Barry MaggieHon MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore): Thank you Madam Chair. I rise to speak to the Arbitration Amendment Bill as the deputy chair of the Justice Committee which heard this. I commend the chair Raymond Huo—who is here—and other members of the committee and the officials who worked very hard on a bill that I could probably describe as a layperson as inordinately complex. A very complicated bill hence the separating out of the Trusts Bill and the amendment bill in terms of its arbitration. As a layperson when weaving our way through the complexities of international arbitration it was apparent that we needed some additional advice and I think that the system actually worked very well to provide the committee with the correct degree of intellectual rigour to bring to this process because if people are legally trained and they understand how arbitration works then you add in the layers of international arbitration and we get into some enormous complexities. This bill was originally in the name of Paul Foster-Bell the Hon Chris Finlayson QC took a big interest in it and Andrew Bayly has worked tirelessly and I commend the member for negotiating a complicated bill through some very choppy waters indeed. It didn't quite work out in the way that was originally intended. The Government members did not support all the provisions in the bill that would have brought our arbitration laws—this bill in particular—more in line with the international standards and therein lay the rub. But for New Zealand it is an opportunity to be able to have international arbitration carried out in this country and that was really the thinking behind the bill when it was first conceived. There are a number of countries in the world—particularly in the Asian region—where a lot of cross-border commercial activities and contracts and international treaties are taking place so the whole area of international arbitration has grown exponentially. Indeed the globalisation of world trade and investment has meant that the world has had to really concentrate on harmonising its arbitration measures and its practices and that is across the world. There is a convention that was signed in New York by 159 of the world's States which allows for the enforcement of arbitral decisions so these were really big heavy grunty decisions that were focused and that many countries have agreed to. So this bill is in my view a heroic attempt to try and position New Zealand well but the issues around confidentiality were ones that were always going to be difficult to negotiate because for people to seek arbitration—to enter into that process—they need to have absolute confidence that it's not going to become a public discussion because of the commercial sensitivities and the privacy which underpins many of these big international agreements. So with many nations scrambling to establish themselves as arbitration hubs of one sort or another this is why the Government's support—particularly here in this Parliament—has flowed on to the very successful arbitration centres in Hong Kong and Singapore. What I mean by that is that those hubs in Hong Kong and Singapore have attracted a lot of the business because many other countries are just not equipped to deal with the complexities and the nuances of it. So we adopted one part of this—the model law—in 1996. Our pointy-headed lawyers could talk you through the various elements of what that Arbitration Act set out. It was originally the rules for the use of arbitration as an agreed method of resolving disputes and that was consistent with international standards but this bill has been an effort for us to move with the times. As I said it was partially successful. We support this bill of course. I think it was important that we as a country and this Parliament in particular really needed to clarify our arbitration rules and this bill and the length of time it has taken and the length of complexity has at least I think resolved—at least in Parliament's mind—some of these complex arbitration rules and where New Zealand sits within that. So it is with considerable pleasure after a lot of hard work in the Justice Committee by the committee members and in particular by the member Andrew Bayly that I commend this bill to the committee.