Tanczos Nandor: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Evidence Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
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NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 Allow me to begin with an apology. I doubt that I will be able to give a full 10-minute speech in the third reading debate without repeating myself on issues that have already been canvassed in previous stages of this debate. I know that members would not like to hear repetition so I will try to confine my remarks to fresh issues. 
I think it is important that we take this debate seriously and do make as constructive a contribution as possible because it is an important issue. The rules of evidence are enormously significant for the maintenance of justice of good rules of law of fair courts and fair process of the safety of the community and of the right to a fair trial. These are important issues particularly because of the nature of this debate and the very constrained nature of the process—the hasty procedure. Although I accept the need for that we have to accept that this is an unfortunately speedy process. So in that regard I think it is incumbent on members to make as constructive and full a contribution as we are able and I will do my best to fulfil the expectations of the House—and of you Mr Assistant Speaker. 
Simon Power 
: Our expectations of the member are high. 
NANDOR TANCZOS 
: Ha ha! 
Let me begin with a comment on a broader principle. As someone who is very interested in the deficiencies of an adversarial court system and in exploring alternative processes for dealing with legal issues and particularly in exploring further ideas around the applicability of the inquisitorial system to our own—and acknowledging that elements of the inquisitorial system already apply in some legal processes in this country—I am nevertheless someone who has a high regard for the elegance if you like of the common law system. It is unique I think to the adversarial system—this idea that there is this judge-made law with flexibility that evolves over time. 
We have developed throughout the common law system a rich intellectual tradition around questions of law and I think that is a good thing. Also within New Zealand there is the question of how much uniquely New Zealand common law we have developed. I know that that is a matter that has exercised better minds than my own and some very interesting contributions to that discussion have been published in recent times. I think it is important that we have a system that allows judges to consider not just statute law but broader principles of law constitutional considerations and the development of judicial thinking. 
I know that this Parliament has debated the question of the relationship between judges and Parliament at times and different members have different views. I know that Dr Cullen has made particularly strong statements around the sovereignty of Parliament. He has stated his position quite clearly—a position shared by some members of this House and not by others. I have to say that I am someone who tends to see myself on the other side of that debate. The question has been raised of course about what the mandate is for judges to make judge-made law. Judges do not have the democratic mandate that members of Parliament enjoy. Nevertheless I think that judges enjoy a different kind of mandate which is to do with the rule of law. It is to do with the protection of rights and with broader historical constitutional issues which can quite easily be neglected in the debates of this Parliament given that we represent moments of history moments of the collective political consciousness of our nation at a particular time. So I do not think that that takes away from the important considerations that a broader historical view might give. 
I remember well the debates between the Attorney-General and the Chief Justice. Nevertheless of course the problem with the common law is that it is relatively inaccessible particularly to ordinary people. In fact the very beauty of its fluidity and ability to evolve is one of the things that makes it so difficult for people to penetrate it and to understand its full scope. Although in the select committee and in this House we like to indulge ourselves and loyally debate some of these things in my case I am able to do that only because of the support of advisers researchers and the like. 
Unlike other members of this House who are accomplished lawyers in their own right and are well-known and highly regarded in the legal world many of us here rely entirely on the enormously hard work of various support people in order to do our jobs. Of course those resources are not available to most people. That is why it is important that we have in the Evidence Act the purpose of trying to make the law as accessible as possible so that ordinary people can understand the laws of evidence understand that the laws comply with logical rules and understand how those rules work. Then they can start to understand better how judicial decisions are made because one of the problems we have in this country is that some people have a low regard for our judiciary. I do not think that that is deserved by and large but one of the difficulties is that people do not always understand the lines of reasoning that bring judges to make the decisions they make. So if we can make explicit the laws of evidence and bring them into one place and make them clear that is a very useful and important thing to do. 
The reason those issues are important in terms of this debate we are undergoing right now is that this bill appears to run contrary to that purpose and this is an issue that has been brought up previously. But I think it is important to stress that it is not the intention of Parliament to create further confusion or anything like that but rather to show that we are rectifying an important area of confusion in the law. If we have to do that in the context of the time by referring to the common law then we have to do that but we do want to see that it is tidied up at a later stage. 
Mr Finlayson is absolutely right when he says that this is unlikely to be the only time when we have to do this kind of thing. We did undergo a massive exercise with the enactment of the Evidence Act. It is a huge Act complex and technical so it is inevitable that in the course of time we will potentially see some oversights or places where there is a lack of clarity about the intentions of Parliament. Again as has been said case law will be developing around the rules as they are set out in that Act. So in that regard it is important that we have a review process incorporated into the Act. As has been said the first review is to commence on 1 December 2011 or at a later date set by the Minister of Justice. 
 I think it would be unfortunate if that review was unnecessarily delayed. The Green Party certainly would encourage that review to be timely because I think by 2011 it is very likely that we will have seen a number of the issues that will come from this. They will have come to our attention by that time and we will need to go through that review process to look at where the case law has got to and to see what amendments or rectifications might need to be made at that time. So of course it is true that this will not be the only time we do this. We need to ensure that we do have this process to follow up and to tidy up the loose strands. That is the important element of that. Nevertheless I think it is great to see the consensus and cooperation across the House on this important piece of legislation. I commend the Ministers and advisers for their good work and I commend members for their very constructive contributions to this hasty debate.