Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thanks very much.Hon Members: Oh!CHRIS BISHOP: What's with the groans? Goodness me! I'm very pleased to take a call on this important bill—well these two bills actually I should say. These bills were introduced in the last Parliament by the last Government and it's pleasing to see—Nicola Willis: Very good Government it was.CHRIS BISHOP: Very good Government it was; that's exactly right Nicola Willis. And it's pleasing to see that the current Government is continuing with them.Look it's really important with bills like this that there is a bit of cross-party support because we all want an efficient and effective justice system. The last Government spent quite a bit of time going through actually some of the fundamental provisions that govern the way our court system works. We had the judicature modernisation legislation that went through. I remember considering that. That was the outcome of an extraordinary amount of work done by various Ministers—and also officials we should acknowledge. This bill is not quite as big as the judicature modernisation project but it is in the same vein of bills to tidy up and improve the operation of the courts.I've been listening to the debate in my office and members have been canvassing some of the important provisions that the bills have introduced. I just want to quickly mention one in my time in the House and that's the disputes tribunal monetary limit which is updating that financial threshold from $15000 to $30000 which you know is basically a very small provision in one bill but is actually a really important provision because it is a doubling of the threshold. Over time as inflation essentially increases the price of goods you do need the law to keep pace with the increase in the price of goods so that things can come within the disputes tribunal. But it's also a recognition that those lower-level non—well it is adversarial in the sense that it's a dispute but the tribunals have a simple process that are easy for people to access and that are not particularly costly in comparison to a traditional court process. It is really important that people can access things like the disputes tribunal and I think the increase to $30000 will see more people using tribunals and that will ultimately be to the betterment of the disputes that the disputes tribunal deals with which is actually an amazing number of disputes and we are world leading in our provision of low-cost simple access to justice for people and the disputes tribunal is a big part of that.I think personally there's a case for allowing Cabinet or the Executive Council to move that monetary limit through regulation rather than having to legislate often to increase the limit. It's not in this bill; maybe we'll see it in another bill. I personally think that would be quite a good idea. It seems a bit silly that you have to go back and legislate the monetary amounts but that's just me.Look these are good bills. They have been through the Justice Committee. I had the pleasure of serving on that committee in the last Parliament but also this Parliament as well. We have considered the bills thoroughly and diligently. Just in closing I do want to pay tribute to the officials from the Ministry of Justice who have worked on these bills. They are very large bills. They make a large number of very minor and very technical amendments. Officials have spent a lot of time on them. This has been the outcome of a multi-year process and so to the Ministry of Justice officials who I'm sure are watching with bated breath to see whether or not the bills pass I just want to acknowledge the hard work that they've done on them. Thanks.Bills read a second time.The House adjourned at 10.57 a.m. (Wednesday)