Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National) (remote): Well thank you Madam Speaker. It's my pleasure to take a call on the New Zealand Bill of Rights (Declarations of Inconsistency) Amendment Bill. I want to join with the Minister in thanking officials and those submitters who were very very supportive of the Privileges Committee in its consideration of the bill. I'm no lawyer but I've been around for nearly 13 years so I've passed a few bills as Minister and considered lots of bills in select committee and I think this one has been quite intellectually and cerebrally challenging—not so much because the bill itself is that complex but because its impact on our constitutional legal framework is significant. As we were considering this bill I was thinking about two things: one was this a constitutional red herring; is this something that's very rare and is unlikely to have effect very often? Secondly is there a risk that Parliament might pay lip service to the declarations by the courts which would be I think a real shame? I think as far as the second point is concerned and I'm confident that—certainly as it's come out of the Privileges Committee but probably in the shape that it was going in—there is a determination to make sure that we do listen very carefully to the courts while maintaining that very important constitutional separation of the legislature and the courts. The second one was Well is this going to be a bit of a red herring one that we don't see so very often?" And when we first got the bill I thought that would be the case. I'm not so sure now because of some of the legislation that's been passed in the last couple of years—particularly in respect of COVID regulations and laws. And there have been a number of those laws passed where the Attorney-General has said that "Yes they may be inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (NZBORA) but that restriction on New Zealanders' freedoms is justified in the circumstances." And I think there will be a situation where that might be challenged in the future. Indeed it's not only COVID legislation that has had that. We have had a number of laws passed in the last couple of years which many say restrict people's freedom of expression freedom of association and freedom of worship. Where the Attorney-General has said "Yip that's reasonable in the circumstances." The courts may in the future disagree with that which will behove the Parliament to come back and have a look at that.Now the case that gave rise to this bill is known as the Attorney-General v Arthur Taylor. It came out of a challenge to a piece of legislation passed in 2010 which restricted the rights of sentenced offenders who were serving a period of incarceration of no more than three years and removed their rights to vote. What's interesting about that of course is that the Attorney-General did issue an NZBORA vet which said that the bill that had passed was inconsistent with the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and such a restriction could not be justified. So Parliament already had a good look at this. The select committee really thrashed it out. It was quite a controversial piece of legislation although I would point out two things actually: Arthur Taylor would not have benefitted from this had the law not been passed because his period of incarceration was longer than three years and anybody serving a sentence of four years or more at the time of an election would not have been eligible to vote. So this was a contentious point the fact that somehow this egregious restriction affected the rights of New Zealanders serving prison sentences of less than three years but not for longer than that. And so it's equally possible that although the Attorney-General wasn't asked to consider that he or she in the future might consider the current law as it relates to serving prisoner sentences of longer than three years to also be an unreasonable restriction. In any event the senior courts have decided that they do have the right to declare an inconsistency and the question then before the Privileges Committee and the Government was: what do we do about that? The Minister has just outlined the changes to the bill as recommended by the Privileges Committee which I support. I think they're a pragmatic response to a situation that does behove Parliament to take the courts' declarations seriously. In fact I was also a member of the Standing Orders Committee. The previous Minister of Justice in introducing the bill thought that—looking at Hansard—the Privileges Committee would also look at Standing Orders but we had this slightly interesting exchange between the Privileges Committee and the Standing Orders Committee of which many of us were members of both to ensure that what we were actually doing was understood. The Standing Orders Committee has come up with I think a very sound process for considering matters that are referred back to the House. Here's where I think there's going to be a distinction and I think the Taylor case is an important one to have a look at in that regard. There will be two scenarios in the future: one where Parliament has already been advised by the Attorney-General that in his or her view a restriction on the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act freedoms is not justified under section 5 of that Act and therefore there has already been a serious consideration of that issue by the Parliament and arguably by the Government if it's a Government bill. If in its collective wisdom Parliament decided that that bill should be passed anyway then I think that's going to trigger a slightly different response to the second scenario which is where the Attorney-General did not issue such a New Zealand Bill of Rights Act vet it was believed that those restrictions didn't exist—whether or not they were reasonable—and the courts come along and say "Actually no they are an unreasonable restriction." So in fact there are two scenarios within that: one is there is a clear New Zealand Bill of Rights vet; the other one is that the Attorney-General does see a restriction in human rights but that is justified and the courts disagree. Now I think Parliament would have to take a different approach to those situations where effectively—this is a poor way to describe it—the Attorney-General and the courts have a different view. If the Attorney-General had the same view as the courts as in the Taylor case and Parliament already thrashed that out and decided to pass the legislation anyway I think going deeply back into that is probably not necessary—that's not to undermine the view of the courts or to diminish their role in our constitution. But it's going to be a quite different process I think if the Attorney-General and Parliament did not think that there was an unreasonable restriction and the courts did. I think that's a reconciliation that would need much more thought and therefore more time. So when the committee was considering this in putting a six-month limit on the report back to the House it gave Parliament or the Business Committee the ability to extend that because I can foresee a time in the future if that scenario does come up where these could be quite complicated issues that will take longer than six months. We struck a six-month time frame to say "OK there is an expectation of a timely and expedient response." but actually for complicated cases that could be unrealistically restrictive.So in summary this has been a very interesting journey. I think it's important to make sure that we get it right and that—the committee was very clear about this—we really protect the constitutional separation between Parliament and the judiciary. I think we've done that. National will continue to support that and I look forward to the bill's passage. Thank you Madam Speaker."