Hon Speaker, as we come to the end of the debate, I just want to make a few points. The first point, a point the hon Minister raised in his speech, is that there was a lot of trauma in the newspapers about a year ago regarding the ANC "tampering with the Constitution" - dealing with the powers of the Constitutional Court. Here we have the Seventeenth Amendment Bill, which has been in this Parliament for nearly two years, and which does deal with Chapter 8 of the Constitution - that is, courts and the administration of justice.
As you have heard from the Minister and many of the speakers, it enhances the independence of the judiciary and increases the powers of the Constitutional Court. So, I would hope that when there is another sort of bogey that is thrown up, that everybody will take the chance to actually investigate what the issues are, rather than talking about things that they are afraid of and that they fear there may be.
Over the time the Bill has been in Parliament and before the committee, the committee has deliberated a lot about it. I think you heard a lot of the points and concerns that have been raised. We only finalised the issue of the jurisdiction and the issue of the Competition and the Labour Appeal Courts very close to the end. Maybe one additional point to make on the jurisdiction of the Constitutional Court is that we have kept constitutional matters as a category. In doing so, we followed the Kenyan example, which has a very recent constitution. Then we provided this general category.
As far as the Labour Appeal and Competition Appeal Courts are concerned, we have specifically referred to labour and competition matters rather than as it was before, which was that any Act of Parliament could determine that a matter did not have to go to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
I am surprised by some of the speeches. We heard from Dr Ambrosini in that the IFP was "duty-bound" and "principle-bound" to oppose this Bill. Unfortunately, they didn't feel principle-bound and duty-bound enough to attend the meetings of the committee, and we never saw them. [Applause.] So, I was in fact sitting in my seat wondering how the IFP was going to vote on the Bill, because we never heard you. You never came. You never participated. You never made use of your opportunities. That, Chair, is a fact. [Interjections.] No, I won't take a question. [Interjections.]