Wood MichaelPRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW (CHOICE OF LAW IN TORT) BILLSecond ReadingDebate resumed.MICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very pleased to rise this evening to speak about the Private International Law (Choice of Law in Tort) Bill and to affirm the Labour Party's support for the further passage of this bill. Really we all feel privileged to be here tonight debating this bill because it was originally under the stewardship of I think we can say one of the great reforming legislators of our age the now Minister David Bennett. The thing you can say about Mr Bennett is that he is probably the guy you have at the vanguard of the revolution inspiring the masses with fiery oratory getting the pulse racing and everything but he probably is not the guy that you have doing the detailed drafting of the constitution.So while this is you know just an absolutely astonishing achievement—pulling this bill through and passing it on to Sarah Dowie—there were a few matters that did need addressing in terms of the text of the bill which the very very good Justice and Electoral Committee did pick up. I look forward to speaking about some of those a little bit later on. It is a bill that does enjoy support across the House—on this side of the House certainly—and my understanding is that the select committee worked very collaboratively to make sure that the bill did address some of the issues that were raised in select committee hearings. My colleague in the House here tonight Louisa Wall who was on that select committee certainly reports satisfaction with involvement in that process.As Sarah Dowie said this is a bill that addresses a particular issue in our law. I think in his first reading speech Mr Finlayson said that this is not a bill that is going to fundamentally change our way of life in New Zealand but it addresses a particular and important issue in our law. That is this issue that we have around double actionability in respect of tort law. Sarah Dowie gave a pretty good explanation of that. It is the issue that we come across when we have multiple jurisdictions and the questions—again Mr Finlayson explained this very well in his first reading speech—are: what law applies and where does it apply? It is those sorts of situations you get where you may be in an overseas jurisdiction something has happened there is a question of tort—a question of a wrong that is being done to someone. Do you apply the law from that jurisdiction or from New Zealand's jurisdiction and what particular law is it? There is a lot of case law that sits in behind this.One of the most famous cases which I read up on a little bit is the Red Sea Insurance Co Ltd v Bouygues SA—I am not sure how we would pronounce it—which was a famous case that went to the Privy Council in 1995. In that particular case we have a situation where it is unclear whether the particular jurisdiction under which the tort should be heard was Hong Kong or Saudi Arabia owing to the fact that different aspects of the case took place across those two different jurisdictions. Immediately we can see the particular problem that we have here. The issue is that it becomes complex for the parties. It becomes unsure as to which piece of law we should be applying. A lot of time and legal proceedings can be spent on that aspect that we call—sorry I have just lost the particular bit of terminology here—essentially the clash of legal systems; asking what particular law we apply to this situation instead of actually dealing with the substance of the case.What this bill does is move towards repealing double actionability. That is the first of four substantial parts of this bill. The first is abolishing double actionability. That is done in the new clause 10 of the bar 2 bill. That removes the hurdle of having to look at the rules in both jurisdictions. That is actually no small thing because this has been a piece of common law that has applied for many many years across countries that apply the common law stemming out of the United Kingdom. It has in fact been removed by the courts in Australia and Canada and as an Act of Parliament in the UK back I think in the late 90s or early 2000s. We are one of the remaining jurisdictions within the common law jurisdictions that still has this on the book.Having removed that you cannot just leave an empty space. So what this piece of legislation does is replace double actionability with a new general rule that says we actually look at the place of wrong. We ask where the tort arose and that is the place in which we apply the rules. So it is kind of a bit of a when in Rome". That will put a new onus on New Zealanders and New Zealand companies and organisations to fully understand the laws and the regulations and the practices in different jurisdictions in which they are operating. So it is a major change to them and this is noted in some of the legal commentaries. They are going to have to do a little bit more work and will not be able to rely on the fact that they know New Zealand law in the future. So that is important but we think that it is a sensible approach.What the bill also does is set in place some rules to determine exactly how we deal with that and also in a very sensible way it does provide an avenue for there to be exceptions to the common rule. That gives the judiciary some flexibility to just make sensible decisions if we need to vary a little bit from that common rule.I know that all members in this House really want to see members' bills proceeding with good haste so I think I will leave my comments which cover the substantial matters in the bill there and I look forward to coming back and making some further contributions in the happy event that we proceed to the Committee stage next. Thank you and I commend this bill to the House."