Cullen orchestrates a common tune

Michael Cullen

Co-operation between New Zealand and Australia is set to extend to the judicial system, including moves to enforce judgments such as injunctions made in each jurisdiction.

Finance Minister and Attorney-General Michael Cullen yesterday outlined areas being proposed for greater co-operation, but said he did not believe the proposals encroached on the sovereignty of either country.

The moves are aimed primarily at creating legal harmony for business, but will extend to cover some criminal proceedings.

The changes are part of the move towards a single economic market that Dr Cullen and Australian Treasurer Peter Costello embarked on two years ago.

Areas identified for enhanced co-operation include:

* Enforcing tribunal orders across the Tasman.

* Enforcing non-money judgments.

* Enforcing criminal fines for regulatory offences when there is a mutual interest in doing so.

* Extending the transtasman subpoena regime to allow subpoenas for criminal proceedings to be served on witnesses in the other country.

* Allowing lower courts to grant leave to serve a transtasman subpoena in lower court proceedings.

* Obtaining interim relief in one country in support of civil court proceedings in the other.

A transtasman officials working group will produce a document in several weeks detailing the proposals, Dr Cullen said in a speech to the Wellington District Law Society.

He compared the planned co-operation to the existing regimes for allowing extradition orders and to pursue child support payments.

He said the moves came down to the "proper administration of justice" but did not see it as the beginning of the integration of justice systems, nor as involving issues of sovereignty.

"Let's not then try running off a whole set of other stuff which is perhaps more problematic, raises perhaps some more difficult issues in terms of national sensitivities.

"I've got enough problems with potatoes on one side of the Tasman and apples on the other without getting too overly ambitious in terms of these things," Dr Cullen said in reference to the call for a boycott on New Zealand potatoes and the case New Zealand has taken to the World Trade Organisation against an Australia apple ban.

He believed there would be further areas of law in which harmonisation would be pursued "where both countries" are comfortable with that.