Ardern Jacinda: Limitation Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Ardern Jacinda: Limitation Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
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JACINDA ARDERN (Labour) 
: 
 I have to point out the irony from the member who has just resumed his seat. Mr Simon Bridges the lawyer was being somewhat patronising to my very learned colleague Lynne Pillay. He claimed that she did not apply any legal rigour. 
Simon Bridges 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take personal offence at that remark that I was being patronising. I normally am but that speech was dead serious. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I say to the honourable member that this is a robust debate. I think he should take on board the words of his own colleagues and harden up a bit. One cannot be that sensitive here. If Ms Ardern had said that the member was being “matronised” it might have been less offensive. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: I would like to put on record that I think this is the first time a presiding officer has told a member to harden up. 
I point out the irony in Mr Bridges delivering a speech that called on my colleagues to display legal rigour when he the lawyer on the other side of the House gave no analysis of this bill whatsoever. I found that a little bit disappointing because I expected a little bit more from my colleague in that regard. Despite all the comments he made about my colleague Lynne Pillay I would have to say that no one on the Justice and Electoral Committee causes more of a stir in our meetings than Lynne Pillay. I do not think a meeting goes by without her defending the worth of the Sentencing Council. I want to mention the value of the Sentencing Council which Labour will defend to the end. 
I want to come to a number of more serious points on the Limitation Bill. Although there was a lot of agreement on both sides in terms of what this bill needs to achieve there were about three areas of contention that I want to draw on. They will probably be discussed in greater detail during the Committee stage but I want to flag them now. First off I again highlight the fact that we were reviewing legislation that had its origins in the 1950s. Obviously a lot of circumstances are known to us in the new modern legal system and they need to be addressed in any new regime around limitations. 
When we were discussing this bill we weighed up the idea of giving certainty to defendants and reducing undue delay with the idea of building reasonable grounds on which a claimant might have reason to delay the claim that was to be put forward. Before I get into some of the depth of the bill I point out that we continually hear from the Government some criticism as to how long Labour may or may not have taken to put forward various legislation and there has been the argument that we demonstrated undue delay in bringing forward a review of the Limitation Act. When we are discussing legislation from 1950 I think that that criticism could extend to both sides of the House. 
Having said that I want to jump into those three areas of contention which I have already pointed out and about which there was some lengthy and robust debate in the select committee. The first area of contention was the longstop period. I know that some of my colleagues have already discussed it. We had divergent views about a 15-year longstop period as defined in clause 10. It relates to the time limit that would apply to one’s claim whether the claim relates to personal injury or is a civil matter. It could even relate to building houses and therein lies the rub. When it came to claims around the Building Act— 
Chester Borrows 
: Give Lynne another go. 
JACINDA ARDERN 
: I tell Mr Borrows that I flag it again because I believe it was an important point. As chair of the Justice and Electoral Committee he knows that this issue caused significant angst for the Opposition. Inconsistency in the law—as any good policy-maker like the good sir will know—causes some irritation. The Building Act 2004 differs from the Limitation Act in that it sets out a longstop period of 10 years. Some arguments were put before us as to why that was important. Some said that defective building claims the complexity of the issues and fading memories meant that those issues needed to be brought forward within a 10-year period and that they would be known to the claimant within that period. 
The fact that the Law Commission in three different reports extending back as far as 1988 I believe wavered in its view on this issue points to the fact that there is room for differing interpretation. My hope would have been that we err on the side of caution with this particular provision and that we default to the important premise of consistency. That was the view that the Labour members of the select committee brought to the table and during the Committee stage I would like to hear a bit more discussion about the inconsistency in that area and about what is added by having two differing periods. 
The National Government has put forward its package of remedial action around for instance leaky buildings and the main set I guess of cases was brought forth in order to explain why we needed a different longstop period. The Government claims that that is a robust package so I would have thought that nothing would be lost by building consistency between the two. 
The second of the three areas of contention I want to discuss—there were a couple of other areas where that the select committee made changes but from my recollection these were the three on which we made a significant contribution—was the discretion to allow relief for the claim of sexual abuse of a minor. Clause 16 gives the court or tribunal the discretion to allow monetary relief to be granted in respect of a claim of sexual abuse of a minor even when a limitation defence had been or could be established. We recommended specially amending that clause to cover claims of non-sexual abuse of a minor based on the fact that they could have the same long-term effects as sexual abuse. I think this is consistent with where we have been heading in New Zealand in terms of not only sexual abuse cases but domestic violence. We have extended our definitions of violence and of abuse in our domestic violence law. 
I think that there are a number of good reasons why allowing more discretion should extend beyond sexual abuse as well because at the end of the day the question of whether monetary relief should be granted despite there being a limitation defence will be a judgment for the court particularly when we are discussing cases that relate to minors. Those cases because of the many psychological factors that are implicit in them provide even more reason as to why we should look beyond what would otherwise be a longstop period. 
Of course we would not be standing alone in making such a judgment. As a select committee we asked specifically to hear international evidence and good practice in this area. We heard that the United Kingdom and many Australian jurisdictions give similar discretion to disregard limitations in personal injury claims which also include forms of abuse. So we are in keeping with other jurisdictions in this regard and I think we have made the right amendments. 
I want to touch now on the third area which I hope we will have more discussion on later in this debate. I do not know that we have resolved this issue which is about the discretion to allow relief for claims of gradual process disease or infection. Of course limitation applies to personal injury claims and it does factor in the idea of late knowledge but we expressed concern that the proposed longstop period could impose an unreasonable restriction on a person’s ability to claim particularly where gradual process injuries were involved. 
The argument we heard back from other members of the committee—and from officials to be fair—was that because we have a no-fault insurance scheme in the form of the accident compensation scheme we would not see as many cases in this area anyway because gradual process disease or infection is most likely to be covered by that no-fault scheme. We had some level of discomfort that that was taken as a given particularly at a time when there has been so much disruption to what otherwise we would have perceived to be unmovable parts of our accident compensation regime. It has in fact been proved that they are movable. Policies can be changed and people can be denied coverage and then they have no access of redress based on the way that this bill has been drafted. I will come back to that element further on in this debate because I do not believe that it is something we have reached an end point on.