Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Co-Leader—Green): The Greens are pleased to support what is absolutely a sensible piece of legislation going through this House as has often been referred to by my colleagues. I too with my colleague the Hon James Shaw was just trying to figure out whether there have been other cases of an Opposition member's bill being picked up and then put through by the Government. My colleague seems to think that there are examples of this happening before but I think this was one of the most important points for me to reflect on in this second reading of this bill. I am new to this bill. It would have been a really interesting bill to sit on at the Justice Committee. As Chris Penk the previous speaker referred to the Justice Committee report back is quite fascinating in terms of some of the changes that came through. What this is about is making sure that we protect the right to fair trial and so the bill wants to pull together laws around contempt into one single piece of legislation to make sure that it's accessible. Currently as things stand there is a mixture of places where people can find contempt law. We need to make sure that we modernise the language and you know that is something quite common across a lot of our laws. Actually I was wondering if anyone in the House could help me. It referred to the current legislation having antiquated language and I was trying to find some examples of that language. So if anyone's got some examples of that I'd be really happy to hear that. This bill is also about modernising law and people have referred to keeping pace with the digital age. But my goodness I literally visualised what it must be like now with the rate at which we can access information to hand immediately and how that can potentially disrupt a fair trial process. There's a bit of a consideration that I also feel is important to acknowledge in my reading of this while on the one hand we need to review the whole entire justice system and what happens in courts—and that work is happening with the Hon Andrew Little—and make sure the overall system is fair and has integrity at its best. What that means is currently a lot of Māori and Pacific low-income people appear before courts so while we want to make sure that our overall system is fair we absolutely have to protect the integrity of what happens when people—victims and perpetrators—have to appear before the courts. That's why the Greens are very clear on this and pleased to be able to support this. I imagine that in the Justice Committee given that this was a bill that came from the Hon Chris Finlayson who—I have to put my words on Hansard about his impeccable taste in making sure that law and legislation is up to scratch. Having served with him on my beloved Māori Affairs Committee I know very well that I am very honoured and privileged to have had a first-hand scenic understanding of exactly how important the integrity of the law is to that former honourable member. So I imagine that on the Justice Committee the putting through of the discussions and debates about the changes of this law were amicable and were cooperative and I heard a little bit about that tonight from those members who are fortunate enough to sit on that committee. Therefore the changes that came through in the select committee report back had a collegial agenda behind them to make sure that this is the best bill that we can possibly offer going forward. So the bill summarises the main following areas of changes to make sure that we have got those objectives of law in this single piece—modernising the language and modernising the law. There are the areas of juror contempt and untrue allegations against judges and I was very pleased to hear my colleague Dr Webb's explanation about the difference between an allegation against judges and an opinion against their ruling or an opinion about the process that they took. It also goes into limiting publication of trial-related information and prohibiting publication of certain criminal trial information—and I am very interested to see how this will play out in some of the high-profile cases we've got coming up that we also know about; there's more than one obvious one—and also enforcement of court orders. I then thought because there was particular example—and I think it was just from this here—of a contempt of court that I don't think this bill touches on but I am happy to be corrected because I wanted to check it on the floor of the House. There was a case only this year of a woman escaping penalty after giving muffins to jurors at the High Court and attempting to influence jurors and I wondered whether that sort of contempt is covered in this bill. From the areas that I have outlined it wouldn't appear to be but perhaps in the committee stage that's something that others might like to address. I actually said I wanted to make a short call and here I am still here. The only other comment I wanted to make was that certainly giving clearer direction to media about reporting and including a prohibition on reporting on prior convictions to help ensure a fair trial is important and why is that? Because the media are also human and because the media will make human judgments and human judgments also contain bias and discrimination. So that's why I wanted to pick up on how important it is in particular to have clearer guidelines around media reporting because the media are not robots and they will bring their own views and analyses. So I welcome that particular part of this law. I do not just commend this bill to the House but I also commend both Minister Little and the former member the Hon Chris Finlayson for bringing together the collaboration for all of the members in this House to ensure the strengthening of democratic fair processes and trials in court. Thank you Mr Speaker.