Tirikatene RinoRINO TIRIKATENE (Labour—Te Tai Tonga): I am pleased to take a call on the second reading of this bill the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill. This deals with a very—I suppose it is a complex area of law. If I think back to my days in law school tort—yes it can be difficult to grasp. Essentially if you are wronged personally the act of being wronged other than when you are in a contract has been established through common law—through judge-made law. The torts have been established through the courts and that is basically the origins of tort law—it is all judge-made—and here we are just clearing up some legal uncertainties that are unnecessary and that could be very costly particularly to parties going before the courts. So we are trying to expedite those processes by making sure that it is very clear which jurisdiction applies when a tortious act occurs across multiple jurisdictions with various international parties. This is a sensible piece of legislation. Based on the number of submissions—from the Law Society and a law professor—I guess it will be talked about among the law community and I am sure it will come in handy for certain parties when a dispute does arise. I was thinking about what is a typical scenario of a potential tortious act that may fall under this piece of legislation. I guess I was thinking about Jono Naylor earlier who was giving some self-promotion about his performance in a band. He was in a band. He was a keyboard player and a vocalist for the band Truly Made with their one-off hit For the Summer". Mr Naylor kindly distributed that song to Kris Faafoi and me over the dinner break and I had a listen. I had a listen to Mr Naylor and you know it is not a bad tune. It is not a bad tune. It has got a bit of a sun-drenched reggae-type beat and some pretty good vocals kind of like Steely Dan meets the Wailers in some sense. But I could hear Jono doing those nice syncopating keyboard stabs as you do on a reggae tune and so he really held it down. Yes it was a very nice tune. Upon listening to that I could not find any—I was not aggrieved there was no tortious act that I was injured from from listening to that tune. But then again Mr Naylor mentioned Jamaica. He mentioned Jamaica in his contribution and I was wondering well what the folks in Jamaica—the origin I guess of reggae music—would think if they heard Mr Naylor's tune which is this sort of reggae-type tune. Who is to say? The people in Jamaica may well feel aggrieved. They may well feel that there was a tortious act and that they were injured. There could be some sort of injury upon listening to Mr Naylor and this sort of pop version of a reggae-type tune that Mr Naylor was involved in and so which jurisdiction would apply? Where was the injury—where did the harm occur? Would it be in Jamaica? Would it be in New Zealand? Who knows? But this is the reason for this legislation. It is to establish very clearly which jurisdiction applies which is where the tortious act actually took place and so that will hopefully clear up those sorts of potential disputes. Remember the example I am giving is not—you know who are we to say what the extent of the law is because tort law is judge-made law and it is still evolving and who is to say that there might not be some sort of harm that is created in the future by the example that I have just given. That was just one example. The other point I wanted to make just to give another example—one that is I guess quite close to home—is about the tort of invasion of privacy or protection of privacy. Consider the example of an electoral agent in say an office like Gore in Clutha-Southland who is potentially aggrieved through the covert installation of—who knows—a listening device or of a recording device. That could potentially give rise to the tort of invasion of privacy. Hon Ruth Dyson: Unless they got paid out. Unless they got hush money. RINO TIRIKATENE: Unless they got hush money indeed. But that is another layer of—potentially another legal wrong that has been committed. So in that scenario yes sure. Perhaps that electoral support agent or whichever employee it was was offshore in another jurisdiction—say Jamaica—working. Someone was working in Jamaica and a covert listening device was installed in the jurisdiction where that person was working but the instructions were given by perhaps the supervising member of Parliament to a firm. Who knows? But there was the installation of a listening device covertly recording private conversations and so again this legislation would be applicable in that situation. I just wanted to give these examples of where this bill may be applicable in terms of the jurisdiction that would apply where a tortious act is committed. We are looking at a range of tortious acts. Of course in the international sphere we are looking at economic harm—economic harm to businesses I guess primarily with these cases. But you know accessing the courts engaging lawyers court fees the adversarial process—all of that is largely beyond the scope of little private disputes. In the international cases it will involve major businesses and corporations and so they will benefit from having a bit more certainty in terms of the process that they are following when they are deciding to engage in a cause of action to sue another party. So yes I do stand in support of this bill. I commend Sarah Dowie from Invercargill which is very close to Clutha-Southland and is also part of Te Tai Tonga for bringing this bill to the House. I am sure that it will provide clarity for those very technical and complex legal issues that will arise in future around tortious acts around which jurisdiction will apply and how the legal proceedings will carry on there. So I commend this bill."