of being adopted.  One purpose of the Law Commission is to suggest changes to the statute book for the betterment of all New Zealanders.    10 New Zealand’s law reform agency was created relatively late compared to the rest of  the  common  law  world.    England  and  Scotland  received  permanent  Law Commissions  by  legislation  in  1965.    The  Commonwealth  of  Australia  passed legislation for the Australian Law Reform Commission in 1973 and it commenced operations on 1 January 1975.  New South Wales set up its agency even earlier, in 1967.    Canada  has  had  the  interesting  experience  of  setting  up  a  Federal  Law Reform Agency, then in 1992 abolishing it, only to set up another in 1997.    11 The reason that New Zealand was late in setting up such an agency lies in the fact that it had already devoted serious effort to the topic, setting up a Law Revision Committee in 1937.  By the 1960s there had been established a series of part-time Law Reform Committees that, working with the old Department of Justice which itself contained a large and extremely-able law reform division, produced a lot of legal  change.    There  was  resistance  to  changing  this  structure.    But  the  open Government  election  manifesto  commitments  of  the  4^th  Labour  Government promised  to  establish  a  full-time  Law  Reform  Commission.    It  was  one  of  my most  pleasant  duties  as  a  member  of  that  Government  not  only  to  write  that portion   of   the   manifesto   before   the   1984   election,   but   also   to   design   the legislation.  Not surprisingly, therefore, I regard the legislation as satisfactory.  As Minister of Justice I was also responsible for recommending the appointments to the new Commission and providing references to it.    12 Sir Owen Woodhouse was the first President and this was no accident.  My taste for  law  reform  was  fostered  by  Sir  Owen  when  I  first  met  him  while  I  was  a student at the University of Chicago Law School, and he was Chair of the Royal Commission on Personal Injury.  The Commission visited Chicago in 1966.  On my  return  to  New  Zealand  I  found  that  he  had  picked  me  out  to  write  the Government White Paper on the Royal Commission’s Report on Personal Injury.⁸                                                    8   Geoffrey  Palmer  “The  New  Zealand  Experience”  in  International  Workshop  –  Beyond Compensation:  Dealing  with  Accidents  in  the  21^st  Century  (1993)  15  U  Hawaii  LR  604, 5