Magna Carta Public Lectures
University of Auckland
Monday 6 July 2015
Magna Carta and the Kiwi Constitution
This session looks back upon the roles of Magna Carta
in New Zealand’s constitutional traditions and
examines its present roles, both in law and in the
constitutional imagination.
Video 1 – Introduction
Stephen Winter: Tena koutou, tena koutou, tena koutou katoa.
Jennifer Lees-Marshemnt: My name is Jennifer Lees-Marshment, I am Chair of the Magna Carta
800th committee for New Zealand. And this is my colleague Stephen Winter who is deputy chair and
lead organiser of the lecture series. We are both academics in Politics and International Relations at
Auckland University and very passionate and committed to universities playing a role in promoting
an informed debate and being together academics and practitioners across all fields of research and
practice. And my vision for the Magna Carta committee and commemoration this year was also that
we'd use it as a chance to reflect on the past, the present and the future of the role and rule of law
and rights in New Zealand. And thankfully, thanks to Steve, this lecture series is going to do exactly
that, and it gives me great pleasure to hand over to him to introduce this evening’s lecture.
Stephen Winter: Thank you Jennifer. As many of you will know, Jennifer’s been the driving force
behind much of the commemorative activity that’s gone on this year, and will continue to go on this
year around the 800th anniversary. So thank you all for coming and welcome to the first of our five
sessions in our week-long speaker series pertaining to Magna Carta. You are all very welcome here.
But I would like to recognise specifically those of you who are watching on the livestream, and in
particular the people that are down in Canterbury. There’s a group of people who have been
brought together there by Chris Jones of the History Department who are going to be watching,
having an event down there themselves. We are very pleased to have brought together a
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distinguished and interesting group of speakers whose experience and position enable them to offer
insight into the complex political, economic and legal matters embraced under questions of Magna
Carta. Unfortunately, our discussion tonight will be coloured by the sadness that I know many of you
will feel concerning the passing of the Sir Ronald Davison, the Chief Justice of the High Court from
1978 to 1989. I did not know him, for he retired before I arrived in New Zealand, but I know that
many of the people in the audience will know him and respected him. Geoffrey Palmer once
described his contributions to New Zealand law as ‘not only just, but sensible’ a judgement that, I
think, befits New Zealand‘s traditional constitutional temper. I expect tonight’s session on the theme
‘Magna Carta and Kiwi Constitution’ to be a fitting launch for our week-long series, with three
notable speakers. We have Chief Justice Dame Sian Elias, the former Minister of Justice, the
Honourable Judith Collins, and Lindsay Digglemann, Auckland University’s very own medieval
historian. Over the next hour each of our three panellists will offer short, 10 minute talks touching
on tonight’s theme ‘Magna Carta and Kiwi Constitution’. After all three panellists have spoken we
will have around fifteen minutes for audience questions. Members of the audience, both here in the
lecture-hall and online can make comments using Twitter and Facebook and so on using this
information that’s up here. So if you've got the telephone, turn the sound off. But if you're fiddling
with them they won't take it as being rude, they'll take it as you engaging in the conversation. Ok?
But if you want to ask a question to our social media curator preface your Twitter comment with the
word ‘QUESTION’, as it were, so that we can make sure it's fed into the fifteen minutes of questions
at the end of our panel session. However, for those of you who are in the audience with us tonight,
you might just wait for the microphone to come to you. That might be a little more simple. And we'll
have some people passing around microphones when we get to that time.
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