MEDIA RELEASE

EMBARGOED UNTIL 7PM, 12 OCTOBER 2006

Rt Hon Sir Geoffrey Palmer
President
Law Commission

The President of the Law Commission, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, welcomed the new Law Commission programme today.

At a speech to the Council of the New Zealand Law Society, Sir Geoffrey outlined new projects that had been agreed to by the Minister of Justice, the Honourable Mark Burton, who is also Minister responsible for the Law Commission:

“I am very excited with the range of projects that the Commission is now engaged in. Some of them are of far reaching importance to New Zealand’s legal system”, Sir Geoffrey said.

Among the new projects for the Law Commission are:

- Accessibility of New Zealand Statute Law – Indexing and Arrangement;

- Sedition;

- Public Inquiries;

- Privacy;

- Simplification of criminal procedure;

- Continuing work reforming sentencing and parole;

- A unified tribunal framework.

Sir Geoffrey released the Terms of Reference for these inquiries.

“The privacy inquiry in particular comprises a large and important project covering many different aspects of the law, not just the Privacy Act 1993”.

“It is gratifying that the Law Commission has been given such a varied and important programme,” Sir Geoffrey concluded.

ENDS

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