Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. We're here at the second reading of the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill and this is a piece of legislation that this Labour Government is rushing through the House with a very shortened period for submissions from the public and from people who work in the sector and understand what's going on in order to try and deal with some issues related to COVID-19 restrictions. The National Party won't be supporting this bill fundamentally because most of the restrictions will have been removed anyway by the time this bill rushed as it is comes into force. As we've all noticed the world is moving on. The peak has passed. People are wanting to get back to a sense of normalcy in their lives. They've worked out what to do when to wear masks and when not to wear masks and we need to get on with things. And this bill probably would have been useful for the last couple of months but ultimately its time has passed.If we were to step back and think about the justice sector generally and the challenges that we face as a result of COVID-19 there is no question there's been enormous pressure on the justice system and we've heard a lot about the police in recent times and their inability to respond in a timely fashion to violent crime and incidents throughout our cities over the last year. One of the reasons put forward is that many officers have been working in managed isolation and quarantine facilities and doing COVID duties and distracted doing other things and that has been one of the costs of this approach that the Government has taken and we've suffered in terms of our law and order because of that. Then if we think about the access to justice the process of justice that has been hugely affected over the last couple of years. If I was to look at the justice sector more broadly I would say that the big challenges facing the country are the rise in violent crime more than 20 percent increase in violent crime since this Government took office; the 40 percent increase in gang membership at least—and anybody who lives in any New Zealand city or town is only too aware of the much greater presence of gang membership and intimidation across the city—and also a concerning rise in that sense of lawlessness in CBDs and town squares. That on the one side and then on the other side the real No. 1 issue is this very slow access to justice through our criminal justice system which of course is not new; it has been a longstanding issue but it continues to get worse.I was in the Auckland District Court recently just spending a morning there watching things come and go learning about the system and the stories that I heard from some of the duty lawyers were just astounding: of three-year waits for justice to be delivered in certain cases—criminal cases civil cases—people's lives on hold for extraordinary lengths of time trying to just get basic things dealt with and the system is gunged up to an enormous extent for a combination of reasons. One: legislation and there is a huge job to be done to deal with the extreme ease with which a clever lawyer can drag things out if they are of a mind to; the efficiency of the court process itself and the amazing delays that are allowed and countenanced and that drag on; and also the participants themselves. I mean there's a whole host of reasons and the sort of antiquated technology used in many places much of it with handwriting rather than computer systems and the lack audiovisual (AV) facilities.So we have this real challenge. It's bad in the criminal sector where like I say people's lives are involved for a very long time. It's even worse in the civil area in many cases. And if you try and weigh up those things that people think about when they think of justice yes the correctness of the decision is a very important factor but also the timeliness of that decision and thirdly the cost of getting to that decision are equal factors because it might all be very well if you get to the right decision but if it takes 10 years and costs too much that is not justice. And that balance does not seem to have been fully taken into account. And so if we look in the civil space if someone steals $50000 from your business basically getting access to justice through the civil courts just does not work. It does not work in a practical sense in terms of the cost and the time involved.So when we confront this crisis with COVID and the lockdowns and the impact that it has had on the court systems first I do want to acknowledge like the Minister did—and I was pleased that he did—the hard work of the many people in the sector who were doing their best in trying circumstances. That is right and people have been working very hard trying to make things work as best they can. But still the reality is that huge delays have opened up and waiting times for delivering cases and getting justice and getting juries through getting people back to pick up their lives after the calamitous events that often lead of court cases is a real problem. So when I look at the whole COVID response from this Government the $60 billion or however many billion dollars Grant Robertson has spent and this Government has spent in response to COVID—one of the highest per capita spends in the world in terms of COVID response—when I look at all that and then I look at what's happened in justice which is relatively little in order to keep these things moving effectively I don't think they've quite got the balance right; the classic example being and the Minister was at great pains to point out that nothing in this piece of legislation does anything to effect remote hearings and the use of audiovisual equipment in the courtroom.Well it would have been nice if they could have got round to doing something about that more effectively in the two years that we've dealt with this issue. It is a fact and I've just had some written questions come back in the last couple of days that 29 courts across this country still—still—don't have any access to audiovisual facilities. So I mean has Mr Faafoi heard of Zoom? Does the court system not actually know about modern technology? I mean is it not possible to get our act together sufficiently to enable people to get access to justice through Zoom or Teams or something like that something other than us all having to rock up and put on our masks and go past security and all these things that are outlined in this legislation?Now of course it doesn't fit every element of the legal system; there are some things that do need to be in person and it's quite tricky to arrange it but there is a lot of work that can be done across the system through AV. But if you've got 29 of your courts that don't have any facilities still after two years of a pandemic where everybody else in the world figured out that there is a heck of a lot you can do using AV it is an astonishingly slow response from this Government. So if we scroll through it—and I've got this list of all these courts—if you happen to live in where are we Dargaville well there's no audiovisual facilities in Dargaville sorry. Sorry to hear that; tough luck. You're out of luck. What about Kaitāia? No you've got to turn up. You've got to drive in if you happen to live up at Ninety Mile Beach or wherever. You've got to drive all the way into Kaitāia to get your justice. If you live in Morrinsville no chance. Te Awamutu? No chance. Waihi? No nothing there. Ruatōria? No. So if you happen to be up at Hicks Bay you've got to get in the car and drive all the way from Hicks Bay—get on your horse—and go all the way into the court because Zoom has not reached Ruatōria according to this list. Wellington Employment Court? Well you would have thought the Wellington Employment Court would have been on to it but no they've got no AV facilities. And so the list is endless.What we've seen is very modest—very modest—progress from the Government on what you think would be interesting but they bring in a piece of legislation that tinkers around the edges and will come into effect after it is required. And that is why we on this side of the House aren't impressed and aren't voting for it. Thank you Mr Speaker.