Jones Dail: Judicial Matters Bill — First Reading 
Jones Dail: Judicial Matters Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:648;Page:17308] 
DAIL JONES (NZ First) 
: 
 Although I really appreciate praise like that from any sector of the House and especially from Mr Finlayson in the National Party I regret to say I will have to disappoint him on this occasion. That is probably not for the first time or the last time but I can see that he will go home terribly disappointed—his handkerchief is out already—and he may not be able to make it back tomorrow morning because he will be so upset. The Judicial Matters Bill is really just a technical minor bill—that is all it is. The bill allows the Judicial Conduct Commissioner to have a deputy and it increases the number of associate judges. That is all it does. 
I am disappointed that the old tradition we used to have in the National Party in this House from 1975-84 where one sat and listened to the next speaker is not continued by current National Party members of Parliament. I raise the point that Mr Finlayson’s speech was in direct opposition to the speech made by Mr Worth in so far as associate judges are concerned and regarding judges. On the one hand we heard from Mr Worth that judges are not working hard enough—and he came up with some statistics on that—but on the other hand we heard from Mr Finlayson that High Court judges have a crippling workload. The National Party is hopelessly confused in so far as its approach to this legislation is concerned. I wonder what the next National Party speaker will say. We have had a sort of flip-flop already—we have had only two National Party speakers and they have contradicted themselves in the space of two speeches. Out of respect I listened to what they had to say and I think perhaps the next speaker from the National Party will clarify its actual view of the workload of High Court judges. 
Mr Finlayson is in fact more accurate than Mr Worth. Mr Worth was referring to practice in 1960 and comparing it with that today. Well strangely enough I did appear in the High Court in 1969 so I can say I practised in the 1960s—doing a jury trial or two and other High Court matters at the time; usually that divorce court stuff that we used to do hoping we would get Justice Woodhouse rather than Justice Moller to do the decree nisi. But the workload of a judge in the 1960s was quite different from the current workload and Mr Finlayson hit the nail on the head. In those days we did not have the needless discovery of documents; today that can go on forever. We did not have methamphetamine cases that go on forever and all those new types of issues that arise. We did not really need masters—or associate judges as they are now called—in those days to any extent and we used to just deal with those issues in front of a judge in chambers and usually in the High Court library. I am speaking about what used to be the Supreme Court in those days; we changed the name to the High Court in the late 1970s or early 1980s. 
So I can see the need for an increase in associate judges absolutely immediately. Of course the cap is a maximum. One does not necessarily have to appoint the additional associate judges immediately. It will all depend upon the circumstances and whether the Minister and the appropriate authorities decide that they are required. I was disappointed in the disagreement on the part of the National Party on that particular issue. 
Of course the most useful role of the Judicial Conduct Commissioner turns out to be that members of Parliament do not have their time wasted by people who say the judge got it wrong and ask what they are going to do about it. I am sure any number of members of Parliament especially those of us who have been constituency members of Parliament—I am not one now but for 9 years I was a constituency member of Parliament—would invariably get at least one or two cases bundled around various members of Parliament. One might have been the first or the fifth member to be contacted by the particular litigant who would be very upset about the outcome. Now of course that type of issue is referred to the Judicial Conduct Commissioner who must have a handle on how to deal with those types of issues and deal with them as gently and as wisely as possible. Really they are examples of upset litigants who are not happy with the outcome of a case. 
The other issue of course and again I was very disappointed in Mr Worth when he seemed to attack the Judicial Conduct Commissioner— 
Debate interrupted.