Calder Cam: Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Calder Cam: Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4442. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a huge pleasure to rise and take a very brief call on the Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill. I appreciate the contributions from all sides of the House. I notice with great delight and pleasure that the whole House is supporting this bill and I commend my colleague Chris Auchinvole for his eminently pragmatic bill. I must say that I do appreciate the contributions of Mr Charles Chauvel both in the select committee and in the House on matters legal but I did find his comments today a trifle judgmental and churlish especially with regard to the filibustering on the Royal Society of New Zealand Amendment Bill that the other side was party to only a few short months ago in this very Chamber. 
I was not a great Latin scholar. I did it only until fifth form year 11. I did manage to get through School Certificate. I can still remember the first line in the Latin primer: “Supra est via Romana via et lata et recta est.”—above is a Roman road the road is broad and straight. I can still remember that. “Habeas corpus” means I think “you have the body”. I was wondering what Su’a William Sio and the Hon David Cunliffe were speaking about in the House during this debate. I wondered at the new cleanly shaven trim tanned and Olympic hopeful haircut on David Cunliffe and I wondered whether my colleague from South Auckland was saying: “Habeas corpus. You have the body. You have the body to be a leader of our party. You have the body to be a leader of our party.” That was just a thought. I cannot confirm that. Of course another David could say “Ecce Davidus habeas corpus.”—alas David you have the body. But then again it has to be a living body as we heard from a previous speaker when talking about a cow in Mumbai. It has to be a living body so that may be a line call with some members of the Labour caucus. 
Colleagues habeas corpus is an ancient writ. It has been called a great writ and not being of the legal fraternity I did look up Blackstone’s  
Commentaries on the Laws of England 
 which of course is the repository of all legal wisdom. I learnt that habeas corpus ad subjiciendum—habeas corpus ad subjiciendum—was actually a writ issued first in the reign of King Edward I in 1305. There have been other writs as we have heard preceding that with a similar target but the basis of the writ is that “the king is at all times intitled to have an account why the liberty of any of his subjects is restrained wherever that restraint may be inflicted.”—so basically to answer the question of whether that detention is lawful. The writ exists basically to ask that question and to protect thereby the personal liberty of a subject and a citizen. Then as now the writ of habeas corpus issued by a superior court is in the name of the sovereign and commands an addressee—perhaps a sheriff a lower court or a private subject—to produce the prisoner before a royal court of law. 
We have heard an excellent summary from my colleague Tim Macindoe the chairman of the Justice and Electoral Committee and also Mr Auchinvole outlining the history of how it came to pass that in 1997 the Law Commission decided that we needed to simplify procedures for dealing with habeas corpus in the New Zealand jurisdiction. This led to the Habeas Corpus Act of 2001 which implemented the changes of that report and formalised habeas corpus in legislation. There were however some anomalies which have been pointed out by previous speakers. In 2007 the Law Commission in consultation with the judiciary and Government agencies came up with the report we are considering now. As Charles Chauvel so well pointed out it forms the basis of this legislation. I do commend this bill to the House.