Banks John: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Banks John: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 31 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4134. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon JOHN BANKS (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 I have been listening to this debate very carefully over the evening and I have got to say that I have some sympathy for the propositions being put up from members opposite. But on balance I think the Minister of Justice has probably got this about right. I think deep in the hearts of the Opposition members they know that. 
I have never been able to work out why someone would be excluded from jury service at age 65. Some of our best hardest-working most productive citizens and role model leaders in the community are working at 65—and some even in this Parliament. The point I am making—and an observation—is from experience when I served this Parliament in a small rural provincial town in Northland in Whangarei. One of the great problems with running jury trials in that city at that time was the pool of people available for jury service—the pool of people available for jury service. It was an eye-opening exercise to go to the local District Court or the High Court in Whangarei any day of the week and witness the people who were herded to the court for jury service. As an observation I can conclude only that most of them would have far preferred to be somewhere else. The problem with wanting to be somewhere else if a person on a jury wants to be somewhere else I put it to you Mr Chairman and to the Minister is that they are not going to serve the interest of the court system at all well. 
Listening to the debate tonight from both sides of the Chamber—and I respect the opposition to some of the provisions in the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill—I have this view that the jury service in this country will work only if there is a good chance that those who step up for jury service or who are called upon for jury service are interested in exercising their public duty in the way that the jury service has worked for so long. Because as I said if you have a look at some of the people on the jury—I do not take away from them as being good human persons—some of them are unqualified for jury service in a perfect world and many of them certainly do not want to be involved in jury service in a perfect world. Indeed I witnessed firsthand in rural provincial Whangarei that some of them who were rocking up to the court for jury service should have been in some part of the court but not on the jury benches. I put that to you as an observation. 
I heard from the learned lawyers opposite that a lawyer cannot be available for jury service or a member of Parliament or I presume a Minister of Police. I presume that a former Minister of Police like the Minister in the chair could not be available for jury service—by the way the best Minister of Police we have had since the former member for Whangarei. If a lawyer retires at aged 65 66 67 or 68—and we know some particularly sharp-brained lawyers in the community who are at a loose end because they have retired early because 65 is early these days—I put it to you that they would make excellent jurors and they would be well qualified to do very good jury service. I have no doubt that like most lawyers when the member opposite who is Labour’s spokesman on justice is 65 he would discharge his obligation to jury service with distinction. 
I think we should be careful about some of these exemptions. There is no doubt about it. For people listening—for the 360 people watching on television tonight for instance; it might be 361 now and going south—I put it to you that some of the provisions we have got here by way of negotiation are sound and sensible. The provision that you can opt out at 65 and the provision that you can come back in at 75 as long as you seek to do jury service make sense to me. I do agree with the question from the other side of the Chamber as to why we have not done this previously. 
Can I conclude by saying this to the Minister: this bill is well overdue. For the purposes of the courts to work effectively the jury service process must be robust must be accountable and must be transparent. And we must get the pool as big as we can and this bill will do that. 
Clause 1 agreed to. 
Clause 2 agreed to. 
Clause 3 agreed to. 
House resumed. 
The Chairperson reported the Biosecurity Law Reform Bill with amendment the Commerce (International Co-operation and Fees) Amendment Bill with amendment and that the Committee had divided it into four bills and the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill with amendment. 
Report adopted.