Finlayson ChristopherHon CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I want to speak to one particular aspect of the Estimates and that concerns the Attorney-General's appearance before the Justice Committee. I must confess it's my misfortune to have to follow on from the Green MP Golriz Ghahraman whose speech was nothing more than melodramatic and formulaic drivel. There is a lot that I could talk about in her third-grade effort but I would rather concentrate on what could be potentially an important issue. It's one I've raised with the Attorney-General offline but I do need to get it on the record so that if it all blows up at least I can say I told you so."—not you Mr Chair but I mean that in a general sense. It concerns temporary judges.The previous administration decided that temporary judges were constitutionally improper and so when the courts legislation was reformed a couple of years ago the new District Court Act provided that one could no longer appoint temporary judges. The former Attorney-General Dr Cullen had appointed quite a number of temporary judges and at one stage I think there were 22 temporary judges who were appointed for fixed terms. What normally happened would be that District Court judges on a temporary warrant would be made permanent after a period of time. Toward the end of the National Party's term in office we decided that one could no longer simply increase the number of judges every couple of years—although the cap had gone up from 156 to 160 when the new District Courts legislation was passed—and that one needed to have a sensible assessment of just what the population projections were so that there could be a proper discussion about the cap. That work I understand is almost completed now.At the present time we have nine temporary judges whose terms are going to expire between the end of this year and about June next year. My concern is that their terms may expire before this Parliament has had a chance to look at the question of the judicial cap or whether indeed there should be a judicial cap because what we're seeing is that District Court judges continue to be appointed but they are being appointed as permanent judges and that the temporary judges stay in that limbo state of temporary judges. So there is at least a possibility that those persons' terms could come to an end and then they cease to be judges and that could cause problems for the administration of justice. So I think the Government is going to need to get on with this matter pretty urgently to complete the piece of work that has been done as between Mr Little's ministry and the Chief District Court Judge on a judicial resourcing model and then make some decisions about what the cap is to be so that if Parliament needs to move to increase that cap to protect the position of those temporary judges it can do so and those judges will not necessarily cease to be holding judicial warrants.So it's a rather arcane but very important point that this Parliament may need to address at relatively short notice. I've been given to understand that there's no problem but I think there could be a problem and that at least a number of temporary judges' warrants will come to an end. Of course we did not approve of temporary judges because it's unconstitutional for the executive to be appointing people to the judiciary for say a term of two years because the implication—or at least the fear—is that people will say "Well if that person's appointed a judge in order to get a permanent warrant he or she has to please the executive." The important thing is that as soon as judges are appointed they should be able as a separate branch of government to get on with the role of judging without fear or favour in terms of what the executive wants. But it's very important that they not be appointed for fixed terms.So that was the rationale about why temporary judges as a category were disestablished but there is this small remaining group. We need to make sure that if the cap is to be increased it can be increased in such time that these people do not lose their warrants."