Collins Judith: Third Readings 
Collins Judith: Third Readings 
[Volume:617;Page:12935] 
JUDITH COLLINS (National—Clevedon) 
: 
 I think it is very pleasing to many members of the House to hear the Attorney-General speak about the importance of the independence of the judiciary. If only we had heard her speak before on this legislation which she has until now been strangely silent on. Having said that it seems to me as though the Attorney-General must be looking at different legislation from this because certainly the submissions from the High Court judges the Court of Appeal judges and the New Zealand Law Society were unanimous in their view that this legislation was an attack on the independence of the judiciary. So I think that perhaps the Attorney-General is looking at different legislation and certainly not the legislation that is before this House. 
Stephen Franks 
: The legislation she thought she had written. 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: As Mr Franks has said it is the legislation she thought she had written. Perhaps the legislation has changed while she was not speaking about it. 
Legislation like this should come before the House to address evils and the evil in this case would no doubt be seen in relation to the appointment of unsuitable people and the disciplining of judges. The Attorney-General has correctly pointed out that this legislation does not address the issue of appointments and she herself has come under considerable negative comment from time to time with regard to her own appointments. Certainly the legislation does deal with discipline but only in relation to the removal of judges. This Parliament as the representative body of the people of New Zealand already has the right to remove a judge. Any member of this House can bring a motion to have a judge removed. The fact that none has had to be removed is an indication that the system works. It works because judges know it can happen and would happen if necessary. It also works because no member of this House is likely either to bring such a motion without some very good advice and reason to do so or to do so without the support of his or her colleagues in Parliament. 
What this legislation does however is to put disciplinary issues off to a commission that this Attorney-General will appoint. So this legislation is in fact an attack on the judiciary. The people of New Zealand are losing the right to be able to speak to their MPs and lobby Parliament to bring about the end of the tenure of a judge who is unsuitable and is acting unsuitably. That right is to be given away and given away to a commission that the Attorney-General will appoint. In other words the very Attorney-General who from time to time makes appointments that many people including myself consider to be inappropriate is to appoint the people who will decide on the actions of those particular people. That is not a move for independence; it is a move for dependence. The judges have rejected it and they have been ignored. They are the very people whom this legislation most affects. I have already in previous debates on this legislation looked at and spoken about the number of complaints—the few that there are—received about the judges in our New Zealand courts from one extreme to the other. 
There are very very few complaints. I note that despite that this legislation is still being pushed through the House and it is being pushed through with a very small majority. Only the Greens have joined with Labour and the Progressive Coalition on this legislation and all other parties have disowned it. Those parties have listened to the people who know best about it: both the judges and the New Zealand Law Society—the people who deal with the law. I do not think we should move past or just ignore the fact that this legislation is an insult to the people of New Zealand. Judges in this country are not elected officials and the people of New Zealand do not get a chance to decide who will be their judges. Many of us would say that that is probably a good thing. But people do currently have the right until this legislation is passed to get any member of this House as their representative to look at and question the actions of judges. That right will be lost because it is to go off into another sphere where a politically appointed group of people will look at that. 
The Minister talked about the appointment process but I note that the date when the new legislation on appointments is to come into force will be very very close to the end of her term as Attorney-General. She will by that time have had 6 years of interference in the judiciary—6 years of appointing people who should not necessarily have been appointed and of a person who has resigned from a District Court position being appointed as a Master of the High Court. Judges are now to be given complete tenure which they did not have before. That is the sort of action this Attorney-General has complied with—in fact she has been absolutely complicit in it. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Unreal! 
JUDITH COLLINS 
: If there is anything that member on the Government side of the House who keeps calling out “Unreal!” all the time does not understand then I consider he should actually read the legislation. As he has not read the legislation he should perhaps be quiet. 
This legislation is a shame. It perpetrates a constitutional outrage upon the people of New Zealand. Unfortunately the media have not quite picked up on the importance of this legislation. It is another example just like the debate on the Privy Council where the issues are very serious. They should be going through to a referendum at the very least but that is being denied yet again by this Government which does not want people to go anywhere near the polls because it has certainly seen what has been happening to the polls lately. I think it is a terrible shame that everybody involved in this legislation says it is bad legislation—everybody from the Law Society to the judges. How often do judges make submissions to select committees? It is an extremely small number of times. They made a submission on this legislation not because they are frightened of having any independence or anything like that. The reason is quite the opposite of that. It is not that judges are frightened of any criticism because they certainly come in for a tremendous amount of criticism which they are often not in a position to deal with. Judges are already under massive public scrutiny. What they are concerned about is that this legislation is yet another attack on their independence and on their ability to do the job. That is a shame. 
The fact is that we will find fewer very qualified competent people in this country who want to be judges. We have already noticed over the last few years that there has been an attitude amongst many of the senior people in the legal profession of not seeking an office in the judiciary. One of the reasons for that is that they feel the position of being a member of the judiciary has been lowered and they do not want to have any part of that. They do not want to have any part of this legislation and nor should we.