Finlayson Christopher: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
Finlayson Christopher: Financial Review Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:637;Page:7937] 
CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) 
: 
 The answer to the member’s obvious question is that nothing will be done; we will not get an answer in the Chamber tonight. But I want to continue on the theme which is a core responsibility of the Ministry of Justice of ensuring that the law is responsive to changing needs. In my earlier speech I spoke about Study Paper 10 a technical matter involving mandatory orders against the Crown and tidying up judicial review yet Government members do not even have the wit let alone the energy to open appendix A and introduce a Judicature Amendment Bill when it is all there for them. It has all been provided by the Law Commission but nothing has been done—and that is in the technical area. 
If we read through the annual report of the Law Commission for 2005-06 we see an appendix setting out the various streams of work that have been undertaken by the commission in the 20 years since it has been formed. Let me just touch on a couple of areas where nothing has been done by this Government. The first is a report that was produced by the Law Commission in May 1998 entitled  
Apportionment of Civil Liability 
. Like the judicial review issue it is a technical issue that should be able to be dealt with in a reasonably efficacious way. It is non-party political stuff but it is nonetheless important to the civil justice system. What is the comment that we receive from the Law Commission in its annual report? It is that the “Ministry of Justice does not currently have the resource capacity available to assess this.” It has not even got the ability to assess it let alone introduce amending legislation to deal with the question of apportionment of civil liability. 
Let us look at another issue that arose—costs in criminal cases. This is an important issue. The report was released by the Law Commission in May 2000 and what is the response of the Government? It says: “The Ministry of Justice officials will progress this work as other priorities allow.” So for 7 years nothing has happened in this area. Perhaps the worst example of this Government’s lack of energy and enthusiasm for law reform is the Limitation Act. In July 2000 the Law Commission published a report tidying up the Limitation Act. What was the response of the Minister of Justice? It was: “The Minister has considered a report from officials on the issues raised. Further work will proceed as other priorities allow.” This is classic “third term-itis”. The ministry and its Minister simply do not have the energy to implement even technical reports yet they have the gall to publish in the Ministry of Justice annual report a chapter entitled “Ensuring the Law is Responsive to Changing Needs”. Instead of dealing with the real issues they trumpet as some kind of huge legislative success utter trivia like the New Zealand Council of Law Reporting Amendment Act 2006 or the Judicature Amendment Act 2006. These are not even third-tier issues but very minor issues indeed. 
Under this Government and under the cohort of Ministers of Justice—none of whom seem to be up with the play—we do not have modernising legal frameworks. Law reform should be an essential role undertaken by any Government and it needs to be done in a regular manner with the support of the Opposition—and there would be support from Opposition parties in the areas that I have mentioned—but instead nothing is happening and it reflects very very poorly indeed on this washed-out administration. 
The second point I wish to touch on—and it was also referred to by my friend Kate Wilkinson—is strengthening court processes and managing court workloads. The reality of the matter is as I showed with the issue of electronic filing that this has been a hardy annual that has come before the Justice and Electoral Committee on a number of occasions. It has been raised within the Rules Committee on many occasions and indeed things are so dire in this area that the Rules Committee has decided to proceed to introduce rules in the hope that at some stage in the next decade something may be done on the issue of introducing electronic filing. Practitioners are using electronic methods for communicating with one another and serving documents including affidavits on one another but this Government has such a bewildered approach to the management of the justice system that it cannot get on to this fundamental task. 
The reality of the matter is that while this Government does nothing but commission reviews and reports the situation in our High Court in Auckland just gets worse and worse. My understanding is that there is absolutely no space for any further judges. The judges’ chambers are all full the courts are all full and the situation in the High Court in Auckland is very unsatisfactory. 
Report noted.