O'Connor GregGREG O'CONNOR (Labour—Ōhāriu): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. The Arbitration Amendment Bill has been one of those bills that one felt that as a new member of the Justice Committee there are certain bills that come through that actually do thoroughly increase your understanding of an aspect of the world of the law that I knew very little about before. Although having said that having been part of an organisation the only organisation that actually had binding arbitration as its manner of settling pay disputes I probably didn't have to understand much about the give and take of the arbitration system. So I do thank the member Mr Bayly for the way in which he has pushed the bill through. It made for quite strong deliberations to the committee and certainly has made sure that when we did come to deliberate on the bill we were certainly as well informed as we could expect to have been.The early stage of the debate was of course around making New Zealand bring in a confidentiality clause so where a case had ended up in arbitration that the presumption of that being heard in public was reversed. So the presumption would actually be that it would be confidential. And the rationale around that on the surface of it certainly from the commercial point of view was that it would assist New Zealand to establish an international base around arbitration perhaps with the benefits financial in particular that would arise. So that really brought us to the nub of the matter in what we did consider much of our debating time.We heard from some very smart wise informed people to the committee. Probably it would be fair to say that for a member's bill the resources that went into it the advice we got probably exceeded that that most will ever be allowed or permitted on such a bill. However it did certainly when you had people of the likes of Paul Heath QC to advise us through this ensure that when we did come to the deliberation and it brought us to this stage we were making sure we were playing with the best information available.When we did go to the confidentiality some of the arguments that were brought up were ones that if we did have confidential settlements all the time then we wouldn't learn anything. No judgments would be published; therefore there would be no learnings.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Can I just interrupt the member's speech? I have stopped the clock. Chlöe Swarbrick can I refer you to Speaker's ruling 16/3 about the device that's on top of the desk. There is a Speaker's ruling about that. It is just above the one that refers to knitting in the Chamber for the members. So can I call Greg O'Connor to resume his speech?GREG O'CONNOR: Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker and being a student of history I'd be very wary if while standing on my feet people were knitting knowing what that preceded in the French Revolution.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Slightly odd juxtaposition.GREG O'CONNOR: However I can go back to the Arbitration Amendment Bill. Again going back to the fact that much of our discussions were around the confidentiality—this basic principle really of confidentiality for public; that justice should be seen to be done and that these things should be conducted in public. And I was certainly left—from the new information that I received the discussion with some of these very learned gentlemen and I believe they were all gentlemen the learned ones that came before us—with the impression that there was certainly no justification that we would actually go against the basic tenets of our justice system of open justice. So it did take us a while to get there but we got there and I think it was something that because of its importance we should really deserve the time that we actually spent on it.When we were considering that there was one celebrated case—the Hawksbury case—that came up about how much and this is again a matter that was considered; it was settled by arbitration but it was around public money. And that certainly became the centre point of much of our discussion around whether with a confidential settlement surrounding public money using this legislation could have prevented that being known. So again another case came to us that helped us in our decision making.As we come to consider the second reading of this bill it goes back again to the basic tenets of this. It was about improving the framework for arbitration as a helpful method of resolving commercial and other disputes. Arbitration or alternative dispute resolutions are very much part of our criminal justice system now with the introduction of pre-charge warnings etc. or alternative resolution right through to these rather large cases that we will hear of.At one stage we did also consider when we were looking at that confidentiality and whether it was possible to set up this international arbitration system whether we could have a two-tier system to preserve the confidentiality—those basic understandings of the way we do our business in New Zealand—whether in fact we could have a system that provided the two parties had no interest in New Zealand were domiciled elsewhere whether we could actually have a system that would allow us to take advantage of the perhaps vast amounts of money that these big corporations coming to New Zealand to do their business might have been able to avail ourselves of and just then have another system for New Zealand - based companies which would have to work under the current system.While there was some work done on that again one of our learned QCs—I think Mr Paul Heath was one of the ones who looked at that—came back and while there was some attractiveness again it had that two-tiered justice system which started to have that smack of a bit of third world about it and started to make New Zealand start to look like a country that you know perhaps was going away from those beautiful basic justice principles that make us one of the least corrupt countries in the world.So again these were the sorts of discussions that we came to. So I won't say it was quickly dismissed but that was one of those suggestions that was brought explored and rejected which brought us then back to the bill we have before us today. The practical purpose again to improve—it really is about improving justice arbitration of course being a helpful method of resolving commercial and other disputes based on the consent of the parties.One of the other things we spent some time on too was the late jurisdictional change. One of the important things here is that—and again we debated whether it was possible for parties to go through what is inevitably quite an expensive process of going through a whole system of arbitration and then one party being able to object to the jurisdiction. And that's a case that came out of Singapore and if one of those parties objected it was quite possible then for the whole expensive process to have to be restarted or thrown out. That was one of the clauses again which we spent some time on. And of course it very quickly became obvious that we needed the protection to make sure that wasn't the case: that an unsuccessful party could stand and say Well I don't like the result. I'll look for an alternative." So we were very fortunate to have time to consider that.Again going back to the matter we talked about about the benefit of New Zealand being a venue for overseas arbitration being considered. And William Somerville one of those submitters said it "should not drive [a] weakening [of] a fundamental constitutional principle."That was really where we arrived. What we have now this Arbitration Amendment Bill—I'm very happy to commend this bill to the House and again congratulate—as it's turned out. Because knowing that I've been part of the very hard-working Justice Committee I'll remind as I have before that at one stage I was reminded that two-thirds of the sittings of the select committees in this House were the hard-working Justice Committee. I see Mr Bishop over there nodding his head vigorously as a fellow member of that extremely hard-working Justice Committee. So I am happy to commend this bill to the House."