Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. I am very pleased to take a call on this Trusts Bill. This bill is a long time coming and we're only at the second reading stage but I know it's going to receive the unanimous support of the House I think and it will pass into law. Actually the second reading does mark somewhat of a milestone for the House because this bill started life as a review of the law of trusts. Now I have to admit to the House that I have a particular aversion to trusts law. When I was a good hard-working law student at the—Chris Penk: Equity—urgh!CHRIS BISHOP: Chris Penk is talking about equity and sounding very pleased behind me! I won't just use a particular term I was going to use to describe him. Mr Penk may be enamoured with equity and trusts but I have to admit to the House that when I was a very hard-working law student across the road at the Victoria University of Wellington law school I was not. But it is undoubtedly true notwithstanding my lack of prowess at the law of trusts and equity that it is an extremely important part of the law in New Zealand. I think I read somewhere—it might have actually been during the passage of the bill and the consultation document by the Law Commission—that per capita we have the most number of trusts anywhere in the world. I know my colleague Harete Hipango will have some views on that and I look forward to her contribution.We have a large number of trusts in New Zealand and the law is extremely important but for a long time the law has been a mess—it really has. That's what prompted the previous National Government to do a very large-scale reform of the law and try and have a new Trusts Act which would replace the old Act and bring all the law together clarify—I don't know if you'd call it a codification but certainly something close to it. We went through this long process and there was a lot of consultation done.Just at this moment I do want to pay tribute to the hard-working team at the Ministry of Justice and I have the privilege of actually knowing in a personal capacity a couple of the people who worked on that project. Can I say for the record of the House that that has taken up some degree of time over the last few years. If I was a public servant and I got asked to work on a very complicated and long project involving the law of trusts I'm not sure I would stay in my job but these very hard-working public servants in New Zealand put their noses to the proverbial grindstone. Honestly it has been a quite large undertaking. They have helped get us to this point but also they have helped us in the select committee.We were very well served on the select committee by the Hon Christopher Finlayson who is something of a trust expert and he subbed in on the Justice Committee and did a very good job alongside the other members of the Justice Committee. I also want to pay particular tribute and acknowledge Dr Duncan Webb from the Government parties the member of Parliament for Christchurch Central. Dr Webb is also a very noted lawyer with a background in trust law as well. He was not a permanent member of the Justice Committee at that point but he started subbing in for other Labour members. He added quite a lot to the process as well and now of course he is a permanent member of the very hard-working Justice Committee. You know often members say Oh we're a very hard-working committee." but I can honestly say in the case of the Justice Committee that is definitely true.Look this replaces the Trustee Act 1956 as I made mention before and the Perpetuities Act 1964 to make it more sensible and clarify and codify some provisions of both those Acts. There's going to be time I know in the committee of the whole House to go through it blow by blow so to speak but I just want to commend the bill to the House and as I said before say thanks to the hard-working officials who helped us with this process. Thank you."