Moroney SueSUE MORONEY (Labour): It is great to get an opportunity to make a contribution on the Judicature Modernisation Bill. At the outset I just want to remind people that Labour of course is supporting this bill but we do have some reservations about it and I certainly have some questions that I would like to ask the Minister. I want to focus my contribution on Part 2 of the bill which is where it repeals the District Courts Act and instead this bill makes a unitary District Court where we have specialist courts as part of that unitary District Court. Those specialist courts will become divisions of it. Those courts will be a Family Court a Youth Court and a disputes tribunal. I particularly want to focus my contribution on Part 2 as I said clause 260 which is about exceptions. This is the part of the bill where it talks about what jurisdiction the new unitary District Court will have to hear civil proceedings. I note that there are a range of figures used in the bill to describe whether the court will have jurisdiction to hear such civil matters. I think that it is perhaps quite a dangerous thing to prescribe limits because they can quite quickly become irrelevant as figures. The example I want to use for this is clause 260(1) which actually states: The court does not have jurisdiction to hear and determine the following classes of proceedings:" and the first one it lists is that it does not have jurisdiction to hear and determine proceedings for the recovery of land. But there are some exceptions to that and that goes down to clause 261 where it says that the court can actually hear proceedings for the recovery of land in particular situations. The situation described in clause 261(1) is where "(a) the annual rent does not exceed $62500; or (b) the value of the land does not exceed $500000." I think that is quite a dangerous thing to do in a bill like this because as we know the price of land in New Zealand at the moment is actually growing at a rapid rate. My concern would be that if somebody has a civil dispute about recovering land and that land at the time that they decide to put an action in front of the court is worth say $400000 it would therefore come under the jurisdiction of this part of the bill. However by the time that action comes before the court it could be several months later it could be a year later or it could be 2 years later. What is the situation—and I would be interested in what the Minister has to say about this—if in the meantime the value of that land had gone over $500000? That really is possible in today's society.Today in the city where I live in Hamilton house and land prices have gone up by 30 percent in just 1 year. When the action is put in front of the court it is quite possible that the land may well come under its jurisdiction because it could be say valued at $400000 but by the time it gets in front of the court the land value may have gone up to a place where it actually takes it out of the jurisdiction because of clause 261(1) of this bill. So I would be very interested to know what would happen in that circumstance. Would the judge be required to strike it out as not being within the jurisdiction? Would they have to transfer the proceedings to a different court to the High Court because it had gone over the limit that the District Court could hear? What would be the remedy for this happening? Or is it the case that the court would continue to hear it because at the time when the action was first put in front of the court the land actually was of a value that did qualify? If this truly is a modernisation bill then it should take into account all those sorts of issues. I just want to bring back to the Committee's attention how dangerous it is to use these sorts of figures when they could become—"