Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Chair. I know that we're on to Part 2 now and that the numbering of these Supplementary Order Papers has been quite confusing but we're right now. I'm going to speak to Supplementary Order Paper 226 in my name which is ensuring that the bill doesn't interfere with the right to restrict the ability to call and cross-examine expert witnesses which the Minister in the chair has already had a bit of a speech on. Nevertheless I'll call on him to come back and have another go as well because I think this is a really important issue because it goes to natural justice and actually I can't understand at all how the officials let this one through either. I think all this goes back to the confusion around the Weathertight Homes Tribunal which was a cut-and-paste for this bill essentially. That's where all of the structure of this bill came from and the issue is of course that the Weathertight Homes Tribunal operates under tort law. This is contract law—quite different—and I'm sure the officials are well aware of that and I know that the Cabinet papers are well aware of it. In fact the advice to the Minister was quite critical. I've never seen that before in my relatively short—I admit—parliamentary career but it's quite damning to see a Cabinet paper telling a Minister that they've got it completely wrong with their bill. It is such an important issue. It seems a minor one and I understand the intent—it doesn't want to delay things—but under the weathertight homes legislation it was all about malpractice and people not living up to what they were paid to do essentially and this one is completely different. It's about the details of the contract and whether the damage constitutes what's in the contract or not and that is where there's always going to be an issue obviously because the claimant wants as much as possible and the insurance company wants to pay as little as possible. Everyone who's got a policy doesn't want them to pay more than they have to because in fact it impacts on their policy but justice has to be done and there has to be a fair line found there. Of course in insurance contracts it's not the insurance company broker who makes a decision on whether they're going to make a payout or not; it's all based on expert witnesses. It's expert evidence. They get people who are most often contracted to insurance companies to actually assess the damages. If an insured person doesn't agree with that they have the right to hire their own expert and say Well actually it's not going to cost $50000 to fix. It's going to cost $100000 to fix." or whatever the numbers are. That's where expert evidence is really important and under the way this bill is structured the tribunal can limit that. Not only is it important to have expert witnesses; it's important to test their evidence and that's what cross-examination is all about. We're in New Zealand not in Iran not in some Third World country. We deserve justice in this country and natural justice is an important part of it. I'm absolutely appalled that this is in the bill. I can't understand how anyone with a law degree could allow that to be in the bill—it's 101 stuff. It's not complex law. They are quite different—tort law and contract law are completely different—and everyone with a law degree would know that. So I can't see why that's in the bill and I'm really going to listen with great interest to the Minister's explanation on this. In fact I think the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act says it quite well here in section 27(1) of the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act: "Every person has the right to the observance of the principles of natural justice by any tribunal or other public authority which has the power to make a determination in respect of that person's rights obligations or interests protected or recognised by law." Natural justice demands that there be an ability to test the evidence of a witness—particularly an expert—and that requires cross-examination and it also requires that people have the right to call for an expert witness. Thank you."