Wood Michael; Rurawhe AdrianMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. The Arbitration Amendment Bill appears to enjoy broad support across the House and all going as expected will pass into law this evening. So it is an important and appropriate occasion to acknowledge those who have contributed to its passage so far. This bill is in the name of our parliamentary colleague Andrew Bayly and so I acknowledge him. But I also note that he's probably a little bit like the winger who got passed the ball in open space somewhere inside the twenty-two and we actually know that the hard-charging No. 8 or perhaps the prop who really got the ball up the field was Paul Foster-Bell. So Mr Foster-Bell our former colleague who's in the House with us tonight on this occasion we acknowledge you for your work in initiating this piece of legislation. I acknowledge all the other members of the House who have worked on this piece of legislation: the chair of the Justice Committee Raymond Huo who as I understand it chaired and oversaw quite a lengthy and quite an involved and quite a complicated process but one that has none the less reached a point of having good consensus between various parties around that select committee table; and Minister Andrew Little who as I understand it has been engaged in the passage of the bill and supportive of the processes that have allowed us to get to this point.I have to say I'm a person who is a fan of alternative dispute resolutions and that comes from my time working as a negotiator in the trade union movement. We didn't particularly make use of arbitration procedures there. We mainly used mediation as a procedure—it's a procedure commonly utilised through the provisions of the Employment Relations Act (ERA). In fact I think one of the things that we could potentially consider more in the employment law world is a greater use of arbitration. The provisions of the ERA tend to take disputes from a place of mediation straight into the courts and arbitration is only rarely used and it could be made more use of there. The value of alternative dispute resolution procedures as has been covered by a number of speakers is that we do clear up space in the courts by resolving these matters outside of the courts. The use of these measures is usually quicker it is usually more cost-effective and it is usually less rancorous. So I think as much as possible—whether it is commercial disputes employment disputes and others—there is a very strong amount of value in trying to steer disputes down the channel of alternative dispute resolution procedures to hopefully be resolved and if not you still then have the option of going through the courts.This bill to that effect streamlines and improves our arbitration processes and I just want to talk about a couple of the ways in which it does that and also touch on one of the areas in which I think there wasn't so much agreement during the process but I think is important to talk about in this debate. One of the areas that the bill makes improvements on is in the area of late jurisdictional objections. This is where fairly late in the process one party who perhaps might see proceedings going in a direction that isn't entirely pleasing to them will raise a jurisdictional—a process—objection to try and derail proceedings at that point. That would appear to be something that is allowed within the current framework but really is against the spirit of what we want to see achieved through arbitration processes and in some ways is an act of bad faith.You might reflect on the way in which in this House if we have a point of order to raise we are required by the Speaker to raise it at the time not to hold it as a card late in the piece to disrupt proceedings later on—and it feels to me like this is a little bit the same. You can't raise a jurisdictional dispute very late in the piece because you want to disrupt play. So I think the way in which this bill withdraws that ability to disrupt proceedings will be helpful and will give parties greater confidence to enter into arbitration proceedings.We've also heard in the debate about the appointment process for arbitrators. Obviously one of the most important parts of the process is attempting to agree on an arbitrator who will hear the dispute and obviously what happens if the parties cannot agree in the first instance is that at the moment we have this slightly bizarre situation which we've heard about and that's the quick-draw process where you end up effectively having a competition about who can get in first to try and get their way with these things and that obviously is not a particularly good process. The committee's adviser Paul Heath QC said this of the quick-draw procedure: it is the most important practical issue from the perspective of the arbitration profession."—that is resolving the problems that are created by the quick-draw procedure. We have through the course of this legislation been able to settle on another mechanism which as I understand it will involve the Arbitrators' and Mediators' Institute of New Zealand supporting the appointment of an arbitrator where the parties cannot agree. That seems like a far more satisfactory path forward.The other area I just want to cover briefly is the issue of open justice. This is a question which has been raised in a couple of the contributions to date around the initial intention in this bill for there to be a greater capacity for hearings to be heard in secret. That is not something that has been supported by members on this side of the House in the process. The bill's sponsor Mr Andrew Bayly has noted that this could potentially be a lost opportunity. He has pointed to the fact that there are jurisdictions where there is a greater capacity for evidence to be heard in secret and this may be appealing for some parties particularly in the area of commercial arbitration.I suspect that he's correct in that respect—that potentially it would be more appealing for parties in those situations—but I guess my take on this is that what is more important than the commercial opportunity that New Zealand might seek out of such a scenario are the core principles that underlie our justice system. One of those core principles is the notion that we have the initial presumption and a very strong presumption that our justice system is open—that its proceedings are conducted in the open and that they can be observed by others. I would be very reticent to see us trade away that principle for what would effectively be a process of seeking commercial opportunity for our country. I certainly err on the side if there's a dispute between those two notions of supporting our open justice system.I do note that the current presumption of openness is a rebuttable presumption. It is possible therefore for counsel to argue for and for judges to determine that in some cases it is appropriate for matters to be heard and kept in secret. So that is there within the justice system and it is the contention of members on this side of the House that it is best to leave it there within the judgment of the judge to decide but to leave the rebuttable presumption of open justice in place.Really in the greater scheme of this bill that's one area in which there has been a difference of opinion but the overarching message I think that we can hear from the contributions in the House tonight is that members across the House are supporting this piece of legislation because it does some very useful things in terms of improving and streamlining our arbitration system which is a very important part of our alternative dispute resolution measures. For those reasons I heartily support it in this reading. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I call Fletcher Tabuteau. [Interruption]"