Penk ChrisCHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi) (remote): Thank you very much Mr Chair. I acknowledge the Minister's responses in relation to clause 1. There was one aspect of that which was not entirely satisfactory to me so I'll attempt to shoehorn that into a subsequent clause.For now though clause 2 at its heart goes to the timing of the legislation going into force and of course the day after Royal assent will be reasonably short order after it has passed through this House perhaps as early as tomorrow. But the point really that the Minister must address in boasting that the court system will be able to be more efficient and more safe in the time that the bill is passed begs the question why on earth it is that it has taken until April 2022 for such measures to be put in place. If they are so necessary then why is it that they have not been at least attempted earlier—for example at the time that the COVID-19 Protection Framework aka the traffic light system was passed in late 2021 by that Government?So I say to you Mr Chair and to the fellow committee members that the Minister can't have it both ways. He can't claim that this is terribly important in the interests of safety and efficiency and that it's going to do all kinds of important and valuable things and necessary things without acknowledging that surely he's saying that these things haven't been able to be done in the meantime. With all due respect the position is simply not a logical one for him to sustain.So I have a number of other calls that I would like to make or questions that I'd like to put to the Minister in relation to clause 2—I'll just put that on your radar Mr Chair—but in the first instance I would like the Minister to respond to that point: how he can be so positive about the changes that this bill will be introduced without appearing to be in the least bit embarrassed about the fact that it's taken him and his Government so long to arrange them.Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): During the debate on clause 1 I outlined the time frame at which both the alert level and the COVID protection framework were in place. The Opposition can't have it both ways either because if we had introduced this piece of legislation when the COVID protection framework came into being then I'm sure there would have been cries and howls that this was being done under urgency and not given due consideration. We took that into consideration and that was the opinion of the Government to make sure that there was at least the ability to have a considered policy discussion about this and for it to have a relatively thorough parliamentary scrutiny as well. If we had put it on the normal legislative track then we'd probably still be here in June July and August trying to get this through and the same howls of anger would be coming from the Opposition. We don't know what is going to happen over the next three or four months. We're still kind of hoping for the best but we're watching the winter season very closely as well. That could—and hopefully it will not—have an impact on the public health situation in New Zealand but if it does it again will have an impact on the efficient and safe operation of our courts and again the Opposition can't have it both ways as well. If we aren't prepared for that I'm sure there'll be howls of opposition. We are in this House today making sure that we are prepared for the worst by making sure that this piece of legislation goes through.CHRIS PENK (National—Kaipara ki Mahurangi) (remote): Thank you very much Mr Chair. With all due respect to the Minister's response I find that actually somewhat fatuous and it ignores the reality that National supported this bill at first reading because at that time it was better than nothing. We made it very clear in our first reading speeches that the bill should have been introduced long before certainty should have been provided to the courts the safety and efficiency mechanisms should have been available much sooner and the backlogs that now plague our court system would be that much less accordingly. But in good faith we did support the bill at first reading for all the reasons that the Minister has said—that it was better later than never; that's my phrase not his to be fair—but in the intervening period of time the Minister needs to acknowledge the fact that the Prime Minister who is obviously part of the same Government has put in place rules reducing vaccine mandates and pass requirements. For him not to acknowledge that and the fact that the world has changed not only in terms of the shape of the pandemic but in the Government's whole-of-Government response to this thing—for him not to realise that there is a difference between the environment in which we are living from a policy perspective from the first reading to now and the intervening months that we've had with a shortened period as it's been at select committee is frankly negligent. I take issue with the Minister suggesting that there be some sort of politicking involved in terms of the National Party's response.As I said we supported it in good faith. The fact is that this was better late than never at first reading. We can see no reason for it now at second reading given that for the courts to be in a more stringent environment than the world outside the courtroom makes no sense just as it made no sense for the courts to have an uncertain environment when there was certainty in the rest of New Zealand from the time that the COVID-19 Protection Framework was passed. For the Minister to suggest that it's important to have parliamentary scrutiny for legislation such as this in a very highfalutin kind of way that suggests that it wasn't important for the remainder of the COVID-19 response legislation in late last year I think will be viewed very dimly by everyone outside the court system who has obviously been affected by those strictures. So I'd welcome the Minister's response to that and in particular I would welcome his advice as to whether he thinks that the other changes that the Government has made in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic are in anyway relevant to this or is he living and expecting the courts to live in some sort of parallel universe?Hon KRIS FAAFOI (Minister of Justice): Can I thank the member for his vague references to the success of the Government in dealing with the current outbreak because we are at the situation where we are able to lift the restrictions that we've had in place in order to keep New Zealanders safe. I'd also like to understand what his crystal ball was saying late last year when we started looking at this issue when the Omicron wave had not hit yet and we didn't know how long the Omicron wave would be here with us. In order to deal with that in terms of the safety and efficiency of courts we started the policy process and introduced this piece of legislation very early this year in order to make sure that we were prepared. Again at the very beginning of this process the Omicron wave had not hit. We had to make sure we were doing everything possible to make sure we had in place the measures and we gave the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice the ability to deal with that. It looks promising that we'll be able to lift even more restrictions in the near future in order to give the freedoms that New Zealanders enjoyed pre-COVID back and that hopefully the likes of the operation of our courts can continue as close to normal as what it used to be. It is imperative on the Government though to ensure that there are protections and the ability for the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice to deal with anything if it were to get worse.