Bill Hastings

William Kenneth Hastings was born in 1957 in Scarborough, Ontario, Canada, and relocated to New Zealand in 1985. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Trinity College at the University of Toronto and law degrees from Osgoode Hall Law School, the London School of Economics and Duke University, and worked as a Senior Lecturer in Law and Deputy Dean of Law at Victoria University of Wellington. He served as Deputy Chief Censor of New Zealand from December 1998 and as Chief Censor of New Zealand from October 1999 to July 2010, was sworn in as a District Court Judge on 9 July 2010, chaired the Immigration and Protection Tribunal from July 2010 to February 2013 and the Broadcasting Standards Authority from October 2018 to August 2021, and was sworn in as a Judge of the Court Martial of New Zealand on 20 July 2021. He served as Chief Justice of Kiribati and concurrently as President of the Kiribati Court of Appeal from 9 August 2021 until his resignation on 6 December 2022, and later as a Justice of the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal of Vanuatu from 1 July 2023 to 30 June 2024.