SpeechVANUSHI WALTERS (Labour—Upper Harbour) (remote): Thank you Madam Speaker. I just wanted to begin my short contribution by responding to my colleague across the House—Mr Bishop's comments about public law. He noted that secondary legislation can't or shouldn't address the New Zealand Bill of Right Act rights and that simply is not true. Secondary legislation does that time and time again. The courts have the power to overrule secondary legislation when it's ultra vires unlike primary legislation and therein lies the protection. I would say it's undeniable that over the past two years the biggest skill that many parts of our essential services have learnt possibly all of us have learnt is a new kind of adaptability and courts are really no different and in many ways I think the need to respond to the risk of COVID has made us much more conscious about what we understand the right to justice the right to access justice means. And there is some utility in this and my colleague Chris Penk spoke to this that in reality there are some parts of our justice system—and this isn't unique to New Zealand—where there are delays COVID or no COVID. If we view this as a learning opportunity there's real potential to address some of the longer-term challenges our courts and access to justice face.But in this instance this bill is a temporary and limited response particular to our COVID response and it has within it a number of safeguards in place to ensure that it doesn't impede unduly on rights. In the context of COVID there's a need to ensure that access to justice to courts remains fair and safe for judges for staff for the accused for witnesses and for juries. And the big risk as my colleague Ginny Andersen mentioned is without this bill people who are compelled to attend court could be exposed to a heightened risk and for some that may put them in the impossible position of having to make a decision about their safety versus being compelled to attend court. So clearly the best way to do that to address that situation is to ensure the courts themselves have the powers they need to support the safe and effective operation of both the courts and tribunals by making amendments to reduce the risk of transmission for those who visit the courts or carry out work there. Others have already spoken to some of the key provisions of the bill and I sort of thought it was interesting when I looked at this to consider the measures that other jurisdictions have put in place in this regard to accessing court systems. In Canada for instance there are requirements about only accessing public areas unless fully vaccinated and in some parts of Canada such as Manitoba they go a bit further requiring jurors to show proof of vaccinations whereas in New South Wales in Australia there's a rule that's much more focused around rapid antigen tests. So again there's quite a bit of diversity internationally and I'd again come back to the idea of flexibility but flexibility with consistency which is another thing that Minister Parker referenced—so consistency across particular courts or tribunals but flexibility for rules that suit them.I'd also say that one of the interesting provisions of the bill is new Schedule 1AB outlining that a hearing may be conducted by audiovisual link or audio link and that includes members of the public and others who wish to observe the hearing members of the media. I'd note that again this isn't new this isn't different. In the last year the Supreme Court in the UK courts in Brazil in Singapore in India were all conducting hearings by video link. So it's not necessarily all the hearings but certainly a substantial number. And again this is a huge learning opportunity as we tackle some of the future challenges in the courts and access to justice. I'm going to leave my short contribution there and just say that I commend this bill to the House.