Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National—Hutt South): Thank you very much Madam Chair. Look we considered the Tribunals Powers and Procedures Legislation Bill alongside the Courts Matters Bill at the Justice Committee in the last Parliament and also into the new Parliament. It's good to see the Labour-led Government continuing with it. It's a bit more substantive actually than the Courts Matters Bill because it makes a whole quite substantive series of changes to the way in which our tribunals work. Members I think will have some appreciation of just how many disputes in New Zealand are dealt with outside the sort of ordinary court process of the District Court High Court and above. There's increasing use of tribunals as well and so it's very important to get this legislation right.There are a couple of things that I want to point to that I think are very important and I praise. The first is the doubling of the monetary limit for the disputes tribunal from $15000 to $30000 and I'll just make a side note here: I think it would be good if the power to increase the maximum limit for claims in the disputes tribunal could be given to the Minister or given to the Governor-General in regulation. I've got to say it seems a little bit silly that we have to legislate in order to increase the monetary limit. That seems to me to be a power that could be within the Governor-General's—so in other words the Cabinet's—ambit. It's a bit of a personal bugbear of mine that a lot of change to things like thresholds limits maximums minimums and things like that is actually in primary legislation. I think it could be perfectly well catered for in regulation. The classic of course is the Income Tax Act. Our colleague Michael Wood is shaking his head in despair—but the Income Tax Act's a classic. Parliament every year has to legislate to add say the Himalayan Trust Board" to the list of charities that are entitled to a tax rebate. Well I mean frankly I think there are better uses of the time than you know the "Mount Roskill Residents Association No 2 Incorporated"—I mean I'm sure they'd do very good work but I don't really think we need to waste Parliament's time legislating. Anyway that's more of a side point.The actual increase in the disputes tribunal maximum is a really important one because over the last 10 to 15 years of course inflation has increased 1.5 or 2 percent a year and more and more claims—and this was the evidence before the committee—found themselves outside the ambit of the disputes tribunal because the claims were for example somebody having a dispute with somebody over 20000 bucks worth of property or $21000 for a car; you know a dispute there or whatever. Basically because of the Act they were outside the ambit of the Act and the law doesn't intend for that to happen so we've now increased it to $30000. There's some interesting other little changes here. The Birdlings Flat Land Titles Commissioner the Health Boards of Appeal and the Maritime Appeal Authority are disestablished. The Health Boards of Appeal was seldom used apparently and given that I'd never heard of them until we started to consider this bill in the select committee I suspect that is true. Just a quick note on the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) of the Government. I think the changes advanced by the Minister Aupito William Sio are very sensible. The particular change in clause 51(5) which is related to the increasing of the general limit of the disputes tribunal to $30000—the Supplementary Order Paper advanced by the Minister brings all those changes into force at the same time. There was going to be a staggered introduction of that $30000 limit across the disputes tribunal and the various other tribunals. That's now going to be done all at the same time and I think that makes sense. I've had a look through the Supplementary Order Paper of the Minister—I think it does make sense and National does support the bill. The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 133 in the name of the Hon Aupito William Sio to Part 1 be agreed to.Amendments agreed to.The question was put that the following amendments in the name of the Hon Aupito William Sio to Part 1 be agreed to: Subpart 3 headingdelete the subpart 3 heading (page 24 line 30).Clause 37after clause 37(1) (page 32 after line 23) insert:(1A) In section 2 definition of work order replace "specified in the order." with "specified in the order".Clause 163in clause 163(8) replace "clause 9C" with "clause 9D" (page 81 line 34).Subpart 20 headingdelete the subpart 20 heading (page 122 line 18).Clause 306in the heading to clause 306replace "25A to 25C" with "25A and 25B" (page 133 line 8).Clause 307in the heading to clause 307 replace "sections 25D and 25E inserted" with "section 25D inserted (Online publication of information about procedures time frames and progress of decisions)" (page 134 line 4).Clause 320in clause 320(1) new section 117(ca) replace "electronically:" with "electronically; or" (page 138 line 11).Amendments agreed to.Part 1 as amended agreed to."