Tanczos Nandor: Arbitration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Tanczos Nandor: Arbitration Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:639;Page:8980] 
NANDOR TANCZOS (Green) 
: 
 I begin by thanking members for their various contributions both in the House today and in the Justice and Electoral Committee. I think there was quite a valuable and an open discussion about a number of issues that have been raised here. I make the point in echoing the comments of Dr Worth that the Arbitration Amendment Bill is important legislation. There were few submissions on it but that is an indication of the technical nature of the bill rather than it being any slight on the bill’s importance. By my reckoning we had six submissions but they were mostly reasonably substantive in the sense of recommending quite specific technical changes—and I will touch on those in relation to the select committee’s report in a second. 
I thank Dr Worth for giving us a good context for how we should view arbitration within the scheme of different methods of resolving disputes. The Greens are very supportive of methods of dispute resolution that operate at a lower level of formality and a lower level of cost than the courts. Hence we are supportive of mediation arbitration and other processes. But as Dr Worth pointed out what makes arbitration a little bit different from other processes is that it is recordable it is enforceable and the intention is that it be final and unchallengeable. So in that sense it is important that we get the framework for arbitration right and that we update our law in line with international best practice. This bill is important in that regard. The bill as has been said is designed to strengthen arbitration as a means of private dispute resolution and focuses on increasing party autonomy reducing judicial involvement in the process and ensuring that we are consistent with other jurisdictions. 
Mr Finlayson has referred to some discussions about whether we could use a speedier process for adopting new innovations in the model law into New Zealand law. Of course there are issues of constitutionality about the right place for making certain changes and certainly to amend primary legislation through some of the processes we explored would be inappropriate. The other point is that not all countries adopt all the elements. There has to be some recognition of the differences in different jurisdictions because there is a certain element of inconsistency in any case. That is just an element that we have to live with. 
I will refer to just a couple of submissions because of the response of the select committee to them. The first one was the submission of the Arbitrators and Mediators Institute of New Zealand. That organisation in its submission opposed the removal of the default appointment provision. It said the invocation of that provision often leads to the early appointment of an arbitrator whether by mutual agreement or by the operation of the measure in clause 1 itself. The institute said there was sufficient safeguard in the gloss placed on the provision by the Hon Justice Rodney Hansen in the Hitex Plastering case namely that the use of the clause was not permissible unless there had first been a reasonable attempt to resolve differences as to an appointment and the abolition of the provision would force many parties into lengthy and costly High Court proceedings. That is something that the committee put its mind to and we have recommended that clause 9(2) be deleted from the bill. That is the clause that would remove the default procedure for the appointment of an arbitrator where parties are unable to agree. 
The other submission I refer to is that of the New Zealand Law Society. It referred to the position of the Arbitrators and Mediators Institute in proposing the establishment of a private arbitration appeal tribunal. It said that the introduction of that tribunal would have significant implications for the courts in terms of the development of New Zealand commercial and civil law and it proposed that new section 14F in clause 6 be amended to provide a presumption that court proceedings in relation to arbitral awards should be held in private with confidentiality preserved unless the court orders otherwise. Again that is something that we considered in our consideration of the bill but we have not recommended that it be amended as the Law Society suggested. That section has been left in the bill as introduced. 
As I said at the beginning of my speech this is technical legislation. Nevertheless it is very important legislation in terms of supporting arbitration supporting private dispute resolution preserving and increasing party autonomy and limiting judicial involvement in the arbitral process. We think that is important and we support this bill.