when I first started out in law school
if someone told me a few years down the
track I would be taking proceedings
against the New Zealand government I
would have found the thought terrifying
and hard to believe as well back then I
knew one side of the story I thought the
law was about the government making it
and enforcing it and the rest of us
following it but I happened to read an
unforgettable case in my first year of
lawyer
which changed my thinking on the law for
good and it showed me there was a whole
other side to that story
that case was Fitzgerald and Muldoon
he might look familiar to some people
back in the nineteen seventies well
before I was born
Prime Minister Robert Muldoon tried to
change the law by publishing a press
statement he told the country the
compulsory superannuation scheme a bit
like a compulsory KiwiSaver would be
suspended so everyone could stop making
payments as of now and they wouldn’t be
breaking the law hopefully all of us in
this room know this is not quite how we
change laws here in New Zealand
Fitzgerald we don’t know a lot about him
but the case tells us that he was
working as a public servant and he was
putting his two dollars and eight cents
into that fund every fortnight so he was
saving up for his retirement and he was
affected by this decision
he took Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to
court and he argued the Prime Minister
had had breached section one of the Bill
of Rights 1688 which is some pretty old
law it says that laws can only be made
or changed
Parliament not just one guy even if he
is the Prime Minister the court ruled
Muldoon had acted unlawfully and
Fitzgerald won that case when I read
this case it was a revelation to me here
was this ordinary person who took the
Prime Minister to court to make sure
that the government followed the law and
to me that was extraordinary
this case reflects an age-old principle
the idea of the rule of law that
everyone is subject to the law no matter
who they are even the government here in
New Zealand we actually all have the
right to challenge decisions made by our
government or other public bodies be
they the police or ministers or
tribunals even school boards of Trustees
we can do this through judicial review
and it’s a cornerstone to our democracy
judicial review allows us to make sure
that when our government makes decisions
affecting us it makes those decisions
according to the law and following
principles of good governance good
decision-making in just the past few
years alone New Zealanders have
challenged multiple decisions impacting
on them and their communities such as
the decision to close down an entire
school or to sell off state houses to
rid zones in homes after the
Christchurch earthquake to build an
irrigation dam on protected conservation
land might sound familiar and also to
put a ban on all prisoners voting when I
was studying law and I read cases like
this I thought wouldn’t it be amazing to
one day be able
to act for a client and on their behalf
fight for something that they believed
him that was important to them I didn’t
anticipate that my first ever case would
be my own and I would be the client it
all started with listening to TED talks
so for the guy who did this TED talk on
wag TED talks don’t change your life
sometimes they do I listened to a talk
by dr. James Henson a scientist a
leading scientist on climate change
before then I kind of thought climate
change wasn’t really in my circle of
concern but in 18 minutes he changed my
mind on that completely in his talk he
likens climate change to an asteroid
speeding towards Earth and the longer we
take to divert this asteroid the harder
and more expensive it is going to become
when I heard this I looked around me and
I felt like I was living in some
upside-down world because I saw huge
road roading projects going on in
Hamilton and around the country
exploration for more oil and the opening
of more coal mines and I thought we
aren’t diverting this asteroid we are
standing right in the middle of the
runway waving it down with glow sticks
oh yeah I also seeing this in action
felt scared scared for the kids that you
know one day in the future I would like
to have they’re going to have to contend
with this mess and yet they have done
nothing to create it and they’re going
to have very little chance of fixing it
either climate change is accelerating
and the solutions that we know now you
know renewable energy cleaner transports
the
things aren’t going to be enough zone
our governments know this and they
continue to delay in the face of this
urgency citizens and lawyers are coming
together they are working together to
take on their government’s to use the
Lord to demand action on climate change
all around the world the UK the u.s. the
Netherlands India Pakistan I could go on
citizens are using the courts as their
last line of defense when I saw the 21
youth in the u.s. taking on their
federal government and the 900 Dutch
citizens demanding action from their
government on climate change I was blown
away by the courage of these people and
their action I didn’t know how at the
time you could take such an action here
in New Zealand for one we don’t actually
have a written constitution like most
countries in the world where one of
three without a written constitution and
our Bill of Rights doesn’t even make
mention of the environment or anything
to do with our well-being however I was
fortunate to meet some of the most
amazing and dedicated lawyers that you
could ever meet and they reminded me
that there’s still an avenue for redress
I’ll be imperfect one judicial review
with hundreds of hours of their help and
the help of scientists here in New
Zealand and dr. James Hansen himself we
filed judicial review proceedings in the
High Court in 2015 the case seeks to
challenge the targets set by the
government to reduce emissions
we’ve signed up to the Paris agreement
and we have promised as a country to
help keep warming below 1.5 degrees and
at the very least below two degrees but
our targets don’t reflect this and if
every country in the world followed suit
we would go past those thresholds I
can’t ask the court to set the target to
step into the shoes and set that target
again and I can’t ask it even to decide
what that target should be but the court
is able to rule on whether the decision
was made in a way that was lawful and
reasonable what I mean by that is was it
made logically rationally based on
current scientific evidence and on the
right reasons
if it wasn’t then the court can order
that decision to be made to be remade
and to be remade in the right way in
June this year we had our day in court
three days to be exact
I had to sit at the back of the
courtroom and behind this glass panel
but I watched very nervously as my
lawyers and suits and black gowns with
10,000 pages of scientific evidence put
forward submissions regarding our future
the bleaching of our coral reefs the
food shortages and the millions who will
be displaced just as we heard about
earlier today all of that was put before
the court on that day what I hope for is
that the targets are reset but that is
out of my hands
and in the hands of the judge now at the
time the case made it into the papers
and
there were headlines a little like this
with me looking really serious and I
just have to clarify I’m not actually
suing the government I am reviewing a
decision made by the government it’s
just not as exciting as students whose
government at the time I received a lot
of support from all around the country
which I am incredibly grateful for you
can’t take a case like this on your own
I also was told don’t read the comments
in you know under the newspaper articles
online and stuff but I did because I was
curious and I noticed there was also a
lot of criticism people saying things
like you know what a waste of taxpayers
money and who’s gonna pay these
government lawyers to defend this case
and what’s the point
New Zealand creates 0.15 percent of the
global emissions and what does it matter
what we do we can’t make a difference
when I heard things like this and I saw
things like this I thought part of the
story has been missed
judicial review does cost money
everything to do with the law costs
money but this is a right that belongs
to all of us and it is too important to
limit even if we don’t agree with the
merits of a single case the right to
question those in power to make sure
that power is exercised in the proper
way and to have some control over our
own fate isn’t this what it means to be
part of a democracy and yes New Zealand
is too small to fix this problem on its
own quite obviously but every country in
the world could say the exact same thing
there is no country big enough
on its own to fix or change the course
of climate change so what if we all said
we were all too small whether it is
climate change whether it is something
else that we care about we have a voice
and it counts even if we don’t know how
when we start out or we feel like the
best we can do is a drop in the bucket
what matters is that we do what we can
and we take that first step now
[Applause]
if someone told me a few years down the
track I would be taking proceedings
against the New Zealand government I
would have found the thought terrifying
and hard to believe as well back then I
knew one side of the story I thought the
law was about the government making it
and enforcing it and the rest of us
following it but I happened to read an
unforgettable case in my first year of
lawyer
which changed my thinking on the law for
good and it showed me there was a whole
other side to that story
that case was Fitzgerald and Muldoon
he might look familiar to some people
back in the nineteen seventies well
before I was born
Prime Minister Robert Muldoon tried to
change the law by publishing a press
statement he told the country the
compulsory superannuation scheme a bit
like a compulsory KiwiSaver would be
suspended so everyone could stop making
payments as of now and they wouldn’t be
breaking the law hopefully all of us in
this room know this is not quite how we
change laws here in New Zealand
Fitzgerald we don’t know a lot about him
but the case tells us that he was
working as a public servant and he was
putting his two dollars and eight cents
into that fund every fortnight so he was
saving up for his retirement and he was
affected by this decision
he took Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to
court and he argued the Prime Minister
had had breached section one of the Bill
of Rights 1688 which is some pretty old
law it says that laws can only be made
or changed
Parliament not just one guy even if he
is the Prime Minister the court ruled
Muldoon had acted unlawfully and
Fitzgerald won that case when I read
this case it was a revelation to me here
was this ordinary person who took the
Prime Minister to court to make sure
that the government followed the law and
to me that was extraordinary
this case reflects an age-old principle
the idea of the rule of law that
everyone is subject to the law no matter
who they are even the government here in
New Zealand we actually all have the
right to challenge decisions made by our
government or other public bodies be
they the police or ministers or
tribunals even school boards of Trustees
we can do this through judicial review
and it’s a cornerstone to our democracy
judicial review allows us to make sure
that when our government makes decisions
affecting us it makes those decisions
according to the law and following
principles of good governance good
decision-making in just the past few
years alone New Zealanders have
challenged multiple decisions impacting
on them and their communities such as
the decision to close down an entire
school or to sell off state houses to
rid zones in homes after the
Christchurch earthquake to build an
irrigation dam on protected conservation
land might sound familiar and also to
put a ban on all prisoners voting when I
was studying law and I read cases like
this I thought wouldn’t it be amazing to
one day be able
to act for a client and on their behalf
fight for something that they believed
him that was important to them I didn’t
anticipate that my first ever case would
be my own and I would be the client it
all started with listening to TED talks
so for the guy who did this TED talk on
wag TED talks don’t change your life
sometimes they do I listened to a talk
by dr. James Henson a scientist a
leading scientist on climate change
before then I kind of thought climate
change wasn’t really in my circle of
concern but in 18 minutes he changed my
mind on that completely in his talk he
likens climate change to an asteroid
speeding towards Earth and the longer we
take to divert this asteroid the harder
and more expensive it is going to become
when I heard this I looked around me and
I felt like I was living in some
upside-down world because I saw huge
road roading projects going on in
Hamilton and around the country
exploration for more oil and the opening
of more coal mines and I thought we
aren’t diverting this asteroid we are
standing right in the middle of the
runway waving it down with glow sticks
oh yeah I also seeing this in action
felt scared scared for the kids that you
know one day in the future I would like
to have they’re going to have to contend
with this mess and yet they have done
nothing to create it and they’re going
to have very little chance of fixing it
either climate change is accelerating
and the solutions that we know now you
know renewable energy cleaner transports
the
things aren’t going to be enough zone
our governments know this and they
continue to delay in the face of this
urgency citizens and lawyers are coming
together they are working together to
take on their government’s to use the
Lord to demand action on climate change
all around the world the UK the u.s. the
Netherlands India Pakistan I could go on
citizens are using the courts as their
last line of defense when I saw the 21
youth in the u.s. taking on their
federal government and the 900 Dutch
citizens demanding action from their
government on climate change I was blown
away by the courage of these people and
their action I didn’t know how at the
time you could take such an action here
in New Zealand for one we don’t actually
have a written constitution like most
countries in the world where one of
three without a written constitution and
our Bill of Rights doesn’t even make
mention of the environment or anything
to do with our well-being however I was
fortunate to meet some of the most
amazing and dedicated lawyers that you
could ever meet and they reminded me
that there’s still an avenue for redress
I’ll be imperfect one judicial review
with hundreds of hours of their help and
the help of scientists here in New
Zealand and dr. James Hansen himself we
filed judicial review proceedings in the
High Court in 2015 the case seeks to
challenge the targets set by the
government to reduce emissions
we’ve signed up to the Paris agreement
and we have promised as a country to
help keep warming below 1.5 degrees and
at the very least below two degrees but
our targets don’t reflect this and if
every country in the world followed suit
we would go past those thresholds I
can’t ask the court to set the target to
step into the shoes and set that target
again and I can’t ask it even to decide
what that target should be but the court
is able to rule on whether the decision
was made in a way that was lawful and
reasonable what I mean by that is was it
made logically rationally based on
current scientific evidence and on the
right reasons
if it wasn’t then the court can order
that decision to be made to be remade
and to be remade in the right way in
June this year we had our day in court
three days to be exact
I had to sit at the back of the
courtroom and behind this glass panel
but I watched very nervously as my
lawyers and suits and black gowns with
10,000 pages of scientific evidence put
forward submissions regarding our future
the bleaching of our coral reefs the
food shortages and the millions who will
be displaced just as we heard about
earlier today all of that was put before
the court on that day what I hope for is
that the targets are reset but that is
out of my hands
and in the hands of the judge now at the
time the case made it into the papers
and
there were headlines a little like this
with me looking really serious and I
just have to clarify I’m not actually
suing the government I am reviewing a
decision made by the government it’s
just not as exciting as students whose
government at the time I received a lot
of support from all around the country
which I am incredibly grateful for you
can’t take a case like this on your own
I also was told don’t read the comments
in you know under the newspaper articles
online and stuff but I did because I was
curious and I noticed there was also a
lot of criticism people saying things
like you know what a waste of taxpayers
money and who’s gonna pay these
government lawyers to defend this case
and what’s the point
New Zealand creates 0.15 percent of the
global emissions and what does it matter
what we do we can’t make a difference
when I heard things like this and I saw
things like this I thought part of the
story has been missed
judicial review does cost money
everything to do with the law costs
money but this is a right that belongs
to all of us and it is too important to
limit even if we don’t agree with the
merits of a single case the right to
question those in power to make sure
that power is exercised in the proper
way and to have some control over our
own fate isn’t this what it means to be
part of a democracy and yes New Zealand
is too small to fix this problem on its
own quite obviously but every country in
the world could say the exact same thing
there is no country big enough
on its own to fix or change the course
of climate change so what if we all said
we were all too small whether it is
climate change whether it is something
else that we care about we have a voice
and it counts even if we don’t know how
when we start out or we feel like the
best we can do is a drop in the bucket
what matters is that we do what we can
and we take that first step now
[Applause]
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