Faafoi Kris: Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Faafoi Kris: Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 20 February 2013. Volume:687;Page:8077. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 For those watching Parliament TV tonight—those who have chosen to watch the Habeas Corpus Amendment Bill instead of watching England’s run chase—I just wanted to give you a bit of a match update of where we are at this point of the debate. What we have got here is a match within a match. There is one that is quite serious—a legal argument about habeas corpus—but there is another match. We call it gerrymandering and I think you could probably call it batting for time with the Government because it is trying to stretch out what is going on on this members’ day. It is trying to make sure that it can stock its side of the agenda with a lot of meaningless bills which should not be put through under a members’ bill. I do— 
Tim Macindoe 
: So what is the score at McLean Park? 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: And that is the real story of what is going on here. This bill should not be being debated on this day a members’ day because this bill should have been put through as a Government bill and should have been dealt with by the justice Minister. With all due respect to the member in charge of the bill Chris Auchinvole—a very fine member of this Parliament—essentially what he has done is take the recommendations from the Law Commission report. It had put a draft bill in the report. He has pushed Ctrl-C he has pushed Ctrl-V and then put this bill into the member’s ballot and this is what we have got in front of us here today. 
This bill should not be taking up the time of this House and I think maybe some members on that side of the House realise that. Alfred Ngaro and Scott Simpson took all of about 10 seconds to debate this bill and that is the level of respect maybe that they have for this bill and the time that it is taking up in this House. Earlier in his contribution or it may have been by way of an interjection Mr Auchinvole was asked why he did not got into more detail about this bill and his reply was: “Time constraints.” I will probably ask those who may be recording this debate at home to go and check just how much time Mr Auchinvole took up during his contribution to the bill. He had a 10-minute call and took up probably 5 minutes so there were no time constraints at all preventing him from going into some of the finer details of this bill. 
This bill should not be being debated as a member’s bill. The members’ bill process is here for all members of this House to be able to put through issues that they hold dear whether it be for their own electorate or their portfolio area. On this side of the House we believe that the Government’s ploy is to stack the ballot with bills in the names of National backbench MPs basically to stop other meaningful bills that could be being put through under a member’s bill from being put through this House—being put through this House. So we do not support the way in which the National Party has used the process of members’ bills to put forward bills of this nature. We have seen other bills put through last year under this same guise while other more meaningful bills that have been put forward by other members and have had the luck of being drawn from the ballot have been at the bottom of the Order Paper on these members’ days and we certainly think that that is a shame. 
But looking at some of the details of the bill itself there are some recommendations that have been made by the Law Commission that I think are worthy. I think it may have been Andrew Little who talked about the benefit of being able to have the provision of permitting pre-hearing conferences by either telephone or video link or by other technology authorised by the rules of the court. We think that that could be quite handy in terms of making sure there is swifter justice for people who find themselves in the situation of having a habeas corpus hearing where it is appropriate of course. I do note there is some concern from the Green Party about whether or not a videoconference facility or making use of that technology is the appropriate thing to do and I guess that is something that we will continue to debate. But there was also another recommendation by the Law Commission that “… the High Court or a Judge of that Court should be given the ability to dispense in appropriate cases with the rule that habeas corpus applications take precedence over all other business:”. That has come about because there have been quite a few cases of the misuse of the habeas corpus procedures by some applicants in order to get priority over other issues that should have been dealt with. 
That deals with a couple of issues around the details of the bill but I just did want to go back to the nature of way that this bill has been brought to the House. You know if you are going to use a word that the Hon John Banks might use it could be described as gerrymandering. We do not believe that this bill should have come to this House in this way. Mr Auchinvole claimed that this bill is worthy of working into the night hours but on this side of the House we really do wonder whether that is certainly the case. We do believe it should have been brought to this House in a much more substantive way by the justice Minister Judith Collins but— 
Denis O’Rourke 
: But there’s no substance in it. 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: Well it could have if it was put together with a whole lot of other things which should have been the way that this bill entered the House—as a Statutes Amendment Bill. But it was not brought to the House in that fashion and you do have to wonder about the way in which the justice Minister worked last year. There are a number of issues that she certainly was not on top of in the justice portfolio that fell over and certainly we do not need to mention what happened in terms of ACC. 
I would like a member’s bill to be pulled out of the ballot. I have not had that luxury yet in my 2.4 years— 
Dr David Clark 
: Oh really? 
KRIS FAAFOI 
: No I have not. I have not had that luxury. So that even more personally guts me to think that this process has been used by the Government to bring this bill to the House in this way. I do note that Labour is supporting this bill but I just did want to remind people at home who can now switch over back to the cricket of the way in which the Government is using this process to gerrymander the process.