Dalziel Lianne: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 31 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4132. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 That was not particularly instructive as a response to the issue that my colleague Charles Chauvel has raised. I mean if we are going to again traverse the history of this matter the original legislation was in fact dealt with by the Hon Phil Goff when he was the Minister of Justice and that was the amendment to the Juries Act. The amendment to the Juries Act did provide for addressing a discrimination that did exist in the law prior to 2000 despite the fact that the National Party had been in Government at the time that it passed the human rights amendment that said it could no longer discriminate on the basis of age. In 1993 that law was passed and the National Government did nothing around the fact that nobody could serve on a jury beyond the age of 65 years. That was actually something that the Hon Phil Goff rightly pointed out by the current Minister of Justice commented on on this matter more recently. He was the Minister of Justice who removed the discrimination that said persons aged 65 years and over were not in fact qualified to serve on a jury which they were not able to up until that point. 
If we were going to ask questions about what people said they were going to do and what they actually did then maybe we could ask the National members why they sat on legislation for 6 years after it was passed and did nothing about overt discrimination on serving on juries. When National was last in Government if you were at age 65 you could not serve on a jury at all despite the fact that National was perfectly happy to take credit for the human rights amendment that saw discrimination based on age removed from our statute book pretty well we thought thereafter but actually many years after because in fact the Government had to keep extending the period beyond which the Government was not capable of being challenged for having discrimination in its laws over and over again. I think there were two amendments that extended the sunset provision that was written into the original Human Rights Act. I have actually been here long enough to remember its passage through the House and I know that the honourable member on the other side of the Chamber John Banks does too but for slightly different reasons than probably I do. 
The point that I want to make is this: the Minister went on about how we had not previously considered whether this matter should have been addressed by the Law and Order Committee. As I quoted from the select committee report we raised it in the select committee. We did not think it was sufficient to warrant moving an amendment in this Chamber but since then a new member of Parliament from a party that was not represented in the last Parliament has moved a Supplementary Order Paper that has caused us to reflect on the issue. It is not a question of whether we took a particular stance on a particular issue in a particular year in a particular Parliament. It is actually a question of whether the grounds are made out for sustaining a particular position we may have adopted in the past. I mean sometimes it is OK to say we have reflected on new evidence and we have decided that on the balance of what we have heard we are prepared to consider that maybe there is another option. To be fair I think that Denis O’Rourke— 
John Hayes 
: Most people would call that inconsistency. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well you know it is all very well to say it is being inconsistent. I was not aware that this had been put up as a serious issue until I was involved in this particular debate and until I knew that one of my colleagues had moved an amendment. I had not even contemplated whether our side of the Chamber should be moving such an amendment but I have heard him make a case for removing the discrimination that exists in the legislation. Let me just quote from the Cabinet paper that I referred to before because I think it answers the question that the Minister raised: “Giving registrars the power to grant permanent excusals in certain circumstances would provide a solution to this problem. Because it is important to retain a wide jury pool from which jurors can be drawn it is recommended that the permanent excusal power be confined to the grounds of age and permanent disability or health problems. Other matters such as religious objections to jury service may change over time and the person may become available to serve in the future.” Does that not actually really address the issue that the Green Party has raised? The Green Party asked as to what happens if somebody who has asked for permanent excusal suddenly wakes up one day and thinks: “Gosh I wish I hadn’t done that. I’m actually perfectly willing to serve on a jury. I don’t want to have a permanent excusal any more. I think I’ll just write back in and ask for them to overturn it.” That is why the Minister has written the significant amendment to the bill as introduced that she has done. She has taken on board the comments that my colleague David Clendon had raised in the second reading of the debate as I understand it. 
David Clendon raised the very good point but what he may not have realised is that actually the Government looked at this issue and felt that that issue was best addressed by not allowing permanent excusal and I think that that is right. I think that if somebody has a reason for permanent excusal then they should put the reason for permanent excusal not simply to say they are of a particular age. I do not know about other people in this Chamber but 65 does not seem as old to me now as it used to and I think that there are many people— 
John Hayes 
: You look every year of it dear. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Yes I get closer to it every single day— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: At the same rate as he does. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: —at exactly the same rate. We all feel the same way. But the point I am making is that just because that is the way that the legislation has been drafted does not actually mean that we have dealt with the fundamental underlying problem and that is that the Government decided that there were a number of people who applied for permanent excusal. A significant number of those did so on the basis of age but that was on the basis that they could apply each individual time on the basis of age. Why should age of itself be the reason for excusal? I have no problem with people saying: “I’m applying for excusal on this case but for these reasons I want to be permanently excused from ever having to serve on a jury.” I have got no problems with that. 
But what I object to is that the starting point and the end point is the age—that just because I am of a particular age I have a right to apply for a permanent excusal. It is almost sounding as if people believe that this is something that we should be able to give people in the twilight of their lives—that somehow at age 65 you can be exempt from serving on juries as if that is somehow onerous when we all know that in fact we rely on people committing to what is a civic duty to perform their jury service. I know that there are people because of their occupations who have automatic exemptions and often those exemptions are either based on the urgency of their location within the community—the doctors the dentists those who are required to serve the community in other ways—but they are also people who because of their particular circumstances would never be chosen to serve on a jury anyway. A member of Parliament or a lawyer for example would never be chosen to serve on a jury and the same goes for a police officer. There is a conflict that sits with certain professions. But to say that that sits with somebody simply because they have reached a magic age does not actually make sense and I am not ashamed ever to stand in this Parliament and say that I did not consider this issue when the bill was originally introduced and I did not consider the issue when it had its second reading. But I want to thank Denis O’Rourke for having the courage to bring an issue to the floor of this Chamber and to have it debated intelligently and reasonably which I believe members have done on both sides of the Chamber. There is an element of disagreement and that is OK but I think it would be much better if Parliament itself could say: “Well actually maybe this isn’t the position that we should have adopted. Maybe we have heard the argument and maybe it’s time to reflect on why we made the original decision and why we should make a change now.”