Tisch Lindsay: Supreme Court Bill — In Committee 
Tisch Lindsay: Supreme Court Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:612;Page:9056] 
LINDSAY TISCH (NZ National—Piako) 
: 
 It is a great headline in the paper today is it not? It states: “Stop this stunning abuse of power” and to have the Minister’s photo there with that comment—“Stop this stunning abuse of power”—says it all. As we have heard during the Committee stage of this debate— 
Stephen Franks 
: Is that Snow White or the wicked queen? 
LINDSAY TISCH 
: Well it could be both. The member is right; it is a good question he has asked. When we look at the abuse and the changes to the constitution which I talked about during the Committee stage last night we see that not one Government Minister not one Government member has been prepared to stand up and come out and bat for this legislation. Yet this is a major change to the way the courts and the judiciary are going to operate in the future. 
I draw the Committee’s attention to clause 43 and in particular to section (2)(a). Although the bill does not contemplate changes to the Court of Appeal it does reduce the numbers. It is going to reduce the numbers of judges from eight—the Chief Justice the president and six other judges—to six or seven being the president and five or six others. We oppose that. We oppose the reduction of the numbers on the Court of Appeal. 
The creation of the Supreme Court should not be an occasion or a reason for reducing the ability of the Court of Appeal to do its work. It should not be a reason to reduce the funding. In fact as Dail Jones mentioned earlier the workload of the Court of Appeal is such that there should be an increase in the number of judges at that level. In fact when I went back through the submissions I saw that the New Zealand Law Society said that there should be eight judges on the Court of Appeal. Yet here in clause 43 we have a reduction and it is our view that this is wrong because if there is a reduction in numbers and the workload increases—and there was absolutely no evidence that there will be a reduction in the workload at the Court of Appeal level—the Supreme Court is not going to take over and simply fill the void. There will be an increase in the workload of the Court of Appeal and what this clause does is actually reduce the numbers of judges. If that goes hand in hand with the reduction of resources be they manpower or finance then of course we are very concerned about that. 
It was interesting to hear the submissions of the Bar Association which considered it a very serious error to approach the reduction of the Court of Appeal contemporaneously with the creation of the Supreme Court. This is the association’s comment: “At present the Court of Appeal is seriously overcommitted with a complement of seven permanent judges plus significant resources from High Court judges sitting on rotation in divisional courts plus the occasional availability of the Chief Justice. It is symptomatic of an unacceptable cheese-paring attitude to contemplate immediate reduction in the judicial resource in the Court of Appeal.” It goes on to say: “The extent to which it can be prudently reduced ought to be left for reassessment after a period of operation of any Supreme Court.” This is the point that we have made. 
 It is all very well bringing in a new structure but if at the same time we do not give the resources to what will be a very important part of the judicial system then we find that a major failing. That is one of the points that came through in today’s  
New Zealand Herald 
. The headline states: “Stop this stunning abuse of power” and the article goes on to state: “To assume that a wafer-thin majority is sufficient to enact fundamental changes to the legal and constitutional fabric of New Zealand is nothing short of an abuse of power.” Here we have the number of judges on the Court of Appeal being reduced to be replaced by something inferior.