Burns Brendon: Statutes Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Burns Brendon: Statutes Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 29 June 2010. Volume:664;Page:12288. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I am pleased to take a call in the Committee stage of the Statutes Amendment Bill. It is not a bill that I can pretend I have taken an intense interest in as it has proceeded through the House. However I am very pleased to take a call on it particularly in respect of the changes to the Wills Act 2007 which I will speak on in a moment. In summary Labour supports this bill. Obviously a Statutes Amendment Bill is a wash-up bill for a whole variety of necessary changes and we support the thrust of it. Most of the amendments are indeed minor and technical in their thrust and approach but there are one or two areas where Labour has indicated its concerns. 
I particularly want to comment on the change to the Wills Act. I can speak about it from the heart as in the last couple of years I have seen both my elderly parents die. My mother died 2 years ago this month and a will was signed by her in the last couple of weeks of her life. No will was in place at the time and that change caused some issues within our family as we considered the will was signed literally on her deathbed. The concept that this bill proposes whereby a will can be acknowledged by a person as having been signed by him or her but not having been witnessed raises a whole series of issues because they are very delicate matters within families at someone’s late stage of life. I think those concerns have been articulated well in an article from  
New Zealand 
Lawyer 
 in which Margaret Nixon commented on the problems with the law change being of concern given that we have a growing population of elderly people: “Many of them live in retirement homes or alone in their own homes under the influence—perhaps at the mercy—of caregivers and relatives. If a caregiver says ‘This is your signature isn’t it dear?’ some elderly people will automatically say ‘Yes’.” 
Then there may be the situation as this bill envisages where a couple of caregivers standing nearby could sign as witnesses and the will would be validly executed. It raises a whole range of questions as to who actually put the signature on the will and in what circumstances that took place. We obviously have not only a growing elderly population but also a growing elderly population of people with dementia. I mentioned both my parents passing away. My father passed away in February at 91 years of age which is a good innings. He had not signed a valid will although one had been drafted because his moments of lucidity were decreasing as he approached his demise. I suppose I could see a situation where at some point there was a lucid moment and he might have been able to sign a will or indicate to somebody else that he wanted him or her to sign the will but the circumstances of that happening have to be explicit and clear. That is why Labour says that this is the sort of issue where very careful consideration needs to be given and it needs to have gone through a separate select committee process for people to be assured that we are framing the law correctly. 
As Margaret Nixon went on to comment in that same article: “… it is a bad idea to make incorrect judicial statutory interpretation into statute law. Legislation should restore Parliament’s original intention if the common law has not corrected the misinterpretation in later cases.” She again commented: “The way chosen to resolve the ambiguity makes life even easier for the caregivers and relatives of elderly people. They can simply say ‘You got me to sign this for you this morning didn’t you dear?’ and with the addition of a couple of signatures from bystanders who see the elderly person blink in reply the person’s will is validly executed.” This legislation gets us into a very very grey area. I think it is very controversial legislation and that goes against the whole premise of a Statutes Amendment Bill. Such legislation is designed to be a non-controversial mop-up bill not one where we get into areas where there are highly contentious matters that deserve to be traversed fully by a select committee and not subject to dozens and dozens of other mop-up clauses. That is why Labour very clearly thinks this is a bill that should be considered by a select committee. Those are points we have raised throughout this process.