8                                                 topic headings is helpful.  It allows the public sector and the private sector alike to locate and read all the relevant law that may be important to a particular concern.   All the law, for example, on “animals” can be found in one place, with full cross referencing.    19 Since MMP, it can no longer be said that New Zealand is the fastest law-maker in the  west,  but  we  are  surely  quite  accomplished  at  making  the  law  hard  to  find.   This  needs  to  be  fixed.    We  have  now  in  large  measure  due  to  the  combined efforts of the Law Commission and Parliamentary Counsel Office, plain English drafting.  What we do not have is adequately accessible statute law.  It is easy to overlook statutory provisions unless you know all of the Acts of Parliament.    20 I  find  myself  in  complete  agreement  with  the  view  of  the  Hon  Justice  Michael Kirby,  now  a  Justice  of  the  High  Court  of  Australia  and  the  first  Chair  of  the Australian Law Reform Commission who has kept up his interests in this topic over the years.  In 2005 he wrote the concluding chapter in a most interesting and helpful book:  The Promise of Law Reform.⁷  He remarks on the robustness of the institutional  idea  of  law  reform,  and  especially  its  recent  spread  beyond  the common law countries.  He says:⁸ “The most enduring polities and economies are those that have inbuilt methods of updating the law and removing the barnacles of injustice and inefficiency.  Absent effective  and  timely  procedures  of  law  reform,  the  markets  tend  to  solve  legal problems by corruption or revolution.  Law reform is part of the stable machinery of modernity.” 21 He points out however that there exists in many countries, and I would include New Zealand in this category, an institutional flaw.  Justice Baragwanath, former President of the Law Commission, also drew attention to the “grave problem of   7   Brian  Opeskin  and  David  Weisbrot  The  Promise  of  Law  Reform  (The  Federation  Press,  Sydney, 2005) 433. 8   Michael Kirby “Are We There Yet?” in Brian Opeskin and David Weisbrot above n 2, 444.