Adams Amy: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeAdams Amy: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 03 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10676. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon AMY ADAMS (Minister of Justice): It is a great pleasure to come down and take a call in the 2014-15 annual review debate. First of all I want to begin by just acknowledging the Justice and Electoral Committee which does a huge amount of work in this space and of course the Law and Order Committee. I see that the chairs of both committees—Jacqui Dean who chairs the Justice and Electoral Committee and Kanwaljit Singh Bakshi who chairs the Law and Order Committee—are present. The members on both of those committees do a huge amount of work in this sector and I do want to acknowledge all of the members on those committees for their diligent work.The role of the justice sector in my view is really about reducing harm and victimisation wherever we can and of course maintaining trust and confidence in our institutions and recognising that when people are in contact with the justice sector it is generally not somewhere that they want to be. It is not something that they have chosen for themselves and it is our job I think to make sure that we deal with them as fairly and as efficiently as possible and allow them to get on with their lives as soon after that as we can. I think in that regard a huge amount of work has been going on under the radar that I want to take a moment to reflect on. It is obviously not only about the people using the sector but also about the taxpayers who fund it and my view is that we have to work very hard to ensure that our services are as supportive and enabling for our customers and as effective for them as they can be and efficient for the taxpayers.When I came into the Chamber I heard Jacqui Dean speaking very eloquently about a lot of the work we are doing in family and sexual violence and members of this Committee will know that I have made this my No. 1 priority in my time as the Minister of Justice. There is a huge amount that we could talk about in that space alone but actually in this contribution having heard the contribution from the chair of the select committee rather than repeat much of what she touched on I thought I would focus instead on some of the areas in the justice sector that perhaps do not get as much visibility because often it is the smaller less newsworthy or less exciting initiatives that we do that make a significant difference. I think some of those really do deserve a little bit of visibility.I talked about the fact that when people come into the court system they generally want to get through it as efficiently and as fairly as possible and one of the big focuses for us has been on reducing the times through the courts. I want to acknowledge the work of my predecessor in the role of Minister of courts in this regard Judith Collins who really kicked off this piece of work. There has been a focus for some time on saying we need to get the court system operating more quickly and more efficiently than it has been and I am pleased to report to this Committee that we have made significant progress. If you look at the category of District Court criminal trials alone over the past few years we have managed to reduce the number of cases that have been there more than 2 years by 73 percent—a 73 percent reduction in aged cases.In fact those sorts of reductions of time are not unique to District Court criminal cases. The Māori Land Court aged cases are down 35 percent Employment Court is down 30 percent Environment Court is down 22 percent and District Court civil originating applications aged cases are down 41 percent. So there has been a tremendous focus from all of the staff who work in our court system and I want to acknowledge them because up and down this country we have thousands of people who work incredibly hard in our courts all around New Zealand and they really have a very very strong focus on getting a better faster resolution of issues for New Zealanders. Their work has paid significant dividends and they deserve acknowledgment.I also want to comment on the increased use of audiovisual links. Over the year in question that we are discussing we saw the continuation of the roll-out of audiovisual links across our courts. As well as being a very efficient and effective way to use technology and reduce cost one of the unspoken—well certainly spoken by me but perhaps unrecognised—benefits has been the reduction in the number of prisoner transports. So it is a reduction in the security and the court time and—actually helping the victims to find the process easier—through not having to move the prisoners back and forward often quite long distances. When I was visiting Ms Dean’s electorate in Ōāmaru we found that youth offenders were being transported from Christchurch from the youth justice residence Te Puna Wai o Tuhinapo all the way to Ōāmaru every time there was a call-over. So obviously that is a significant impact.In the use of audiovisual links just in the area in question we saw a 25 percent reduction in prisoner transports just from having that system. These are the sorts of figures you do not hear a lot about but they make a significant difference to both the offenders in the system and as I say the victims and also the cost and safety of all of our corrections and security staff. I can tell this Committee that since the year in question the use of audiovisual links has gone up and up. So we have gone from about 9000 instances of use in the year in question—that is increasing and we are now up to around 1000 a month which I find very encouraging. The most recent court to get its audiovisual links upgrade is the Waitakere District Court as part of a $3.8 million refurbishment which we are going to visit shortly. I am very proud of the work that we are doing in this space.