Last night saw the committee stage of the Courts (Remote Participation) Bill, aimed at streamlining the courts process by allowing defendants and witnesses to appear by video-link. The bill will allow trials to proceed much faster, but it also undermines the right to appear at your own trial, one of the fundamentals of our justice system.
Fortunately, there's a happy ending to this story. The Greens Greens, Labour and the Maori Party defended human rights so strongly last night that the government backed down and introduced a hurriedly-drafted amendment to ensure that defendants would only participate by video-link with their consent. The result is a bill which protects human rights rather than undermines them, and which is now likely to pass its third reading unanimously.
This is a good example of how the parliamentary process can work to produce better legislation and better policy. Unfortunately, it usually doesn't - but sometimes, at least, we win.
Updated: So, it wasn't just the Greens, as my cursory glance this morning and skimming of tweets last night suggested. This was a full-on effort by all opposition parties which was successful. Hone Harawira's powerful speech is here; I haven't seen anything from Labour on it (trumpet your successes, dammit!), but apparently Lianne Dalziel and David Parker were instrumental in brokering the compromise which led to a better, and unanimously supported, bill.
