Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Madam Chair. I rise to speak to the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill. As with the bill that we considered a little while ago—the Courts Matters Bill which amended 14 Acts—this one is also all about standardising and modernising legislation to make it better and more fit for public purpose. It modernises the legislation for 21 tribunals—so improving productivity and efficiency amending powers and procedures—to improve users' experience of tribunals to make these procedures easier for the public to understand and to reduce the length of time it takes to hear and to resolve matters. It is very difficult indeed to argue with the spirit of the intention of what this bill is doing.The Justice Committee has heard a number of submissions on it. It has made some recommendation for changes and in my call tonight I intend to look at aspects of the Real Estate Agents Act under Part 1 and also the amendments to the Human Rights Act 1993 also in Part 1. I commend the work of Hon Aupito William Sio the Associate Minister of Justice and he has outlined some of the changes in Part 1. I think that some of the things that he outlined which I feel will be particularly popular with the public are particularly around the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal. It will be able to award compensation of up to $100000 and that's for financial losses arising from a real estate agent's unsatisfactory conduct. That's a very specific thing and I think that really the public appetite for badly behaved real estate agents is very minimal.I think that the processes for the somewhat unfortunate acronym of CACs the complaints assessment committees are going to be more clearly defined. So CACs when the breach is minor or technical don't need to send it on to another slightly odd acronym READT the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal. So overturning a CACs assessment of a breach as not qualifying for a referral is not going to be happening. I think that for members of the public and others who are interested in the way that these things can be delayed—and justice delayed is justice denied—I think that the speeding up and the clarifying of the strikeout powers that have been inserted into 13 Acts can now only be applied if the party was not present or represented at a hearing in which they were required to be.So that makes it very straightforward and I think the better consumer protection and redress for people with the tribunals makes it much simpler and faster and of course a cheaper alternative to a court case. I think that the use of tribunals—using them in a better and more appropriate and intelligent way—is a better process. Omnibus bills in two parts as this one is I think make a series of particularly good observations and the standard appointment terms are part of that. I think in the past it was all a little bit ad hoc. People could be appointed for example to tribunals for terms of three five or seven years. No one particularly knew who was going to be there. When the time was up they went. But now the provisions—eminently sensible in my view—have standardised the appointment term of up to five years. There are multiple terms for reappointment but I think it will be very important to make that standard provision to be inserted into 16 different Acts.I think also when we look at the Human Rights Act 1993 the Human Rights Review Tribunal—anyone who has tried to take a case before it or who follows some of the high profile cases is very well aware of the large workload of the tribunal. The provisions that have been mooted here as the changes which have been approved through the select committee process mean that at the moment two chairpersons can be appointed to the tribunal and they're responsible for dealing with almost all of the tribunal's workload which is why they have become so overburdened. The change to address concerns about that workload is to change many different aspects of the New Zealand Public Health and Disability Act the Privacy Act and the Human Rights Act to have a much more sensible provision so that we can have other individuals there—chairpersons or deputy chairpersons—for training purposes. That will allow those chairpersons or deputy chairpersons to consider alone as opposed to just the standard procedures. So all of these are major improvements that the public will I am sure welcome.