Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: I move, That the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Justice Committee to consider this bill.

Improving timely access to justice is a priority for this Government. I’m proud to present this bill to the House, today. In essence, it doubles the current financial jurisdiction of the Disputes Tribunal from $30,000 to $60,000, and this will improve access to justice for New Zealanders. It will provide an affordable forum for resolving more lower-value claims at a time when low-cost dispute resolution is increasingly important for New Zealanders. Around 2,000 claimants per year will experience improved access to justice as a result of this bill. That’s because New Zealanders with civil claims between $30,000 and $60,000 currently do not have an affordable place to take their claims. It’s uneconomic to take civil claims of this nature to the District Court, due to the significant cost of legal and court-related fees. This is commonly referred to as the justice gap and leads to people abandoning the amount of their claim over $30,000 to fall within the Disputes Tribunal jurisdiction or accepting a loss by not pursuing a claim at all.

This does not support a well-functioning justice system. It’s inconsistent with the rule of law and not helpful to the basic business of people getting on with their lives, taking risks in business, and resolving their disputes in a timely fashion.

The Disputes Tribunal is a cheaper, more acceptable dispute resolution forum that’s well suited to considering claims of up to $60,000. The tribunal takes an informal inquisitorial approach, and referees support parties to put their best case forward to determine the facts without the need for lawyers. The specific features of the tribunal make it less formal than a court—quicker and cheaper—and hearings are held in private. No standard right to legal representation creates an even playing field for both parties and eliminates legal fees. Limiting appeals to the issue of unfairness or prejudice promotes the finality of the decisions, and, thirdly, the statutory basis for the tribunal decision-making—including that it shall have regard to the law but not be bound to give effect to strict legal rights or obligations—promotes flexible, pragmatic resolutions.

The low rate of appeals, rehearings, and complaints shows that the tribunal is operating effectively. New Zealanders have confidence in using it, and so we want to extend it. The tribunal is one of the busiest forums in the civil justice system. Despite this, it is effective in resolving disputes in a timely fashion, with one of the fastest disposal rates of the courts and tribunals in New Zealand, and I believe it’s well placed to effectively manage higher-value claims.

I expect claim numbers will slowly increase as people become aware of this, and this will be closely monitored and managed by the Ministry of Justice. The tribunal is funded by the Government and tribunal users pay a filing fee. It’s appropriate that tribunal users help to recover some of the costs of administering the tribunal, given the private benefit of people having their disputes resolved. At higher values, the private benefits are greater, and with this change to the financial jurisdiction, parties will be able to recover up to $60,000 in debt owed. A new filing fee of $468 for claims of more than $30,000 will aid in cost recovery and help maintain current service levels. Most of the costs will continue to be met by the Crown, as there is significant public interest in ensuring citizens feel they have a viable method to enforce their rights and uphold the rule of law.

I’m aware that the requirement for the application to front the cost of filing an application fee can still be seen as a barrier, particularly where the applicant is not seeking financial compensation. This Government is separately progressing proposals through the Regulatory Systems (Tribunals) Amendment Bill, which will give Disputes Tribunal referees the discretion to order the respondent to repay the cost of the filing fee to a wholly or partly successful applicant. This will help ensure that the cost of pursuing justice does not fall on those who have been wronged.

My hope is that by keeping this tribunal significantly cheaper than bringing proceedings in the District Court, in the absence of legal fees and additional court fees, it will continue to be seen as an affordable and accessible way to resolve disputes.

The Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill fulfils both the National Party’s election manifesto commitment to raise the tribunal’s financial jurisdiction, allowing it to resolve disputes of a higher value, and this Government’s justice priority to improve timely access to dispute resolution. It’s part of a broad-ranging justice response that focuses first on reducing the number of victims of violent crime, secondly on reducing that small number of serious repeat youth offenders, and, thirdly, on speeding up the processes of the courts. This particular bill responds to that third area. If we can help New Zealanders get a faster resolution to their disputes and move on with their lives in a timely fashion, then that’s a useful thing to do. On that basis, I commend this bill to the House.

The question is that the motion be agreed to.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. We will support this bill, but in many ways there’s a couple of funny things about it. In many ways, it’s a missed opportunity. Raising the jurisdiction certainly provides access to justice or fills what the regulatory impact statement calls the “justice gap”, whereby going to the District Court, where lawyers are not essential but pretty handy, the costs are difficult to meet—whereas, in the Disputes Tribunal, lawyers in fact aren’t allowed, except in very limited circumstances. That will increase access to justice in some ways.

However, the difficulties with the Disputes Tribunal jurisdiction, once we get to $60,000, is its high degree of informality. For example, there is no requirement that a person—who is, essentially, a judge—making an order in respect of that amount has legal qualifications, and whilst most, if not all, appointments are in fact legally qualified, it may well be time to reflect that in the legislation. In fact, the legislation itself does not require a Disputes Tribunal referee to decide a case according to the law; a Disputes Tribunal referee can decide a case in accordance with equity and fairness, but “with regard” to the law.

It’s a pretty interesting situation where you can be in a contractual dispute with, say, your builder, or whatever, for $60,000 and the Disputes Tribunal referee says, “I’ve looked at the law and I’ve had a good regard to it, but I don’t agree with it, so you lose.” Now, that’s a matter of concern, but you don’t have a right to appeal. Only for, essentially, a breach of natural justice, a failure in the procedure itself, would you get a right of appeal. These are all things where there’s an opportunity to tidy up: rights of appeal, qualifications of Disputes Tribunal referees, and the need, at this level, to decide cases on the basis of the law and not well-meaning reckons—although, to be fair, I’m pretty sure Disputes Tribunal referees do try to apply the law wherever they can.

The other thing that could be tidied up here is the jurisdiction of the Disputes Tribunal itself, in terms of the subject matter. It’s got a relatively narrow jurisdiction in respect of contractual disputes and some tort disputes. It can consider car crashes, basic negligence, but it can’t consider economic torts or torts of, for example, defamation or nuisance. It can’t consider a civil trespass or questions of title to land or rights over land. It can’t consider any questions of equity or trusts. All of those things are things that can crop up just as easily, and people have just as much access to justice issues there as anywhere else. I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to have a good look at this when we come to the select committee, which I’m sure we’re excited about as well.

The other thing is this: there’s actually a really strange thing here. The Minister has imposed, or intends to impose, in this bill a $468 filing fee for claims over $30,000, I think it is. You know what: you can file a claim for up to $350,000 in the District Court for $260. There’s a real mismatch when you can go to the District Court for $260 but the Disputes Tribunal, which doesn’t apply the law and doesn’t have a judge, is $468 as well. Now, the other point here is this: in the District Court and every other court, if you can’t afford the filing fee, you can apply for a waiver, but in the Disputes Tribunal you can’t. If you’re going to put up a barrier of $468, you need to be able to have a hardship waiver as well, because there’ll be plenty of people who don’t have $500 to front up with at the Disputes Tribunal. The committee has a lot of work to do.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand on the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill. The Green Party will support this bill as well.

In terms of the context, I think the Hon Paul Goldsmith and also the Hon Dr Duncan Webb have already mentioned it, in terms of the fact that this predominantly increases the financial jurisdiction of the Disputes Tribunal from $30,000 to $60,000. This is something that we have seen increase a number of times over the years, noting that, for example, in 2009 the limit was only $7,500 at that stage. Like the bill suggests, and like the intention of the bill, yes, I think there is the possibility of creating a relief or some sort of relief in the District Court system by having some of that going to the Disputes Tribunal. In many ways, this will allow for more accessibility and also faster processing times in terms of the court system.

However, there are a couple of concerns. I think the previous speaker, the Hon Dr Duncan Webb, has laid some of them out, and number one being that you will have to represent yourself. Once we’re getting up to a certain level of threshold, there’s also greater risk of that. There are also fewer legal protections for claimants, there are no judges, and also, like what we heard before, there is no waiver being applied to now the new administrative fee, essentially, of $468.

However, in saying that, people will still have the flexibility of whether to take their case to the Disputes Tribunal or the District Court. But, considering there isn’t a waiver, there is possibly the greater discussion of what, then, would people do, knowing that one is more expensive than the other and one doesn’t have a waiver. Will we actually see the manifestation of the intended purpose of this particular bill? That is something that we are looking forward to teasing out during the select committee stage; but overall, it does offer greater flexibility.

Some of the other things that we would also be interested to hear during the select committee process is that we simply don’t have the data right now of the number of civil claims that are between $30,000 and $100,000 at all, and they are not currently captured in the legal system. We also don’t really know what is the maximum intent and the maximum benefit that we will see with this particular bill. Overall, although the Green Party supports the intention of this bill, we would like to see the purpose of this bill being that it does allow for some of that faster processing times and relieves some of the pressure that we have on our District Court system.

Fundamentally, we are seeing that our court systems are systemically underfunded in this environment and something like this is mainly pushing a certain section of the bill around within that greater ecosystem of the court system. Although this bill is good, we would like to see there being greater support to the court system across the board. Although there are other bills currently in the House around increasing, for example, the number of District Court judges, there is nothing that’s concretely around increasing funding to the staffing. We haven’t had tangible solutions in terms of some of the outdated and archaic filing systems and IT systems, which is currently in the works, and also some of the issues that we’re seeing with District Courts and also in terms of building and infrastructure of District Courts in general, particularly District Courts and court systems in the rural and regional system.

Overall, the Green Party is supportive of this bill. We are interested to hear more from the public during the select committee stage, particularly around some of the instances and some of the cases and the number of cases between $30,000 and $100,000.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise to take a very short call on behalf of ACT on the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill. I want to thank Minister Goldsmith for bringing this bill forward. I know he and Minister McKee, the Minister for Courts, do share a desire to speed up our justice system, and that is something that they are absolutely focused on.

This is a very important but small amendment, upping the amount that the Disputes Tribunal can look at, adding this extra tier—basically increasing it up to S60,000—and then adding this filing tier. This will make a material difference for people wanting to use this avenue to get disputes resolved. We think it’s a very, very important bill, and it will actually do something practical for people out there. I will be commending it to the House on behalf of ACT and I, again, look forward to it coming to the Justice Committee.

We’re really, really looking forward to getting as many bills as possible before the Justice Committee. I think we’ve picked up the second one today. I will be commending this to the House. Thank you.

I rise again to take a call on the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill, which New Zealand First will be proudly supporting. It aligns with New Zealand First’s commitment to a fairer New Zealand where justice is accessible to all, and it works efficiently to the benefit of every citizen.

Expanding the threshold ensures that we have the ability to close that gap that the Minister spoke of earlier and ensure that there is a process by which we can expand access to justice, which is a critical component, which I think is where this gap sits. It is about delivering some cost-effective dispute resolution, enabling some of those barriers to taking these claims through. There is also the knock-on effect that it does empower our small businesses and our communities to be a bit more brave, to be a bit less risk-averse, and to challenge things a bit more.

It is about futureproofing this process and ensuring that we have recognition that there is a changing dynamic around the values of some of these disputes, and we want to ensure that people aren’t getting away with things because it becomes too costly or too complex to seek the resolution that is appropriate. So, on that basis, New Zealand First will proudly commend this bill to the House.

I thank my lucky stars that I went to a strong secondary school like Timaru Boys’ High School, which had a strong focus on numeracy and maths, because, by my count, this is the 27th bill that the Justice Committee will receive this term and consider. It’s another absolute masterclass from Minister Paul Goldsmith in getting the simple changes that the country needs in order to get us back on track.

There’s a few things I’d like to raise in select committee that members have raised, one of which is around the filing fees. Of course, there is a filing fee of $468 proposed, and that is higher than the fee in the District Court, but then, of course, you’ve got half-day hearings of $1,200 and judicial settlement conferences of $1,200 in the District Court, so there are those other costs to consider as well when you’re going through that process. They are the things that we can discuss in the select committee, and with that, I look forward to it traversing its way to us very, very shortly.

Thank you. I am very interested in this bill. As a Labour member, I am concerned, and I have been for a long time, about the fact that people with these smaller amounts of money—and it is a lot of money to a lot of people—just simply have not had mechanisms that are affordable. I’m extremely pleased to see this step in the right direction.

I note that Dr Duncan Webb made some interesting points about the gaps that remain. I also noted that Paul Goldsmith seemed willing to consider those and I hope that the committee will look at them. The ones that I see: one is actually defamation. Defamation is a really undercooked tort in this country. There’s a lot of people suffering a lot of damage on social media. I wonder whether there is a little bit of an opportunity there to build that in.

I do take note that the people that sit on this tribunal aren’t necessarily lawyers, and that’s sometimes a really good thing to have a bit of a mix of people going on, because they come with a lot of acumen out of a more pragmatic approach sometimes. I don’t actually have a problem with that. I can see that that means it might limit the kinds of things that you have in the Disputes Tribunal, because some are probably more legalistic than others. Some are quite formulaic, but actually defamation is one that is quite formulaic. It is a test that should be being applied more regularly than it is, and people should be more careful about the damage they do through the statements they make.

I am interested, too, in the issue of the gap that’s emerged where people have been compromising their claims, and I think that’s very real. I think there are a lot of examples where people have compromised their claim just to get into this service and get away from what is actually an overwhelming system. We have a lot of work to do with regard to that.

I’m also concerned beyond this bill, but I think it is relevant to it, in situations where people are actually just owed debt. Those situations where there is no dispute in play but people are owed debt, I don’t think they’re working particularly well either. It costs a lot of money to go into a situation where you get a statutory demand, and then you’ve got to take an action, often in the High Court. The fees are actually exorbitant for that, so I think there may be some work that could be done in terms of also looking at an expansion in that area.

I commend the work that’s been done in looking at this. This matter is incredibly important to New Zealanders. This will affect our small businesses, and it will be something that will be incredibly important to a lot of individuals. Those are the people that in this Parliament we should be looking after. We often bring mechanisms into play which might be well meaning, but they are just too expensive for people to use in those situations. The Disputes Tribunal has worked well. I am always concerned about those kinds of mechanisms like inquisitorial systems because they have got some disadvantages as well. They can be a bit erratic in terms of the justice they mete out, but life is full of that sort of thing, and we’ve got to kind of strike a balance here.

I do see a lot of advantage in a system which doesn’t involve lawyers at this kind of bar, and the $60,000 amount seems about right. I hope that the committee, of course, will also look at the amount. The submitters, I think, would be welcome to focus on things like whether, in fact, that is the right amount—whether it should be $60,000, whether it should be $70,000, or whether it should be $100,000—$100,000 is a lot of money. I would probably have concerns about going quite that high up, but it does seem that that would be a situation where submissions would be very helpful from real, live New Zealanders who have suffered harm under a system that has not necessarily catered for them as well as it should. I commend this bill to the House.

It’s a pleasure to rise again for the second bill that the Justice Committee is receiving this evening. Today, it’s the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill, and, essentially, as we’ve heard so far, there’s a justice gap that this bill will indeed fill. I would like to say, let’s fill that justice gap. Let’s get this bill rolling, and, with that, I commend the bill to the House.

There’s really no excuse for any Justice Committee members to get themselves into mischief, is there?

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Thank you for the chance to make a contribution on this Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill. As several people have noted, Labour, obviously, will be supporting this bill. It’s a sensible, small piece of potential legislation that makes a difference to real people who are going through a disputes process.

The Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill, as has been said, simply raises the cap from $30,000 to $60,000 on the awards that the Disputes Tribunal can make. As has also been said, it’s a really important way, therefore, to make that justice and that recompense accessible to people, because for a lot of people, their only experience of the justice system is through a disputes process. For people to have faith in the system as a whole, they want to be able to seek that redress in a way that makes sense and that is efficient, cost-effective, and doesn’t do more harm than good, so to speak.

At the moment, the fee of $59, as I said, therefore does make it accessible. I think many of us on this in this House possibly have experience of going through a Disputes Tribunal or know of people that something has happened—whether it be the Tenancy Tribunal for some people, but the Disputes Tribunal in this case—where people have sought to get what’s owing to them or sought to right a wrong that has happened. It’s incredibly stressful and it’s something that you have to do yourself and it’s something that you have to take the lead on. There’s a lot of unfamiliar language; there’s a lot of unfamiliar process. Anything we can do to make that better is good.

The bill will mean that losing parties in the tribunal will also have to pay the cost of that filing back fee to the applicant. I note that when the claim is between $30,000 and $60,000, that fee is significantly higher. I suppose that is with an eye to preventing frivolous claims, so that people will think twice about pursuing claims that are frivolous, particularly, you can imagine, when there’s a power imbalance and it may just be they think it’s worth their while to do so. If that had to be paid for, then, if they were to lose, that kind of evens up that process a little bit.

It’s not a perfect bill in so far as—I think someone said earlier on—it’s a little bit of a missed opportunity perhaps to have done a couple of things differently. There are a number of issues with the bill, but nothing that couldn’t be sorted out through the select committee process, and I’m sure it will be there. If I remember correctly, I think the Hon Dr Duncan Webb said earlier about there not being the right of appeal, which obviously is an important part of any process and should be no less important in this process.

It doesn’t increase the cap to the level that had been suggested by that Rules Committee recommendation, which of course is the impetus for this and where it comes from, but, as Helen White has just talked about, where is the happy balance between that cap being too high and not high enough? All things that can be discussed during the select committee process, and hopefully there will be some submissions and hopefully we will have some scenarios and some stories to sort of flesh out some of the pragmatics around this bill. There is a need to balance the benefits of what is a quick, cheap, and cheerful sort of informal justice process with something that could be a little bit more robust; and the ability to correct error, as I said, with a potential of an appeal rights process through the courts. I think that will be quite interesting.

As I said, the bill in itself is simple; it stems from some recommendations and so has already come from a relatively good place in terms of process. Labour commends this bill to the House and we look forward to the Justice Committee doing its thing and reporting back in due course.

It falls to me again to wrap up this first reading on the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill, the 27th bill that will go to the Justice Committee. Now, 27 isn’t so good in Hollywood or if you’re a pop star, but it will be a lucky number here.

As we know, at present, people can pursue disputes about claims of up to $30,000 in the tribunal, and this bill, as others have canvassed, would amend the Act to increase that amount to $60,000. I look forward to the submissions, and I look forward to the discussions. I commend this bill to the House.

The question is, That the Disputes Tribunal Amendment Bill be considered by the Justice Committee.

Motion agreed to.

Bill referred to the Justice Committee.

I declare the House in committee for the consideration of the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products Amendment Bill (No 2) and the Crown Minerals Amendment Bill.