Curran ClareHon CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. What an extraordinary bill this is. I actually almost wish I was sitting on the Justice Committee through all of this.Chris Bishop: No you don't.Hon CLARE CURRAN: Ha ha! Well when I'm looking through the list of reports submissions QC reports coming out your ears—not yours Madam Deputy Speaker apologies—it's an extraordinary trajectory for a member's bill. I acknowledge Paul Foster-Bell and Andrew Bayly for the work and for the commitment clearly that you've put into this because I know that you have put a lot of commitment into this. There were 10 submitters a departmental report—I presume that was the interim report—then you heard again from the submitters and then QCs were engaged to provide advice and it went on and on.For those who are listening at home what we're talking about is arbitration which is—it's basically described as a helpful method of resolving commercial and other disputes and it's based not on litigation but on the consent of the parties. That is what we are discussing and what the original bill set out to do was to try and introduce some significant changes. I think where we've ended up is what good legislators should do which is with important technical tidy-ups with a bigger discussion around the role of arbitration and where New Zealand could fit into that space. But where we've also ended up is with a bill that's come back from select committee with some significant recommendations for taking out two of the key clauses—clause 4 and clause 5—which ultimately means that you are left with the technical tidy-ups.I'd like to just make a couple of comments in the couple of minutes that I've got particularly around the principle of open justice. That was seen as being so important. I just want to refer to the New Zealand Law Society submission and then contrast that with what Nick Smith said earlier. The New Zealand Law Society submitted that any derogation from the principle of open justice"—and "derogation" means moving away from the principle of open justice—"requires a compelling justification and should be limited to the least derogation necessary to achieve the objective." They said that "Comparable provisions in other jurisdictions [such as] Australia and the UK should be considered."Now from what I can gather the basis of the discussion to move away from the principle of open justice was based on Singapore and other jurisdictions—Hong Kong—where a lot of arbitration takes place commercial arbitration. I think the aim was to try and see New Zealand as being a centre for that kind of commercial arbitration but to do that would be to move away from the principle of open justice. I think that where we've ended up is to say that actually in our rule of law and the way that our justice system and our democracy operates we don't believe that it's worth it to do that.That open justice—and I think what Nick Smith was arguing for was a qualified form of open justice. I'd love to hear what Chris Finlayson had to say about that. I hope he does make a contribution in the committee stage around what that actually means. Is qualified open justice worth giving up our principle in order to get more commercial arbitration into New Zealand? We say no to that. We think that we've ended up with a bill where there is obviously some unanimous support around the House.Debate interrupted.The House adjourned at 10 p.m."