Muller ToddTODD MULLER (National—Bay of Plenty): Mr Assistant Speaker—Michael Wood: Quality not quantity.TODD MULLER: Oh one can do both. Look thank you for the opportunity to say a few words on the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill in its second reading. Well this is dry stuff I would have to say. As someone who was not on the Justice and Electoral Committee and as someone as you can probably tell who is not a lawyer it has been quite a mission of resilience for the last hour and a half to 2 hours as we have debated that and—even though the Assistant Speaker is going to tell me to sit down—can I just acknowledge the Lions supporters in the gallery for having the resilience to stay with us. What an extraordinary effort. I can assure you that the New Zealand Parliament has more vibrant days and vibrant debates than this but occasionally we are drawn to very engaging technical debates that certainly can be a bit dry. So I am delighted to be able to speak for a few minutes on this bill.I acknowledge the Hon David Bennett from Hamilton who took this particular bill forward initially and now of course it has been passed to my good friend and colleague Sarah Dowie. But thinking of David Bennett and the good city of Hamilton a very good friend of mine the late great Sir Ross Jansen was the mayor—I knew him in my university days and he strongly advised me that I should be a lawyer. I have a sense that he would be very impressed to know that all these years later I am standing here holding a view in respect of something as intriguing as torts.But anyway as we have heard already from all of the speakers a tort is essentially a private dispute between persons and what we are doing here is providing a solution or a simplification along with the similar jurisdictions of Australia Canada and England to codify as a general rule that the law applicable to the alleged tort will be the law of the jurisdiction in which the events constituting the alleged tort took place. Actually very much as a layman to this particular issue that seems to make a heck of a lot of sense and one wonders why it has taken so long across the various jurisdictions to get to what appears to be quite a simplistic and a simple and a sensible solution. The current model that exists until this bill passes of double actionability has been described in the words of one Australian author as notoriously difficult to understand and apply and based on having listened to the various contributions over the last 2 hours I think that is a very fair assessment not only of the historic case but potentially even of what is proposed as a solution. But then you know I am not a lawyer so others may well see the compelling logic of it more clearly than I do.What I would like to do is just specifically talk to I guess the three key clauses that underpin this sensible change. The first is clause 7(1) which establishes the place-of-wrong" rule in which the applicable law is the law of the jurisdiction in which the events constituting—that is a hard word to say; "constituting"—a tort has occurred. Secondly clause 7(2) provides rules to determine where a tort can be said to have occurred where the events have occurred in more than one jurisdiction which is a critical component because sometimes depending on the nature of the dispute it is over multiple jurisdictions. Then of course clause 8 provides for an exception to the "place-of-wrong" rule allowing the court to apply the law of another jurisdiction where it is substantially more appropriate to do so.It was interesting to hear that there were two specific and quite comprehensive contributions from submitters and I am not going to step through that in any particular detail. Look I could go through here every one of the changes that the select committee made—Chris Bishop: Oh I said you would.TODD MULLER: Yes I know you did. But I think in due deference to those watching and to those observing and I wish them good luck for the second test—Hon Member: You don't really mean that. TODD MULLER: —generally good luck—can I commend the bill to the House and I look forward to the vote which should be unanimous. But as my learned colleague Chris Bishop said it is very disappointing when a party whose members stand and say that it is a good bill and stand and say that it is technically the right solution to address a problem that exists will then stand and say that they will vote against it because they do not think it is appropriate for the Government backbenchers to be able to put a bill up on a day like this. I think they can do better than that and they know they can. I commend the bill to the House.Bill read a second time."