Court inquiry continues

Press, 27 April 1983, Page 26

Court inquiry continues

PA Wellington A deputy registrar of the criminal section of the District Court at Wellington had no knowledge of purge reports until after investigations into court procedures began last year and did not audit minor offence files to disclose irregularities, a Commission of Inquiry has heard. Te Rereka Haenga Wanoa, who had worked in

the Justice Department since leaving school in 1966 and who had been a deputy registrar since 1974, said he knew staff were receiving minor offence notices, “some of them with large blocks of minor offence notices.” “I wondered what staff were doing about their notices. I suppose there was some doubt or suspicion in my mind. I left it at that,” he told the commission.

Members of the commission are Mr Peter Hillyer, Q.C. (chairman), Mr Gideon Tait, a former Auckland Assistant Police Commissioner, and Mr Eric Missen, a former Secretary for Justice, investigating irregularities in Wellington District Court procedures, will resume on April 28. “Piles and piles of work accumulated in minor offences ... far more work than the minor offence sec-

tion could posssibly cope with,” Mr Wanoa said.

“All staff hated working in minor ottences ... 1 just put up with the situation and tried to persevere,” he said.

Mr Wanoa said he believed the irregularities in court procedures occurred because the minor offence section could not cope with the volume of work. “I do not think it had enough staff ... the fact that the staff were not all in one place did not help either. There may have been a lack of instruction or training but we did our best

.'.. there was not a lot of time for training,” he said.

After the investigations into court procedures began last August, the deputy registrar, Mr Lindsay Auger, told Mr Wanoa he should be making random checks of the purge reports, or lists of files entered in the computer as “not served.” The random sample check would ensure that each had been properly “not served.”

“I was not aware that I was meant to be doing this and, in fact, did not know what a purge report was,” Mr Wanoa said. Under cross-examination by counsel for the Justice Department, Mr John Gib son, Mr Wanoa admitted that if he had made certain checks such as auditing minor offence files and purge reports he may have known and done something about the irregularities which were happening.