Borrows Chester: Justices of the Peace Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Borrows Chester: Justices of the Peace Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:638;Page:8368] 
CHESTER BORROWS (National—Whanganui) 
: 
 It is a privilege to be able to speak to the Justices of the Peace Amendment Bill. I will take a couple of moments just to say how grateful I am for the work that JPs do right around the country. As my parliamentary colleague mentioned 10700 of them operate around New Zealand and every day of the week hundreds of them are sitting on depositions hearings traffic courts and infringement courts and listening to bail hearings. I understand that about 34 percent of bail hearings in this country are conducted by justices of the peace so they must save our judicial system a heck of a lot of money. JPs are in charge of distributing and allocating a heck of a lot of justice around our country. I wonder just how our system would cope without them. Many many JPs have given years and years of careful consideration to the pleas of those appearing before them and they have very much enhanced the system we have in this country. 
I will take a couple of minutes to acknowledge the work that JPs put into making submissions in respect of constructing the bill. They raised three particular issues before us. The first one was what to do with long-serving JPs who for one reason or another cannot continue with their duties. How could we treat them graciously and with dignity and not require them to continue to function when under pressure due to age or ill health? JPs take their function seriously and so does the rest of the community. The ability to allow JPs to retain an honorific of “JP (retired)” treats those people with dignity and accords them the grateful thanks of New Zealanders for the work they have done for the country. 
The next question raised by the JPs was how we supply JPs with training sufficient for the task before them and how we create in them the capability to serve the community in their judicial office a role which is becoming more complex and more demanding. The point was made that training should begin before a warrant is extended to JPs. A number of examples were given of JPs who having been sworn into office were unable to continue with their duties—were unable in some cases even to take up the most basic of duties—because of a lack of understanding of the language or a lack of understanding of the office they were to perform. Of course we know that 70 percent of all criminal information that comes before the courts has been dealt with by justices of the peace so they must have a huge level of understanding in order to make the decisions that they are called upon to make. 
The last question raised was how we deal with the very small number of JPs who show a lack of competence in their duties or for some reason cannot continue with their duties. Unfortunately in respect of some of them there has been an offence of some kind. How do we deal with JPs when they become unsuitable? That matter needed to be dealt with discreetly with some sensitivity. I believe that this bill does that. 
I reiterate the comments of others who served on the Law and Order Committee about the way the task of dealing with this legislation was addressed. It was done in good faith and obviously a lot of time and commitment were put into it. In fact there were six drafts of this bill before it was finally reported back to the House. Members of the committee worked well together and took seriously the matter before them.