van Velden BrookeBROOKE VAN VELDEN (Deputy Leader—ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's my pleasure to rise on behalf of the ACT Party to take a call on this referral motion to the Justice Committee. I have a few points that I wish to raise and the first is how short the select committee time is. The select committee is an extremely important part of the parliamentary process. The main function of it is to allow for there to be time to hear from members of the public and to hear their thoughts on what Parliament is passing through this Chamber into law. Now the date that the Minister has referred back to only gives a period of about three weeks for the select committee to sit but if we walk through what has to actually happen in that time for select committee it doesn't really give much time for the members of the public at all. So if you think starting from I guess today you'll end up with advertising needing to occur so that submitters even know that we're talking about this law. The submitters then have to have time to be able to prepare their statements for the House. They have incredibly busy lives and that might only give you a couple of days—and then the clerks have to sort all of those submissions. Then you have to call people in for an oral hearing if that's what they've requested. Once that's happened you would hope that the select committee has done their job well and picked up on any recommended changes that might need to happen so they've drafted some amendments. Those all need to go through the Justice Committee for everybody's acceptance. The report then needs to be finalised and before you know it you're not actually giving a lot of time. So if I look at the calendar here open on my phone and if we work backwards and you actually look at how much time that's giving you to put in place all of that work you're only really giving at maximum a week for the actual select committee hearing process. If we're talking about the judiciary these are extremely busy people. I don't see how it's acceptable that we could end up in a situation where we're putting a new law on how the courts will operate and yet the people who we depend on to be our judiciary who are working extremely hard in a time-sensitive manner will have to work around the clock to make sure that they can get their submissions in on time. I hope that this process will actually be fulsome and that it's not just ticking boxes. If you think of the types of people that you'd hope would be submitting on this type of law you've got the judges: the people in charge of the courts. You've got those who might be doing the jury trials and those will be doing judge alone. Then you've got the registrars: the people who make sure that the court process are followed and they're helping the judges. Then you've got the juries: people who have actually sat on jury trials and might be able to give you their opinion on how this will affect jury trials going forward. The prosecutors: the lawyers or police officers who are trying to prove that the defendant is guilty. You've got media who quite often cover court cases; defence lawyers who quite clearly are lawyers for the defendant; and the actual defendants themselves. I think that's incredibly important and shouldn't be skipped over. People who are police escorts and prisoner escorts who help out at courts; people who sit in the public gallery—also very important for victim support—and witnesses. We have court victim advisers—another very very worthwhile member of the court and judicial system—the witness support person which is the person that a judge has agreed can support the witness in court; and the witness who is actually giving evidence on what they saw happening in front of them or on what they know about a particular case.When you take all of those people who will be affected by this law change we want to be making sure that we have given them the sufficient time to get their thoughts in order to make sure that they have an effect on this law. That's incredibly important. I think there is an element that Chris Baillie from our party talked about earlier in his speech. We already have changes that have gone through the court system and I think it's really important that if we're changing this law then we're actually giving time to even ask questions of submitters back to them in that select committee process to ask why the changes that have occurred already in the courts have already been able to do that without having this law change because if I just refer to the Chief Justice's latest post on requirements of the court it shows a lot of things that have happened. The Chief Justice said—operational from Monday 14 February—that The Chief Justice has today published revised protocols for the operation of the Courts of New Zealand. The protocols have been adjusted to allow for an extended period in the Red traffic light setting following the Government's announcement of its three-phased public health response to the Omicron variant on 26 January 2022. All court protocols are available here on the Courts of New Zealand website … "The court operating protocols set out a framework to ensure that everyone who needs to participate in proceedings is able to do so. The primary considerations that underpin the protocols and decisions made under them are the interests of justice and the protection of the health and safety of those in court buildings. Key changes to the protocols published today: the protocols issued last week have been adjusted and republished today to ensure that courts are operating as safely and fully as practicable during the Omicron outbreak within the current legislative settings that govern access to courts and the right to be present at hearings. The revised protocols will take effect on Monday 14 February 2022. "The main changes to the protocols are as follows. For those entering the Courts without a My Vaccine Pass the requirement for a negative PCR test to be administered has changed from 72 hours to 48 hours. If a person whose attendance is required presents at court without a My Vaccine Pass and is unable to provide proof of a negative PCR test and is asymptomatic free supervised Rapid Antigen Tests (RAT) will be available at pharmacies until 30 June 2022. For health and safety reasons there may be limits on the number of people not directly involved in proceedings who can be physically present in courtrooms and court buildings. The High Court has moved to a presumption that at the Red setting its business will be conducted to the extent possible by remote participation. In remote hearings in the High Court and District Court media representatives who are present must introduce themselves to the judge. A new triaging process has been introduced for the Youth Court. This includes judges reviewing lists at least two days before a hearing to determine which cases can be dealt with remotely. Matters requiring an in-person hearing will be allocated time slots to reduce numbers of people present in Court. "Jury trials: criminal and civil jury trials in the High Court and District Court continue as scheduled and will be subject to enhanced health and safety measures including rapid antigen tests for jurors and other participants." But if I look at what this bill is seeking to hope to do they're starting to talk about some people being maybe unwilling or unable to attend court because of safety concerns and they're wanting to remove legal barriers to desirable safety measures. It appears the courts have done most of this already and I think this select committee needs to hear from those who make these decisions in the court. Thank you Mr Speaker."