Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I would like to start by congratulating the member Ian McKelvie as well for having his bill pulled. I'm sure it's an exciting experience. I do want to acknowledge as well that this bill is attempting to address an issue that is real—a problem that's a real problem—and that is the huge backlog that we have in every court and every tribunal in our system now.We know our justice system is hugely overburdened hugely underfunded as it has been for some nine years. We know the Human Rights Commission had a backlog of about 2½ years. We know we are having to fix the Family Court system because of the delays there. The criminal justice system I know from first-hand experience is so overburdened as to have serious criminal cases waiting some 18 months to two years to go to trial so getting some of the less serious cases out of that backlog I can see will be a real relief. The only problem of course is that we can't address the backlog in our justice system by expediting cases and lowering the due process standards that we have come to enjoy and rely upon in New Zealand's model—other than the backlog—justice system. This can't be the answer the lowering of that due process standard.I can see why the types of offences that come under this bill are seen as being so minor as to be able to be dealt with in an expedited way and by non-legally trained judicial officers but in this case and if you do look closely we can see that the breadth of the offences that come under the bill actually do touch on some serious repercussions. If guilt is found and if guilt is found in a process that's not fair—if the judicial officer involved isn't trained in things like the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and evidence standards and in other procedures that we use to safeguard the presumption of innocence—then those repercussions become very unfair. So $3000 fines—for some people that's not actually all that minor. And of course for the animals involved we're talking about a capital offence here because the dogs involved are put down. To anyone who has had a pet that is one of the most serious things that could potentially happen in your life and to the dog I mean that's death. We do consider that for offences like that we do owe the highest standards of due process and lowering them just to get rid of the backlog isn't necessarily the answer.Justices of the peace (JPs) are of course not necessarily legally trained so they don't have a higher understanding in terms of due process as judges would in the District Court where these offences are coming out. Community magistrates who do have a high level of training—there's only 14 of them nationwide so it's not really them that we are relying on; it is really JPs. In fact as I know in some of our busiest courts we are now relying on JPs—and we have been for a few years now—to deal with things like bail.So this is a wider problem and it's one that needs to be fixed through better funding of our justice system more judges more courtrooms and more resources to safeguard our high expectation of that process being safe and fair while at the same time addressing the backlog. While we in the Green Party do respect that the problem this bill seeks to address is very real we don't support the mechanism by which it seeks to address that problem which is a lowering of due process standards in circumstances where the repercussions are very serious both for the dogs involved—and that is an animal rights issue—and also for their owners. So the Green Party will not be voting for this bill.