Whaitiri MekaMEKA WHAITIRI (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti): Tēnā koe Mr Chair and thank you very much. It is a privilege to take a call on the Committee stage of the—here we go—Judicature Modernisation Bill and I hope my contribution is a lot clearer than my pronunciation of the name. Labour does support this bill but I want to focus on Part 1 and particularly on Subpart 5 Senior court Judges". Of course I am going to reference the submissions by both the Bar Association and the New Zealand Law Society because who better to take a lead from in this particular section of the bill but actual practitioners in this field. Clause 93 talks about the judicial appointment process. The Minister who was in the chair previously Amy Adams gave the outline around flexibility and avoiding any overly prescriptive criteria when appointing judges. I do want to draw the Committee's attention to the submissions like I said previously from the New Zealand Bar Association and the New Zealand Law Society in respect of judicial appointments as noted in clause 93. The comments that I draw from their submissions particularly from the New Zealand Bar Association are about the role of the Attorney-General in appointing judges. In its submission the Bar Association is recommending that the appointment process that the Attorney-General undertakes should be done in a consultative manner. It has given a whole list by way of example of the organisations or the actual individuals that it considers the Attorney-General should consult with—for example the Solicitor-General the president of the New Zealand Law Society the president of the New Zealand Bar Association and other such people as he or she considers appropriate. Clearly the New Zealand Bar Association asserts that the Attorney-General should be required by legislation to consult with specific people in advising the Governor-General on judicial appointments. I turn to the report from the Ministry of Justice to the Justice and Electoral Committee and I read about this particular point I am raising—on clause 93. It makes mention that there were a number of submitters that support the Attorney-General taking a more consultative process in terms of making the decisions. It then talked about the Law Society the New Zealand Bar Association and the Human Rights Commission. Then it goes through as officials do and actually puts up the argument on whether those recommendations should be taken or not. I do note—and perhaps the Minister can explain this to the Committee—that one of the reasons why it does not consider that it should take up the suggestion of a consultative process has to do with the following statement: "We are not convinced that legislating set criteria and consultees is the only way to achieve this aim. In large part the sunlight effect of requiring the process to be published and therefore open to public scrutiny …". I would appreciate it if the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner would just explain how not taking the consultative process will ensure that we have an open and transparent part as per clause 93. In terms of the other clauses I want to go to there are quite a few in Subpart 5 of Part 1 but I definitely want to hear back from the Minister in relation to that point. The other one is obviously the criteria that are laid out in terms of the sorts of qualities we want in judges when the Attorney-General makes his or her determination. Again the New Zealand Bar Association lays out in its submission a set of criteria that are quite clear I think in terms of suggesting statutory criteria—namely the personal qualities including integrity sound judgment and objectivity. Obviously legal ability is one of those criteria that we should list."