te Heuheu Georgina: Supreme Court Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
te Heuheu Georgina: Supreme Court Bill — Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9033] 
Hon GEORGINA TE HEUHEU (NZ National) 
: 
 Part 2 deals with amendments repeals transitional provisions and savings. I wonder whether the Minister who lodged a Supplementary Order Paper today—and quite an extensive one; one that has some impact on Part 2—might take a call to explain the impact of those new provisions she has tabled because of course those did not come before the select committee. One has not necessarily had the chance to read them carefully and at the same time the opportunity to question officials about their impact. 
I have had a call today from people involved in what will possibly become the subject of an appeal to the Privy Council regarding the foreshore and seabed case. They wonder whether the provisions in the Supplementary Order Paper lodged today will have any impact on their desire should they see fit to carry their appeal through to the Privy Council. Maybe the Minister might take a call and we might not get there tonight but I am sure she will oblige in the next session of the Committee. 
I want to acknowledge Minister Taito Phillip Field. I am very pleased that he took a proper call and made the comments that he did. I have great respect for him and for the things he said. I have to say though that I found it difficult to reconcile his comments about New Zealand having the competence to form our own highest court of appeal. He said that we have our own people who are competent to form a strong bench—those are not exactly the words but that is essentially what he said—and it is time we broke the ties with the Privy Council because we can do what Canada and Australia have done: that is show our capability and our own competence here. 
 I do have difficulty with those statements on two counts. The first is—and my colleague Pansy Wong referred to this earlier—to do with the honourable member’s pleadings or petitions in respect of the case that was so important to his own Western Samoan people and how the Samoan community recently sought to have the impacts of what was done to that Privy Council decision reversed. I point out to him that in effect that was not so long ago. That sort of thing could happen again in New Zealand. It happened in New Zealand in our highest court and justice was seen by the Western Samoan people to be delivered in the form of the Privy Council decision. I had a bit of difficulty with his comments but I recognise that he is entitled to make them. 
I also had difficulty on another count. I think it is so ironic that members of the Government stand up and talk about our own competence in New Zealand to establish the highest court in our court structure. They say we have the people in our own judiciary who have the competence to form the Supreme Court yet it is that very Government that has shown its disdain for those judges who are likely to sit on the new court. It has shown it has no respect at all for the competence of those judges by saying it is going to step in and legislate because it does not like the Court of Appeal’s decision on the foreshore and seabed case. It is so ironic. This irony has been pointed out to me a number of times by Maori during the Government’s consultation hui on the foreshore and seabed. 
This is a Government that on the one hand says we have the competence in New Zealand that we are grown up and have the judges to form our highest court of appeal yet on the other hand in one fell swoop on the day after the Court of Appeal delivers a pretty substantial and significant decision in relation to rights that Maori assert in the common law indicates by the action it is going to take on the foreshore issue that it has no regard whatsoever for the competence of those judges it is now going to appoint to the new court.