Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Well I don't think that's 10 minutes that will go down in history as the best 10 minutes ever delivered in this Parliament. I was going to crack a joke about the performance of Mr Patterson overseas in the parliamentary cricket team. I note that he managed in his speech on the Trusts Bill to congratulate almost every New Zealand team that's competed overseas in the last few months—Andrew Falloon: Except yours Bish".CHRIS BISHOP: —and he failed to mention the parliamentary—exactly. Except the one that I was involved with him on and Greg O'Connor.Greg O'Connor: Poorly led—poorly led—like the National Party.CHRIS BISHOP: Now look we're not talking about that; we're talking about the Trusts Bill—we're talking about the Trusts Bill.The one good point that Mark Patterson made in his speech was that the select committee worked really hard on this and it's true because this is the most technical area of law it's possible to get I think and—Angie Warren-Clark: RMA.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh well that's a good point actually. The Resource Management Act is possibly slightly more technical—we'll come to that maybe later. But this is one of most technical areas of law on the statute book. Actually it's probably one of the most important areas of law on the statute book because thousands of New Zealanders up and down the country have trusts. It affects the day-to-day circumstances of people's lives and the way in which they look after their assets—Mr Patterson also talked about community trusts—and so it is of significant importance. The law has been a mess for many years. The law has been a mess for probably about 30 or 40 years. There have been sporadic attempts to clean it up and this is the most thorough substantive effort to do that. It was done quite rightly by the Law Commission which is the appropriate place to look at technical areas of the law. The Law Commission did various exposure drafts and did a substantive report—that was back in 2012 and 2013—so this has had a long genesis and gestation. We finally got a bill. The bill has been introduced. The Justice Committee that I am from tomorrow morning no longer going to be a member of—and I'm very upset about this—[Interruption] I hear the members opposite being upset about that. I suspect it's confected outrage but I will miss the Justice Committee. I've served on the Justice Committee since 2014. It was the first committee I joined when I became an MP and I've served on it continuously. I'm going to be sad to move on but all good things must come to an end. So the Justice Committee did work really hard on it and we actually had to break into a subcommittee to properly consider the bill. Chris Finlayson was subbed on to the committee for a while. He's probably the only person—or was the only person—in the Parliament who actually enjoys trust law. Andrew Falloon: Mark Patterson does.CHRIS BISHOP: No Mark Mitchell does not enjoy trust law.Andrew Falloon: No Mark Patterson.CHRIS BISHOP: Oh Mark Patterson—I think Mark Patterson woke up this morning and discovered what trust law was when he came down to the Parliament. I think he just discovered it—he still doesn't know. So Chris Finlayson enjoys trust law. He came on to the committee. Chris Penk who's a much better lawyer than I ever was—he enjoys trust law. He did a good job on it. We had the expert advisers and we worked our way through it and I do just want to pay tribute to the advisers from the justice team at the ministry. This has been a five-year or six-year process for them. So today you know marks the end of that process I suppose and they've done a great job on it. So we worked our way through. We have made a series of substantive improvements to the law—broader altogether—and there will be a Trusts Act and that's the key point. It'll be a Trusts Act that you can go to and you can look at the law a little bit in the same way that you can look at the Crimes Act and look at the law. Obviously there's the common law beneath it but the substantive principles and the way in which the law is put together will be in a singular Act. That's a good thing.You know there are not many people in the House but actually this is quite a significant moment for Parliament—quite a significant moment on the law reform journey of trust law—and so it gives me great pleasure as my final act as a member of the Justice Committee to commend this bill to the House."