Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): This is a fascinating bill the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill and I think Sarah Dowie the member in charge of the bill was doing herself a bit of a disservice when she commented with basically words to the effect that she sort of inherited the bill and she was not wildly enthusiastic about being the person in charge of it. But I think that is doing herself a disservice because I think she is actually very excited about this and I know that she has commented to me privately that a bill like this is really good. That is good because actually as we know from her chairpersonship of the Justice and Electoral Committee a legal background is very helpful.I want to raise a question with the member about clause 10 in Part 2 of the bill which is about the rule of double actionability and related common law rules being abolished. What this clause basically does is abolish rules of common law to the extent that they apply to a claim in tort. Clauses 10(a) and (b) are about actionability under both New Zealand law and the law of another country for the purpose of determining whether a tort was actionable. This is essentially part of the double actionability clause that we are abolishing and then the exception rules are in clause 10(b). I guess all I am just asking is whether the member in charge of the bill is comfortable with abolishing wholesale common law rules because traditionally the Parliament is very cautious about abolishing common law rules.I mean the common law is a creature of the courts. It is judge-made law it has evolved through centuries—hundreds of years—particularly when it comes to tort law which is essentially an invention of common law going back through to Donoghue v Stevenson and some of the cases before that. It is essentially an invention of common law and I think there is a point where the Parliament and the legislature should be a bit cautious and a bit sceptical about treading on to the realm of common law. Of course Parliament is sovereign Parliament can do whatever it likes subject to the inherent rights and freedoms and without getting into a debate about Lord Cooke's famous dictum I just raise the point for the member. [Interruption] Jono Naylor says: No come on." But I am sure the Chair will encourage well back to the scope if I started talking about Lord Cooke and fundamental rights and law journal articles that I thought I had long forgotten from my law school days but it turns out that apparently I have not.I just raise the point about treading on to the path of the common law because Parliament is traditionally a bit cautious about doing that and what we are doing here through clause 10 is we are saying that the following rules of common law are abolished which is starkly put in clause 10. It is very starkly put and we just need to be careful about doing that. I mean to be fair there is a fetter in clause 10 and it says the following rules of common law are abolished but "to the extent that they apply to a claim in tort". So we would not want to get ahead of ourselves we are not making some massively drastic wholesale change to the common law but we are abolishing a couple of rules of common law. So I just raise that point with the member in charge of the bill to make sure that she is absolutely confident that it is the right path to go down and that we have got the wording of the clause exactly right."