McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I stand in support of the Remuneration Authority Legislation Bill and would like to acknowledge the Minister the Hon Aupito William Sio for bringing this bill to the House. The purpose of this bill is to transfer the determination of fees from the Cabinet Fees Framework to the Remuneration Authority and that was done off the back of a review which has already been discussed at length by several members. The review has of course found that there are sets of judiciary personnel I guess is what we'll call them that are actually currently being paid by the Government's fee regime. And I think it's really important that we do ensure that there is independence between the judiciary and the Government especially when it comes to public trust because that public trust and confidence has been wavering quite a lot recently especially when we look at—I don't know; it's not judiciary—Government payments to media. And then we have the public thinking of course that the media are doing the Government's work for them and not giving them the full story.So I think it's really important that we have that balance where when we are working within the judiciary we do have that independence and there cannot be a claim that Government is buying off the justice system. Because with some of the things that have been happening within our justice system more recently especially with being soft on crime as an example you would think that there is some payment possibly going on there although it's not. And the review itself found that in order to make sure that we have a clear line we should actually remove that framework away from the Government and give it to the Remuneration Authority. And ACT does support that.Several members here tonight have talked about the members of the judiciary who this will affect and while they have named them I thought I would just go a little bit further and name actually what they do because that puts a bit of context behind why we need to separate them. So for example the chairperson and deputy chairperson of the Human Rights Review Tribunal come under this regime and it's important that they do because each case that they hear they chair—or the deputy will chair it—and they have two panel members there. And I note also that those panel members don't come under this review; it's just the chairperson and the deputy chairperson. And the review actually found that their jurisdiction is comparable to that of a judge. So with that high importance you would expect that they should be moved into the new regime.Community magistrates at the District Court—they're effectively hearing the cases that a District Court judge would be hearing. So again it makes sense that they would be moved into the new regime. Environment commissioners—they're deputies of the Environment Court. Again it's another court and they hear a lot of appeals. They are skilled workers with lots of qualifications that make decisions that affect the environment and also their local councils as well. So it does make sense that they are also moved into the new regime. Members and deputy chairs of Immigration and the Protection Tribunal—now it's really important that they when hearing appeals hear them as being independent from Government especially when a lot of those appeals actually involve the Minister of Immigration. So pulling those two apart and having a separate regime will stop any accusations especially when there are people who have been given residency or access to come into New Zealand and then create terror while they're here.Then of course there are the tenancy adjudicators and the Tenancy Tribunal. These are already chaired by a District Court judge but it puts the remuneration determinations for the other tribunal members in the hands of the Remuneration Authority just as it does for those judges that are chairing over the Tenancy Tribunal. And then there's the disputes tribunal referees which of course come under a division of the District Court and referees also need to be qualified. So again it makes sense.So as we went through this bill and we listed all of those different areas that needed to be moved over to the Remuneration Authority and away from the fees framework we agreed wholeheartedly that it was really important that they are moved away because it's important—they are important roles and we want to make sure that there is no conflict. We want to make sure that these people that are administering the Government's legislation can do so independently because this will help ensure that we have trust and confidence between the public and the judiciary. We think this will go a long way towards mending some of that trust and confidence that has already been lost. It just goes to show the Government will not be paying for the outcomes that these courts determine. So the importance of the work that they do the qualifications of these people that are in these jobs and the relevance of the work that they do we wholeheartedly agree that there needs to be some independence in those determinations for the reasons I outlined just through this speech.So we're quite happy to support this bill. We think that it's a good job well done and we look forward to it coming to the Justice Committee where we can hear some of the other ideas from submitters and look to put this bill forward. Thank you Madam Speaker.