Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Attorney-General): Thank you Madam Speaker. Can I thank the very considered contributions from other members of the House from every party that has spoken and every party who—and they all have. Sir Geoffrey Palmer when he submitted to the select committee on this bill said that this is the most important change to our constitutional settings in a very long time perhaps since the passage of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 in the first place.I had the privilege of chairing the Privileges Committee and although other members have referred to the length of that select committee process that was deliberate on the part of select committee members and me in that this consideration went over two parliamentary terms. It arrived at the select committee shortly before or in the months before the 2020 election. We didn't just want to force it through. We wanted this to have full and due consideration of all parties and civil society so that we could form a consensus around it as a Parliament so that this would endure and that people understood the importance of what it is that we are doing by this bill. Members have said that this is in response to the decision of the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision; that's not quite correct. The genesis of this legislation goes a lot longer. It's been an issue that's been important to me and colleagues I'm sure on other sides of the House for a long time. The constitutional review committee some years ago recommended what was called the halfway house under the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which this is. In order to stop breaches of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act effectively being able to be ignored by either the executive or the Parliament without much notice I then got it into the Labour Party policy before the 2017 election and it was in our policy to introduce this legislation.Now we all share responsibilities in this House for upholding civil liberties. As the Government part of that those responsibilities are essentially shared between the Minister of Justice and the Attorney-General and I'm the Attorney-General. So Andrew Little the then Minister of Justice and I brought a Cabinet paper to Cabinet to seek Cabinet authority for the proposition that we introduce this legislation and that legislation has now come back in the form that it is.I want to endorse comments that were made by Chris Penk and Vanushi Walters who both made reference to the fact that we've got to be very careful that we don't give up the settings in New Zealand which we think in this House are superior to a lot of other liberal democracies who we none the less respect but we don't think their constitutional settings are quite as good as ours. I think at this point in the history of the world we're very very well served with our settings in New Zealand where we have a parliamentary democracy with real power invested in the executive controlled by the Parliament which is controlled by the people through an MMP system that has a lot of checks and balances and can throw us out after three years if they're sick of us. And within that three-year term the executive working through Parliament does actually have the power to effect change. Now that system has stood us in good stead in New Zealand. We're one of the longest unbroken democracies in the world. Nowhere in South America virtually nowhere in Asia or Europe—there's a couple of exceptions there being Great Britain and Switzerland—virtually nowhere in Africa has an unbroken democracy as long as we have had in New Zealand. During that period we've been able to sort through some really difficult controversial issues. Whether it's the criminal code whether it's abortion laws whether it's the rights of minorities be they sexual or racial or whether it's Treaty issues we've been very flexible as a country as we approach contentious issues and we can duck and weave and we can go back where we make a mistake and we can revisit things where we don't quite get it right and we can get things across the line that require a conversation. We're not constrained by a written constitution such as they have in the United States although we have many written parts of our constitutional framework. I think at this point of time in the world when we see some of the more constrained arrangements where they've got so many checks and balances under their arrangements that they can't effect any change or they can't effect a lot of significant change that is necessary or at least it appears so from the outside we can be thankful for our settings. Now in those written parts of our constitution sits most importantly the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act which enshrines certain civil liberties freedom from torture right to vote—a lot of very important human rights that are incredibly important but they don't extend to social rights or environmental rights. This is an issue that I'm going to come back to because I think we should take great care as a Parliament not to extend the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act to those sorts of rights because the decisions that would then become the courts' become increasingly political in their focus rather than the protection of core human rights that are protected by the Human Rights Act.The problem that we've had to date is that until the Taylor decision there was uncertainty as to whether the courts could make a declaration of inconsistency. As Joseph Mooney has outlined one of the reasons why that was a controversial proposition was that although a declaration is made that Parliament has done something wrong there is no remedy. The declaration is made but there is no substantive remedy other than words. Therefore the concern was expressed in earlier court judgments that that sort of expression of discontent with what Parliament has done without a way for reconsideration would somehow lead to friction between the courts and the Parliament. Now the Supreme Court in the Taylor decision said No they did have jurisdiction." And to a certain extent that in time overcame the bill that was in gestation for granting expressly the right of making declarations of inconsistency. But the more important part of this bill is what happens when a declaration of inconsistency is made. Because until this bill passes and becomes law the answer is sometimes nothing and that's wrong. Where a senior court makes a declaration of inconsistency the executive and the Parliament ought to consider it. The courts as other speakers have said don't make these declarations quickly. Indeed they're going to have to be a bit careful that they reserve them for the important rather than overused declarations of inconsistency because that would undermine comity between the branches of Government. But I'm trusting that they won't and that has been the experience of New Zealand previously. But when they do we do need mechanisms to ensure that what the courts have said is considered by both the executive and Parliament. Sometimes the mistakes of Parliament are made in the heat of a political moment which by the time these things have gone up through the courts is long past. The people who were invested in those particular issues have sometimes left Parliament and the political moment has moved on. And I think in those sorts of situations where the courts then opine that we have gone too far as a Parliament sometimes we can sit back we can de-personalise these issues and we can try and where appropriate fix our mistake.But that doesn't mean to say the courts will always be right in a declaration of inconsistency. On occasions I can see that this Parliament will say "Well look we're seriously considering the declaration of inconsistency." We in Parliament have a choice as to whether we amend that legislation whether we repeal that legislation or we leave it as it is. Those are the decisions for Parliament and we retain sovereignty to make those decisions under this bill if it passes. But there should be a process that enables us or forces us to give that due consideration and that's what this bill does. The amendments at the select committee stage leave some of the mechanisms to ensure that that's done to the Standing Orders. But in essence as others have described the Attorney-General has to bring to the attention of the House the declaration of inconsistency. The House then will through Standing Orders refer that to a select committee. I would quite like that often to be the Privileges Committee because I think it would be quite good to depoliticise some of these things. There were mixed views on that amongst submitters and amongst committee members and we in the end agreed that that should be up to the House to decide and that sometimes it will be appropriate to go to the Justice Committee or maybe the Regulations Review Committee or maybe sometimes the Privileges Committee. I commend this important bill to the House.Motion agreed to.Bill read a second time."