Jones Dail: Judicial Matters Bill — In Committee Procedure 
Jones Dail: Judicial Matters Bill — In Committee Procedure 
[Volume:617;Page:12875] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 Part 1 of this bill which we are now considering is a lengthy part with some very important provisions dealing with the Judicial Conduct Commissioner which is a debate in itself and a Judicial Conduct Panel. There have been a good number of submissions on this bill and a good amount of objection to it and that relates especially to Part 1. I turn for example to the submission from the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties. Usually one would expect a Labour Party to be concerned about anything the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties might say but times have changed— 
Jill Pettis 
: Times have changed! 
DAIL JONES 
: As Jill Pettis indicates times have changed. The Labour Party’s regard for the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties has decreased the longer it stays in office— 
Jill Pettis 
: It depends on the issue. 
DAIL JONES 
: It depends on the viewpoint of the New Zealand Council for Civil Liberties. In this case the council says: “This part of the bill is nothing more than an elaborate piece of window dressing and does not give effect to the comments of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights of 15 March 2000.” 
Once upon a time the Labour Party would bow down and genuflect forever in front of a United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights but those days have long gone. Those comments were made in the context of a complaint regarding a New Zealand judge through a United Nations special rapporteur on judicial independence. The witness said: “It would also appear to be nothing more than an unnecessary complication to the current unencumbered right of Parliament to impeach a judge.”—as the previous speaker was saying. “The right of Parliament rather than the executive to exercise that power is one that I hope any parliamentarian would be loath to surrender without full and adequate reasons of which none are evident here.” 
I think the Law Society submission indicated that this right goes back at least as far as the 1700 Act of Settlement. This Labour Party has no regard for history and no regard for the rights of this Parliament or parliamentarians. If one links this system back to the English Westminster system and the Houses of Parliament we as parliamentarians have had an unencumbered right for at least 304 years it would seem to impeach a judge. This Labour Party is wiping it away in one piece of legislation which gets very little support in this Committee. I think there is support only from the Labour Party and the Greens. 
Dare I say it again the Labour Party and the Greens are again supporting legislation that gives New Zealand lengthy and long-term rights. They got together on the Supreme Court Bill and passed legislation to abolish the Privy Council without any regard for the rights of the Maori people of New Zealand all of whom opposed that bill despite everything the Greens said. The Greens said they would not support the Supreme Court Bill if the Maori people opposed it but of course they changed their minds in some sort of deal they did with the Labour Party. Here they are again the Labour Party and the Greens taking steps to remove this Parliament’s long-held constitutional right in terms of Part 1 of this bill to impeach a judge. The Greens are taking that right away. 
The civil liberties people said: “This bill does not conform to international norms. New Zealand entered into the first optional protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights on 26 October 1989. According to the fourth report of the New Zealand Government itself on its compliance at paragraph 47: ‘Use of international human rights norms is not confined to the courts.’ ” It pointed out how Cabinet should be involved with them as well. 
 The New Zealand Law Society which rarely if ever issues views on policy opposes this bill. It opposes the proposals in Part 1 to establish the office of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner. In this call I am unlikely to have enough time to speak about that but I hope to get a second call to do so. However the Law Society’s reasons are that the proposals are constitutionally unacceptable because they will undermine the independence of the judiciary and most important there is no evidence of a problem that requires this legislation.