Wall LouisaLOUISA WALL (Labour—Manurewa): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o Te Whare. It is my pleasure as a member of the Justice and Electoral Committee to speak on this the first reading of the Arbitration Amendment Bill. I would like to commend my colleague Paul Foster-Bell. It is a bill that meets a need and I want to acknowledge that and certainly I want to acknowledge the information that we have received from John Walton the President of the Arbitrators and Mediators Institute of New Zealand. I also want to acknowledge that this whole area actually stems from the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law model law on international commercial arbitration of 1985. So it is actually called the 1985 model law and it was amended in 2006 which added a more comprehensive approach to interim measures in support of arbitration. New Zealand became a signatory in 1996. It is interesting the whole issue about model law which is really about suggested patterns for lawmakers and Governments to consider adopting their own domestic legislation based on the framework. We are actually implementing an international instrument—so well done Mr Foster-Bell. I find it interesting the whole discussion around arbitration versus court proceedings. I have googled and arbitration is a private dispute resolution mechanism". So I think the reason you have highlighted specifically that it is about confidentiality is that it is a private process and that process is undertaken by agreement by contract—which is actually why there are limited rights of appeal—as opposed to a court process which we all know is public. The courts are usually governed by judges and juries and there are rights of appeal. So those are essentially the differences. I was fascinated to look at the Carr v Gallaway Cook Allan Supreme Court decision. Just as a bit of background that Supreme Court decision was a dispute about a commercial property sale and included within that particular arbitration agreement the right of appeal based on questions of law and fact which in fact is not part of clause 5 of schedule 2 of the Arbitration Act 1996. Within that judgment—and I think it is really interesting to note given that actually that seems to be the premise and context for this amendment—the Supreme Court identified three issues. The first was what constitutes an arbitration agreement terms of the Act; secondly can the offending words in relation to appeals on question of fact be severed from the overall agreement to arbitrate; and thirdly if they cannot should the award be set aside on policy grounds under article 34 of the model law in schedule 1 of the Arbitration Act—because that is in fact what happened. The agreement that was reached in the arbitration was set aside. So I think this is a very important piece of legislation. Our select committee is incredibly busy but I do not think that we are too busy to fit this piece of legislation into our schedule. I also want to particularly highlight the issue between the court and arbitration as it relates to trust issues and there have been issues lately where families have had to go through very public processes. As noted in some of the information that I have received some of those family members—I do not think it was good for their family matters to be aired in such a public way. That is what this particular bill seeks to do. It is to provide that mechanism of arbitration that allows families to have their disputes but let us have disputes that are related to family matters in private and let them be confidential. Overall we want an agreement that is binding on both parties so that if people go through that process they cannot then go to court and in fact end up starting the entire process again. So well done Mr Foster-Bell. There are questions to be answered but I am sure that the select committee has the capacity to answer those questions. I look forward to participating in the process and hearing from esteemed legal minds because I am sure—as Chris Bishop has already highlighted—there will be much interest particularly from certain sectors of our judicial system. Kia ora."