Webb DuncanDr DUNCAN WEBB (Labour—Christchurch Central): Thank you Madam Chair. Firstly Mr Bayly congratulations on your fine work in marshalling this bill through the Justice Committee and also on your excellent explanation of your Supplementary Order Paper 180. I don't think I need to say anything more about that. Congratulations also to Raymond Huo our excellent chair on managing this and on managing some very technical work and using our expert adviser to great effect. This has become much more of a tidy-up bill if you like but I wanted to make it clear that although it can be viewed as simply tidying up some technical aspects those technical aspects can be of absolutely critical importance. As Mr Bayly has explained with the quick-draw procedure the appointment of a tame arbitrator has been known to occur. That won't be possible any more and that would be a real breach. I mean arbitration is special because it is in a sense private justice. It's justice which is undertaken away from the eye of the courts and Government in the way that we usually think of justice as being done so we need to get these rules right. The other thing about arbitration as has been noted already is that it is by agreement—the parties have consented to that. Tucked away in this bill is the fact that if you wanted to challenge the agreement itself you can't just sit on your hands. It may well be that you argue that the arbitration agreement or the arbitration clause in your contract doesn't apply to these circumstances or perhaps that the parties to it didn't consent appropriately or any other contractual ground for setting aside that arbitration agreement. Now historically parties could play chicken if you like and do nothing to see who blinked first in terms of objecting to jurisdiction. So someone could go through an arbitral process and it would only be when the thing got to the enforcement stage that someone says Fooled you—I'm not bound by that clause." Quite rightly this bill has tidied that up. It says that if you're going to object to jurisdiction you must do it in a timely way. That is a good step forward. It requires discipline and it requires essentially no more than fair dealing in that you can't hold that jurisdictional ace up your sleeve until the end of the game. So well done Mr Bayly there. But I must say that the suggestion that court hearings would be presumptively held confidentially was not accepted by the committee on similar principles—principles of fair dealing and open justice. Whilst the arguments were made persuasively it has to be said that for the international arbitration market for international harmonisation the bill that we have before us makes what we have already much much better but it doesn't change in substance the way we do arbitration in New Zealand. It does recognise also the important role that the Arbitrators' and Mediators' Institute of New Zealand has and it takes it just a tiny step further in formalising that relationship—their place as an appointer of arbitrators—as well. So congratulations to Mr Bayly. This bill is progressing further through the House but clearly will make it the whole way. It's a good piece of work. It's made our law better and it is great to see it happening in this House in this cooperative way. Thank you Madam Chair."