Ghahraman GolrizGOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN (Green): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. There has been a particularly jovial mood across the House I've noticed tonight as the reading of this bill has been proceeding.Chris Penk: Don't kill the mood!GOLRIZ GHAHRAMAN: Ha ha! I wanted to begin by congratulating Andrew Bayly for bringing this bill to the House and tonight having it passed by consensus across this House and also to congratulate the Justice Committee for their work in a cooperative amicable way that has brought this bill to us in such a way that we can all agree on it. I also wanted to congratulate that committee for their fine appointment of Paul Heath QC who was always my favourite of the High Court judges and what a loss to the bench but a huge asset I see to the committee on this particular bill. It is nice to have cross-party support for anything that comes before this House.This bill aims to update and streamline our laws on arbitration which if you look at the Arbitration Act were passed in 1996. So I think it is timely and again congratulations to the member who has actually brought this reform before us because it has been a long time coming.Alternative dispute resolution is so important. It is cost-effective it keeps our courts from being so clogged up as they have been and we all know that that's really important because of course access to justice is important and so we do want to encourage an effective and streamlined process that's alternative to the mainstream courts so that commercial entities and private citizens can actually avail themselves of that rather than coming into the very overworked and under-resourced public court system. So I do want to support this bill whole-heartedly in actually bringing New Zealand's arbitration laws in line with international standards.As everyone has noted here tonight we're doing that in such a way that is going to make our laws actually and New Zealand an attractive centre for international arbitration—though as one of the submitters pointed out that's a side-line benefit and not necessarily in and of itself the justification for reform. So we're doing this for New Zealand but we are going to get this very attractive outcome as well that we will be so up to date and so effective in arbitration that we may actually become a hub for this type of dispute resolution internationally.I do just want to speak about open justice just very briefly in that that was a concern I know of the members of the select committee and this bill does extend the presumption of confidentiality in arbitration processes. You know we do note that arbitration is a voluntary process. It's not part of the public justice system in the same way. So in the way that the transparency and openness of public justice processes is important to the public good those same standards don't necessarily apply across the arbitration proceeding and in those contexts. But the members of the select committee did take that seriously and the bill does in the end strike a good balance between the need for transparency and the ability of parties in arbitration proceedings to keep their information confidential and to make those proceedings thereby more effective; so that balance has been struck. Our justice system is coming up to date with 21st century standards and with international standards. So I commend the bill to the House.