McKee NicoleNICOLE McKEE (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party to speak to the COVID-19 Response (Courts Safety) Legislation Bill in this second reading and I note that this is an omnibus bill and it is being heard under urgency in order to allow our judiciary to mitigate the risk that the impact of COVID-19 restrictions enforced under the COVID-19 response Act. So what does this bill actually do? We covered this before but I'm going to cover it again because I think it's important. It's amending three pieces of legislation: the Courts Security Act 1999 the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 and the Juries Act 1981. So bear in mind that this bill is being heard under urgency with reduced time for submitters to prepare and appear in front of the Justice Committee to speak to and of their concerns. The effect of the amendments on these three pieces of legislation includes: for example under the Courts Security Act 1999 it will enable the judiciary and the Ministry of Justice to impose requirements relating to COVID-19 for people entering or remaining in any court and in some tribunals. Those requirements include allowing security stationed at the front of and throughout the courts to determine whether or not a person can enter remain or partake in the court process based on these imposed requirements. Now that could be anything because nothing yet is determined that will tell us what will allow or disallow you entry into the courts. The Minister of Justice says that there's no vaccine mandates to restrict access but that's not determined within this bill. This bill could allow the courts to impose vaccine mandates if they wished and that is concerning because it is time to move on. Also being amended under this omnibus bill is the Criminal Procedure Act 2011 and it's about the access to justice protections that sit within sections 196 to 198 of the Act. This amendment confirms that courts holding remote hearings it's OK to do and it confirms that it would not be inconsistent with the right of the public or the media to attend criminal hearings. So this is a confirmation of what is already happening in aspect to that bill. Lastly the Juries Act 1981: this amendment allows the judiciary to set requirements for managing juries and I find this intriguing because I note also that as recently as 24 March 2022 the Ministry of Justice released their jury bubble guidelines for safe operation of jury trials. If the Chief High Court Judge and the Chief District Court Judge can release their guidelines then why are we rushing through this piece of legislation which includes amendments to the Juries Act 1981? Another interesting aspect to this urgent bill is that while nearly everything in this bill will expire on the COVID-19 Public Health Response Act 2020 being repealed there are aspects about this amendment that will not expire upon that repeal. The ability for a two-year deferral of jury service based on COVID-19 reasoning will be extended for two years after the COVID-19 Act is repealed as an example. We're told that this amendment is needed to manage keeping jurors safe even though the guidance on exactly this was released nearly three weeks ago by the Ministry of Justice and I note this amendment allows the judiciary to also make exceptions to their own rules. For example the judiciary can allow those who don't meet the requirements that they themselves have set to enter the courts for jury service and be eligible to serve so why are we legislating this? This whole bill is about allowing or disallowing people into the courts based on COVID restrictions which are rapidly decreasing or on COVID requirements made up by the courts and implemented without discussion. So what are the COVID-19 jury requirements that the judiciary can or will impose on those attending courts? We don't know. It's whatever the bench decides it to be perhaps on the day or perhaps on a trial by trial basis and whatever the provisions are that they implement they can continue for two years after the COVID-19 response Act is repealed. The judiciary can change the rules to suit on the day or on the case for one person with something completely different for another and we call this access to justice? When vaccine passes are no longer relevant and the courts are not defined as a mandated service then we question the relevance of continuing to pass this bill under urgency. When we look set to move to the orange traffic light setting possibly as early as tomorrow Labour still continues to move this bill under urgency. I think it is relevant and important to note that the Clerk of the House has reported back to the committee that they did not get enough time to produce a legislative scrutiny because of this bill going through under urgency and the committee noted that the fast-tracking of this bill should not include permanency clauses within it when the time frames for submissions have been reduced. They correctly commented that another bill with fuller time frames should address the issues that the judiciary would like to see made permanent. We conclude that there is no need for this bill at all let alone under urgency. In a democratic society everyone should have equal opportunity to have a say. There is no need for this bill to proceed under urgency without the people of this country having had an opportunity to have a decent go at having their say. If we are to have thriving communities in successful societies then we need to be inclusive and stop making rules that potentially exclude some at the expense of others and at the expense of accessing the judicial system for fair hearings. The people want control of their lives back. They want to not be caught up in more Government bureaucracy. ACT opposes this bill.