Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's actually my first opportunity to address the House and indeed the nation in my new role as chief whip of New Zealand First. Hon Members: Hooray! MARK PATTERSON: Thank you—enough. I am aware of the convention around discussing the whereabouts of other parliamentarians but I will say that it has not been a naked grab for power. It is a temporary acting position. It is a pleasure to rise on behalf of New Zealand First in support of this bill. I commend Minister Sio on shepherding it through. As has been referenced this is a bill that started under the previous Government. I believe the Hon Amy Adams may have been in charge of the early part of this bill. When I first looked at it—just sort of the headline—I thought this must be some sort of reasonably trivial piece of legislation but in fact it is not as Mr Bishop referenced in his last presentation. The cognate nature of these two bills the Courts Matters Bill which actually amends 14 Acts and the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill which amends 20 Acts—within them there are some fairly significant changes to our laws and some pretty important clarifications. I would also like to commend the Justice Committee under Raymond Huo who is the chair and—as Mr Bishop said in his previous address—the officials because I think to trawl through the detail of these amendments and changes is pretty mind-numbing actually and it speaks to the calibre of the officials that we have that they can come up with tidying-up legislation of this sort. The Courts Matters Bill—to start with that—there's a couple of high-level matters I'd like to touch on there. I've actually never been in a court it occurred to me when I was preparing for this bill and I've never had an ambition to be a lawyer—for good reason—but the powers going to the court security officers are I think a really important provision within this bill. Giving the court security officers the ability to remove and detain people and increasing those powers since the Act of 1999—that meant that courts were manned by security guards more and more so than by police officers. There were actually 78 weapons intercepted in courts in 2014-15 and 327 people were removed from courts. It's really important that courts of all places are safe and secure places where people feel free to express their opinions. The other one within the Court Matters Bill is the audiovisual provisions within the court system and I think that's really just bringing this up to date with the 21st century. There are already audiovisual provisions for defendants but now witnesses and counsel can also beam in through audiovisual means. So I think that's a really important step up because justice not only needs to be done but it needs to be seen to be done and I think this is a good example of us advancing that cause. With the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill there are actually 21 tribunals under the Ministry of Justice and 30000 New Zealanders access those services every year. Some of them are quite significant ones like the disputes tribunals and the Tenancy Tribunal. Of course one we focused on here within this bill is the Human Rights Review Tribunal and we have seen quite a backlog building up. As of June this year there were 135 cases waiting to be heard and that backlog has jumped by 144 percent since 2014. So this was a building problem and this legislation bolsters the ability to deal with those backlogs. We have brought in the new role of deputy chairpersons so that we can clear that backlog and we can add some efficiency and speed into our disputes tribunals. Also the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal—they're lifting the threshold for fines in that to $100000 for losses incurred through poor performance and I think that's a really significant lift. When we look at the value of real estate transactions now where even a modest home is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars—and pushing towards a million dollars I see in Wellington during the week—$100000 is not unreasonable I would have thought in terms of losses incurred through shonky real estate dealings. It also provides for District Courts to oversee cases for fines under $350k and I think that's up from $12k—anything over $12k used to have to go through the High Court. Now the District Court can deal with cases under $350k. So I think that's a step forward in the right direction too to add flexibility to our system. So I'm only really giving a very short high-level overview of what is an incredibly complex set of clarifications and changes to regulations. It is actually really impressive work by the officials and the select committee to wade through that. We're accepting that you've been very accurate with your job because there's a lot in there—hopefully nothing's slipped through. I don't think there are any New Zealand First members on that committee so we'll take your word for that surely. I'm glad—actually I'm not because it looks dry as old chips the stuff that's going through there. But with that confidence in the select committee and confidence in the parliamentary process and the officials who have got this bill in good shape I will on behalf of New Zealand First commend this bill to the House.