Barker Rick: Standing Orders—Suspension 
Barker Rick: Standing Orders—Suspension 
[Volume:673;Page:19657] 
Hon RICK BARKER (Labour) 
: 
 The National members have castigated the Opposition on a number of occasions I think unjustly about the way in which it uses parliamentary procedure to oppose legislation. I make the point to the House that the Opposition’s role is to oppose bad legislation and we will. We will do it with all the power and the force that the Standing Orders provide. There should be no criticism of that.  
Following on from that I reiterate the point made by Charles Chauvel. What we are embarking upon here is no small matter. The Government has asked for the Standing Orders to be suspended. That is what it has asked for: the suspension of the rules. This is never done lightly. The Minister for Courts has come with a well-argued case. John McEnteer on her staff has argued the case for the Government very well. It was only on the basis of the merits of the case that we have agreed to suspend the Standing Orders. It is not something done lightly as you would well know Mr Assistant Speaker Robertson. We have done so because we agree with the intent and the thrust of the amendments that the Minister wishes to bring to the House.  
I will put it into simple language. The fact of the matter is that for a long time the administration of our courts system had been overlooked by the legislature. The legislation is old and antiquated. One piece of legislation that is relied upon and has been amended many times is the Judicature Act of 1908. I do not know many other parts of our society whose foundation bedrock is legislation that was passed in 1908 and amended and amended. It is well overdue for an overhaul. When I was the Minister for Courts I suggested to the Ministry of Justice that we overhaul the Judicature Act 1908 and update it and it almost passed out at the prospect of such a huge piece of work. But it is the bedrock on which our system rests. It is very old.  
There are many other very old pieces of legislation and they date from a time when each of the courts saw themselves as separate entities. The High Court with its inherent jurisdiction and the District Court all had their separate processes and not one of them had anything to do with the other. This of course was the approach that the judiciary took to it. It is not the approach that the public take. The public see the court system as an entity simply with different doors to the same house. They believe that when they owe money to a court they effectively owe money to the State. But as far as the judicial system was concerned if a person owed money via the tribunal system it was different from owing money to the District Court which was different from owing money to the High Court. Not very long ago each court had to have its own process of taking the money that people owed it. A bailiff or registrar of the District Court could not enact matters on behalf of the High Court; nor could it act on behalf of a tribunal. The general public will have seen this as pretty impractical and it was and is. Money that people owe is money owed to the court system and to the State and to the victims if it is reparation.  
In essence this legislation proposed by the Minister simply streamlines that process. It helps any debt any amount that is owed to a court to be able to be picked up and dealt with by the same process and by the same system whether it be reparation in any form that it is given or whether it be a fine in any form that it is given within any jurisdiction and concerning any amount that is owed. All the tools that are available in one jurisdiction will be available to all. If there is to be an attachment order for a fine owed and if a person owes money to the High Court the District Court and a tribunal a single attachment order will cover all three. That is as I understand this Supplementary Order Paper. It is eminently sensible. Anyone would agree with that. I think even the people who owe money to the courts system would agree with that too.  
It begs the question as to why we have to suspend the Standing Orders in order to get this sensible legislation through. I make this point to the House and to anybody else who wishes to listen. One of the great frustrations I had when I held the portfolio that the current Minister for Courts the Hon Georgina te Heuheu holds is that when these ideas come up it takes quite a lot of work and effort by people in the back rooms and back offices the policy makers to ensure that the legislation is right. There are many different pieces of intersecting legislation. If the legislature passes the legislation incorrectly it becomes almost impossible for the courts to fix—in fact they cannot—and it becomes almost impossible for them to operate. In making these changes people have to be very very careful. They have to be very skilled and very knowledgable and it is work that is not rushed. So I can well understand how the Minister has got this out of sequence and out of time.  
The point I make is that in all the hubris we get about reducing the State sector about shifting people from the back office to the front office and about cutting down on civil servants who are somehow portrayed in the current atmosphere as a dead-weight loss to the public we only exacerbate this problem. The one thing that I felt I lacked in the executive arm of Government was the necessary resources to do the policy work the theoretical work to bring papers forward and to get legislation prepared checked drafted and passed.  
This legislation should have been passed 3 or 4 years ago. Other matters associated with this legislation should have been passed 5 or 6 years ago. I make no criticism whatsoever of the people who work in the Ministry of Justice today or who worked for me in terms of the slowness of it. People can do only so much on any particular day. If we want this type of legislation passed we simply have to put the time and resources into it which means engaging hiring and employing the civil servants with the skills and capacity to develop the policy to write the papers and to write the legislation for us. Unless we are prepared to commit to that then the reform of our judicial processes which is well behind where it should be will continue to drag on. The only sufferers will be the people who use it either willingly or reluctantly.  
I will make a couple of points about the reform. Anybody who goes to a local courthouse on a Monday morning will see a great big queue of people standing outside waiting to be heard. They have all been told to turn up at 10 o’clock but they are then processed in some haphazard order; no one knows when they will be heard. They could be heard at 2 or 3 o’clock. I do not know of any other part of the State that does it in this way. Imagine if a hospital said it was going to do hip operations and everybody should turn up on Monday. It would have queues everywhere and people would then wait and wait to see the doctor. They would camp and camp and camp. Of course the health system does not do that. It gives people a date and time to see the specialist and we turn up in an orderly queue. We are treated in a civilised manner. But in the court system one is simply told to wait and wait. This is out of date; it is antediluvian.  
A lot of other things also need to be done such as electronic filing in courts. We have to do a lot more work which requires a lot more policy. I re-emphasise the point made by Charles Chauvel that the overhaul of the administration of our justice system lags well behind. Charles made a very good point that we have had a change in people: the Hon Simon Power Georgina te Heuheu and the Secretary for Justice. At a time when the system needs to be overhauled and have strength and direction it has had a complete change of the guard. It seems to us that this will simply exacerbate the problem.  
We will be faced with more situations in which this type of amendment—worthy justified and supported by the Opposition—will come to this House in an inappropriate way. That is no criticism of the staff who bring the work together; it is a criticism of the structures and resources that are not there in order to do the job properly. We will continue to suffer from this until it is well managed.  
Labour will support the suspension of the Standing Orders we will support the motion for the legislation to be put before the Committee and we will in all probability support the legislation when it comes before the Committee. Thank you.