Adams Amy: Disputes Tribunals Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Adams Amy: Disputes Tribunals Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Volume:655;Page:4974] 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 Like my colleague and friend Nathan Guy who spoke before me I am very pleased to speak in support of the Disputes Tribunals Amendment Bill. 
Before I came into this House I was a lawyer and I can tell members that one of the most discouraging situations lawyers face is to have in front of them clients who have very genuine claims that deserve redress and deserve to be followed up on for amounts of $10000 to $15000 and up to the $20000 band. That is a lot of money to the people involved. It may not be big money for some of the large corporates but for a lot of people I would see that was a considerable amount of money for them to have been done out of. When one had to tell those clients that they had a valid claim and a reasonable prospect of success but that it was simply not worth their while to take it to court it was really heartbreaking. That is not what our justice system is supposed to be about. That is not the sort of advice one should have to give clients. That was incredibly discouraging in respect of the band of claims that fell within that unspoken cost level where it was too big to go to the disputes tribunal and too small to make the claim justifiable to take to the District Court where claimants would have run up considerable costs. Even if a claimant won a case there he or she would not get the costs back and the chances of success were not absolute no matter how strong the lawyer felt the case was. 
We are able now to expand the jurisdiction of the disputes tribunal up to $15000 as of right which is double the amount that parties can take to that forum under the existing legislation and beyond that there is the ability to go to the tribunal for claims up to $20000 where the parties agree. I think that is a very significant step and one that we should not downplay simply because we are not talking about millions of dollars. It is an access to justice issue. As a person who has seen people turned away from justice because that additional jurisdiction is not there I see this legislation as being a real and meaningful step now being taken. 
As well as providing that access to justice this legislation will have a measurable and important benefit for businesses in terms of their cash flow in terms of their time and in terms of their ability to enforce debts and collect debts in a quick manner. I think everybody knows particularly in difficult times that cash-flow management is all-important. This bill makes the process easier and quicker for businesses—often small one-man-band businesses or mum and dad enterprises—to recover money owing to them without having to involve lawyers without having to spend years often in the court process and without having to throw more good money into the pot in order to have the prospect of success. Quite apart from the access to justice issue that is a very important step as part of this Government’s plan to help small business in these difficult times to get the economy moving and to look after cash flow. Although it may not make any headlines around this Government’s work to support small and medium enterprises I do not think the effect of it should go unnoticed. For those people who are in the category that can now access the tribunal the effect will be measurable and real. 
It is good to see general support in the House for the reforms. I think equally that the Justice and Electoral Committee should be commended for doing a very good job of consideration here because there are important issues at stake around justice and the entitlement of people to have the full protection of the law. There are important considerations where the rights of appeal are limited and where claimants do not have lawyers. It might seem strange for a lawyer to be endorsing a situation that precludes lawyers from getting involved in more cases but then again that might be reason enough in itself to support the bill in some people’s minds. But I think that the balance here is right for the current times between the informality and low cost that the disputes tribunal system gives us and the right to have the more full and complete protection of our system of law where the monetary amounts creep up above the levels that we now have. 
I turn now to the matter of how long it has been since the issues addressed in this bill were last raised. I think the bill should be supported and I commend it to the House. Thank you. 
Bill read a second time. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.