Dalziel Lianne: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Dalziel Lianne: Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Particulars of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 31 July 2012. Volume:682;Page:4124. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) 
: 
 I think the member who has just resumed her seat Jacqui Dean was telling us about how urgent it was that this House address this particular matter. I think she said things about members on this side of the Chamber who have said very clearly that we support the passage of the bill the Juries (Jury Service and Protection of Jury List Information) Amendment Bill in respect of this particular matter because it is an important issue. But when she describes it as an urgent issue she is describing a bill that was introduced on 5 April 2011. I think that was before the last general election. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: Say that again. When? 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: It was introduced on 5 April 2011. To be true to its word the Government did treat it urgently. It had its first reading on 12 April 2011 which is pretty smart. Who was the Minister back then? I think it might have been a different Minister. But he was in charge back then and he said it was urgent and it needed to go straight to a select committee. We had had a problem arise where a particular juror had been followed up by somebody who was defending themselves. They had access to information that would normally go through their lawyer. It had raised a genuine issue so he introduced the bill on 5 April and it had its first reading on 12 April. 
Submissions to the Law and Order Committee were due on 26 May. The then chair of the Law and Order Committee Jacqui Dean who has just resumed her seat was obviously working under instruction that this was an urgent bill and had to be dealt with quickly. We needed quick submissions and we needed to get it back to the House so it could be dealt with as a matter of urgency as we have heard from her just now. So it was dealt with and the submissions were due on 26 May. That is a very quick turn-round for submissions to be called for. When did the select committee report back to the House? Well actually it did a very very good job. It did it on 11 July 2011. That is extraordinary. It absolutely did its job; it got this bill back. 
When did the bill have its second reading? The 22nd of May this year. 
Chris Hipkins 
: Nearly a year later. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Nearly a year later the Government managed to actually prioritise something that it told this House was such an urgent priority that had to be addressed. We have heard it repeated tonight from Jacqui Dean criticising this side of the Chamber for daring to raise the actual substance of the issues in the debate and for actually seeing exactly what it is that the Government has done. The reality is that when it suits the Government to choose something as a particular issue for the— 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: SOEs. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Well State-owned enterprises—it managed to get that legislation through a heck of a lot more quickly and why did it get that through so quickly? Do you think the Government might be nervous about a certain number of signatures that are being added to the petition day by day by day? Of course that takes priority. This issue which we have just had a lecture about from the former chair of the Law and Order Committee— 
Charles Chauvel 
: She’s still the chair. 
Hon LIANNE DALZIEL 
: Oh she is still the chair. Well I have not had the pleasure of actually serving on that committee at any stage; that just reminds me that I am very busy tomorrow morning because I know that the whips are looking for somebody to serve on that committee tomorrow. 
But the truth is that there is no question of urgency when one is dealing with these matters unless it is a matter that the Government wants to bring to the attention of the House at a particular time. Yes it was urgent back then because there had been I think a fundamental flaw in the system that allowed access to information that would not normally be available to somebody. Nobody had thought about that being an issue before. It did come up as an issue and it was dealt with in an appropriate way. But for my colleague Charles Chauvel to then to get a lecture in the Chamber from the chair of the select committee for daring to debate the substance of the issue—and my colleague Charles Chauvel actually does understand these issues extremely well—on the basis that the time frame for dealing with these issues still meets that urgency when we find ourselves 11 months or 10 months down the track from when the bill was reported back from the select committee is absolutely extraordinary. In fact it is 12 months later now that we are debating it in its Committee stage. We have made it absolutely clear that we agree with the substance of this part.