearly and much more eloquently than I'm able to do by Associate Professor Bernard B J Brown described by David Lange as I think a national treasure and he's not wrong there. I won't go through all the provisions of the bill obviously—maybe just a couple to touch on to the relief of us all to give a flavour of the kinds of considerations that the select committee made and a couple of the changes that emerged as a result. I start with the fact that the High Court will retain jurisdiction over contempt matters that aren't covered in the bill. It's an aim to have the best of both worlds and in fact this was a feature of the bill as introduced by Mr Finlayson. So we'll have maximum certainty about what the law has to the extent that we're able to crystallise it now in Parliament or at least at the time of the third and final reading but also allow flexibility for the development of the law going forward.I've briefly alluded to before the changing of the title of the bill to the Contempt of Court Bill. That's reflective of a general approach to make the law as accessible as possible. By way of example I'll just mention in relation to the suppression period aspect because I don't think we've gone there in much depth so far tonight that there will be a suppression order that can be made and will apply from the time that a person is charged as opposed to the time that they are arrested. Media organisations submitted and I think quite reasonably that it would be difficult to know when a person has been arrested. That moment in time is always not clear and not knowable by them. So if they're to comply with the law it would be helpful for something of a brightline to be drawn and so encourage compliance in that way. The committee therefore has recommended that it would be the point at which a charge is filed against a person that suppression would kick in where that does apply.Finally in relation to suppression orders again but going to suppression orders that are temporary under clause 9(1) of the bill as introduced the threshold needs to be sufficiently high as to allow a certain amount of robustness in terms of exchange of ideas and also the committee was clear in its view that only information that needs to be suppressed to protect the right to a fair trial should in fact be suppressed. So that reflects the overall flavour of the considerations that as light a touch as possible should be had but as heavy touch as necessary should be preserved too. Again just balancing those rights as noted in section 5 of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act where that test for applying justifiable limitations to rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act is defined. So with that I'll leave my contribution and say that I look forward to the committee stage where more detail perhaps can be applied but I commend to anyone who has an interest in the matter to read the report from the Justice Committee which sets out a number of those issues in more detail and I look forward to the continued passage and support across the House of this important piece of work. Thank you.