Connell Brian: Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
Connell Brian: Judicature Amendment Bill (No 3) — In Committee 
[Volume:630;Page:2245] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 I will pick up where my National colleagues left off and the first issue I want to raise is the Supplementary Order Paper. I agree with the analysis of Dr Worth and Mr Finlayson that the Supplementary Order Paper makes a lot of sense but I do wonder how it is that a select committee can sit through its process and not have this issue brought before it. Here we are now on the day the bill is being debated in the Committee stage and the amendment is actually being put before the Committee for discussion. I do not believe that it makes for good order or good business for such things to be dropped on the Committee at the last moment. That is not an argument about the veracity of the Supplementary Order Paper; it is just an observation about the process. That is the first thing I wanted to raise. The second issue concerns the fact that most speakers here tonight have legal backgrounds. I do not and one of the benefits of sitting through the select committee process as a lay person is that one sits there and tries to determine issues as matters of practical— 
Dr Richard Worth 
: Common sense. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
:—common sense is the term I was looking for—as opposed to legal process. 
The argument that was put forward in favour of more judges was one of workload. I listened carefully to the arguments that were mounted and on balance I accepted those arguments. But I feel we are still falling into the trap of treating the symptoms and not the problem. What we did not do and one of the things I argued at the time was look beneath the surface of what those workload pressures are all about. My colleague Chris Finlayson has raised the issue of too many District Court jury trials going to the Court of Appeal. I see nothing in the discussion from the Government that suggests it is in a position and has the will to do something about that. So that is something else I would ask the Committee to be cognisant of. 
The other issue raised by a submitter is the use of seconded judges in the Court of Appeal or judges seconded from the District Court to the High Court and from the High Court to the Court of Appeal. One of the concerns raised was double-dipping. The issue at hand was that a lot of those judges were retired judges who were claiming superannuation and at the same time could claim salaries of $240000-odd. That figure is not exact it is approximate but it is the best as my memory serves me. We were satisfied that nothing was illegal in that but the issue was raised of its morality. I think people listening out there might be concerned to know why that issue was not addressed. 
The other issue I want to spend a little time talking about is the reporting of judges’ decisions. I notice that hitherto a decision could be reported to an empty courthouse which did not make good use of judicial resources. The bill will take care of that issue by allowing decisions to be reported through the registry. That is fine but in the course of those discussions another issue was raised—that is that a number of judges’ decisions were not being authenticated. By that I mean that a judge was not putting his or her name to a decision which leaves us with the possibility that some people sitting in the Court of Appeal as judges could actually be sitting in judgment upon themselves and the parties affected by the decision would not know about it. I thought that surely that could not be right so I asked around for some advice. Our officials sought advice from the President of the Court of Appeal who told us that if that were happening it was inadvertent. On face value I accepted that and so did the members of the select committee until submitters started raising it as an issue. A high-profile legal professional said: “Look that does happen; it happens all too often.” So I and other colleagues on the select committee moved to try to deal with that issue. 
I have to say that the advice and help we got from our officials on the issue was first class. I do not mind saying that I thought we should make sure that a provision requiring that judges’ decisions were authenticated should be written into the legislation. As I have already said our officials wrote to the President of the Court of Appeal who gave us that advice and he said he would make sure that he reinforced with the judiciary that those decisions were to be authenticated. Again that did not satisfy me because with the best will in the world the current President of the Court of Appeal might do that but personnel change and I wanted it to be written into legislation. After our discussion it became apparent to me that that probably was not the best course of action so a compromise decision was reached whereby the Regulations Review Committee would address this matter in regulations. I am now satisfied on this matter. 
So I will conclude my initial remarks by saying the National Party supports dealing with the issue around having more judicial resources at the Court of Appeal. I think though that an underlying issue does need to be addressed which is finding out what is exacerbating the workload pressures. I thought the contribution made by the Maori Party member was very good and very relevant in regard to this issue. But I also believe that the process itself may be flawed and that it should be refined somewhat.