$73m budget injection to relieve pressure on courts

1.00pm

Courts Minister Rick Barker said today that pressure on the court system would be eased by a $73 million budget injection.

He said the Government was putting $30m over four years into digital audio technology to improve the recording and transcription of evidence at district and high courts.

New evidence recording equipment would go into 37 additional court rooms, and would cut the time hearings took to complete by 12 per cent.

Mr Barker said judges would be able to hear more cases faster.

The recording equipment meant courts would be able to proceed at "normal speaking speed" with typed transcripts of proceedings available within 30 minutes of evidence having been given.

He also said the Government was putting $1.56m into a two-year pilot scheme using mediators rather than judges in four Family Courts to work with families involved in custody, access or guardianship proceedings.

A capital injection of $10m over two years, plus $7.9m operating funding over four years, was going towards the replacement of computers for new information technology systems.

Another $23.9m over four years was being earmarked to relieve "specific fiscal pressures", which the minister did not identify, that were affecting delivery of court services.

National's law and order spokesman Tony Ryall said he should send the Government a bill for policy advice.

"We've been telling the Government for well over a year to do these things, and they've finally done them," he told NZPA.

"They're not going to have an immediate effect on the court waiting times.

"The most effective thing now that the Government could do to reduce the waiting times is to ask the Supreme Court judges to sit in the High Court for the next few months to clear the backlog."

Mr Ryall said the Supreme Court had "virtually nothing to do" at the moment and putting its judges into the High Court would be good use of their time.

He agreed the court system had needed significant new investment.

"We would have done this quite some time ago when it would have made more of a difference."

- NZPA