Finlayson Christopher: Wills Bill — Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeFinlayson Christopher: Wills Bill — Third Reading[Sitting date: 22 August 2007. Volume:641;Page:11417. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National): I thank the Minister for her kind and generous words about the work of the Justice and Electoral Committee. I endorse what she said about the good work of the Law Commission and I would also mention the Ministry of Justice officials who I think made a great contribution to the work of the select committee as it reviewed this bill. Given the Minister’s excellent summation of the legislation I will not attempt to go over that material again. I endorse what she said;that can all be taken as read. I simply want to say that I am very pleased we are at the third reading stage of this bill.I am also pleased that this is one of three law reform projects that will shortly become law. I would say this about law reform: I believe that law reform is a subject that should transcend party politics. I think it is very good that in the dying days of this Labour Government the Prime Minister has discovered law reform. But a display of energy after 8 years of laziness is quite frankly disappointing. It behoves National-led and Labour-led Governments to pay attention to law reform. I certainly endorse what Sir Geoffrey Palmer of the Law Commission said a few years ago: “Keeping the law up to date is important for the commercial life of the country and for the better functioning of society.” That statement is nowhere more applicable than it is to this legislation which as the Minister has said will replace the Wills Act of 1837 of the United Kingdom Parliament.It is simply not good enough that some law reform projects languish. As I said the wills project is almost completed. But let us look for example at the law of limitation. We should consider the very poor performance of the legislature on that issue. The Law Commission in 1986 was asked by the then Minister of Justice Geoffrey Palmer to look at limitation defences in civil proceedings. It came up with a report on 31 October 1988 and nothing happened to that report. In 2000 the Law Commission published another paper on limitation law. Nothing has happened yet time and time again the courts of this country have been asking the legislature to act on that important area of the law. Most recently the Supreme Court commented that New Zealand law concerning limitations was long overdue for consideration.I say this in a bipartisan way: Parliament has to lift its game as it is currently failing the public. The Wills Bill is a good start. In the last 12 months we have already dealt with the law relating to evidence. Shortly we will be dealing with arbitration homicide succession and property law reform and the select committee is currently dealing with sedition. But many other reports of the Law Commission need to become the subject of legislative action and it is high time that Parliament lifted its game.Darren Hughes: Name them.CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: The last time the member asked me to name them I started to name them and that caused groans from the Labour benches. So I will not accede to his request but rather I will continue with my speech. I will name them afterwards to the member if that really interests him although I suspect that it does not do so. Before I was rudely interrupted I was saying that Parliament has to lift its game.I refer to an outstanding speech which was just recently handed to me by Dr Richard Worth that he gave in 2004 on the subject of law reform. One of the things Dr Worth mentioned was the possibility of our introducing to the New Zealand Parliament a Main Committee or a second but parallel Chamber which is basically a large select committee to which business can be referred and where decisions have to proceed with unanimity. The Main Committee was established in 1994 in the Australian Parliament to minimise business overload in the House and increase opportunities for all members to participate. So legislation like the wills legislation homicide succession law reform and matters such as that would be referred to the Main Committee comprising about 40 members of the Australian House of Representatives. In a non-adversarial and cooperative environment devoid of some of the petty points-scoring we sometimes see in this Chamber there can be substantive debate in the House of Representatives on non - party-political but none the less very important legislation.I think it is time that the New Zealand Parliament considered that because even now it takes too long for non - party-political but none the less important legislation to get through this House. Much of the work of the Law Commission could be brought intoforce a lot more quickly if we had something like a Main Committee. I commend that outstanding address by my friend Dr Worth to all members of Parliament. They should read it they should understand it and they should implement that proposal as quickly as possible. So in a John Fitzgerald Kennedy kind of way I exhort all members of Parliament to work together as parliamentarians to ensure that important law reform projects do not languish for as long as the wills project has and certainly for as long as the limitation project has. In fact limitation is an important area that still has not been looked at by this lazy Government.The Wills Bill is good law. It replaces ancient legislation and is generally expressed in clear and accessible language. But may I close by warning laypersons of the desirability of continuing to have the legal profession draft their wills. In my first reading speech I spoke about certain testators whose wills had resulted in litigation. Generally those wills were drafted by the testators themselves so for the benefit of Mr Hughes—Hon Member: Young Mr Hughes.CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: —young Mr Hughes—I will mention this excellent poem:Ye lawyers who liveupon litigants’ feesAnd who need a good manyto live at your easeGrave wise or wittywhate’er your degreePlain stuff or Queen’s Counsellisten carefully to me.When a festive occasionyour spirit unbendsYou should never forget the profession’s best friends;So we’ll send round the wineand bright bumper fillTo the jolly testatorwho makes his own will.And I do think it is an important point notwithstanding that we have renovated the law on wills that it is expressed in clear and unequivocal language and that concepts are made much simpler and easier to understand that I still exhort laypersons not to try to draft their own wills but to ensure that the legal profession drafts them. If one reads my first reading speech one will see many examples of cases where wills have come to grief because people have tried to draft their own wills be it on eggshells as I told the House or in some other peculiar way.So this is a good bill and I am pleased that it will shortly become law. But I really do think that in recent times that has been the exception rather than the rule and that too many law reform projects have stalled because of a lack of attention by this Parliament. I really do endorse what Dr Worth said in that address in 2004: that law reform is too important to be left to party politics and that we should contemplate having something like the Main Committee which can consider this sort of legislation very effectively indeed.