Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (National): Thank you very much Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to take a call on this because I actually am quite concerned about the amount of time that has been allocated for this bill at committee according to the motion from the Government. If you start with Mr Parker's own speech when he was reading the first speech on the bill in the first reading he talked about how this bill had to be rushed and put together quickly and for that reason alone I think it is worth having significant time at the committee.I appreciate Mr Parker's concerns about the alphabet-soup" TPP that we're now in but it's sort of a little ironic given that he's spent much of the last couple of years talking about New Zealand sovereignty and how important it is for New Zealand to do the things that are important for it and suddenly we get a piece of legislation that does change things for New Zealanders in quite a comprehensive way. It needs to be assessed properly and we are having to kowtow to the international agenda such as it is rather than actually taking the time to investigate this bill properly ourselves as a country and as a Parliament. So I would have thought for sovereignty reasons alone we should start by having a decent look at this particular bill.Of course we have no way of knowing at this point whether the alphabet-soup TPP will actually be signed and in fact the signs are not particularly portentous given what didn't happen in Argentina last week. Not only did the Ministers of the TPP—I'll use the shortened version if I may—not meet to actually decide whether they could sign up they didn't even meet to discuss whether they could sign up to the agreement. They were all there apparently. It's obviously busy at this time of year in Buenos Aires—you know there's lots to do. It's a pretty city I'm told; I haven't been there myself. But for all of that they had no time to sit down and say "Well where are we up to? Let's take stock on this. Let's see where the Canadians are let's see where the Vietnamese are let's get this thing cranking." No there was no time for such matters and—[Interruption] They didn't what?Hon Todd McClay: Canada probably didn't turn up to the meeting.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Well they wouldn't have turned up to the meeting. But that's possibly why one was never scheduled and there would've been the risk of Canada not turning up to the meeting. So the urgency from that perspective is not apparent. So I come back to the importance of getting this bill right as the pre-eminent responsibility of this Parliament and there are lots of red flags—or at least amber flags—that this bill is not right.First we had the Minister in charge of the bill saying it was rushed and had to be put together quickly. I note that when this so-called solution was announced there was no paperwork at all. It was on 31 October—less than two months ago. There was no paperwork at all that was released. It was literally an announcement at a post-Cabinet press conference with very little detail at all and now we have a bill that it has to be said has a number of red flags on it from Treasury which is in charge of putting together the regulatory impact statement on the bill.That's important because the whole idea of these regulatory impact statements is that Parliament and indeed the public get the officials' view—not the Government's view; the officials' view—of how things are coming together and the sort of work that's been done to bring the solution in the form of the bill towards the House. Again the flags here are quite large and waving. The first flag is right on the front page and it says that this particular version of the regulatory impact statement "was prepared for consideration by Cabinet on 11 December … further policy changes were made subsequent to this meeting." So we're not even a week past and there were still further policy changes being made up till just a couple of days ago obviously. So we have a bill that is literally being rushed into the House before it lifts for Christmas.It notes in this cover note that "The Treasury has not had an opportunity to assess the impacts of these changes." So the agency in charge of the regulatory impact statement hasn't had the opportunity to consider the bill before it comes to the House for the first reading. That seems very strange indeed. Then you get into some of the design choices that they worry about. I'm not going to discuss the contents of the bill Mr Assistant Speaker but just simply some of the points Treasury makes as it raises its various flags. It says "some of the design choices may be sub-optimal or have unintended consequences;". It doesn't get much more black and white than that. Then it says "the Overseas Investment Office will [in turn] have limited time to operationalize the policy; and limited time to educate real estate agents conveyancers and the general public."So we have there three separate flags and I as a member of the select committee would like to have the opportunity to explore fully what design choices could have been done instead that might be better. I would like to hear from the Overseas Investment Office as to how they might operationalise this policy. I would like to hear from some real estate agencies some conveyancers and from the general public as to how they might respond to this particular piece of legislation. The problem with that is that if you look at the potential time for the select committee to examine this bill it is very limited indeed. If the Parliament agrees with this 20 February—or whatever the date is; 20 February?—Hon Members: Yes.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: —20 February report back then realistically the committee has to be considering the submissions by the time of late January which means that submissions have to be called for tomorrow if this bill gets—it has been passed through. The committee will have to call for submissions tomorrow and the submissions will have to be received by early in January.This is an important piece of legislation. The Government says that this is a piece of legislation that is important. There will be others who think it's more like virtue signalling but the Government says it's an important piece of legislation so you would think it would warrant asking the public at a reasonable time of year and acknowledging the time of year that the public would have perhaps a little more time to make their submissions. I'm not just talking about the public; I'm talking about the real estate agencies and the conveyancers and indeed the lawyers. I don't have the same concerns about the lawyers as my colleagues do because I'm sure they'll be able to charge extra hourly rates to be on deck.Hon Gerry Brownlee: No. The lazy buggers; they're always out at their relations.Hon STEVEN JOYCE: They'll all be out already you think? They won't even get the memo. But these things are important and it is important for the public. I know it's often talked about—a decline in homeownership—but actually when you add the number of people that own their own homes and trusts that own homes it's nearly 70 percent of the population. We can debate whether that's enough or not but that's a lot of people who are impacted potentially by this bill once they look to sell the property. I would like as a committee member to actually explore a little bit more in detail why it is that we are bringing this bill to the committee in the first place. Some of the rationale for the bill needs to be properly examined by the committee because unfortunately again Treasury says the only reason that it's here pretty much is because it seeks to implement the Government's 100-day commitment.In the section of the regulatory impact statement where it says "What problem or opportunity does this proposal seek to address? Why is Government intervention required?" effectively it says that Government intervention is required because the Government wants to intervene. Actually the committee could perhaps do the Government's job a little bit given a little bit of time and assess what is the need for this particular piece of legislation because there is none in the documentation that's been provided to the committee. I know that across this House there are different views as to the need for this particular piece of legislation or not. That's something the committee should address and have the time to address if this Parliament takes itself seriously. I think that it's important that this Parliament does.So I would call upon the Minister who is leading this bill David Parker to think very carefully because there is as Mr Brownlee says alternatives to setting such a short date. There are alternatives for doing that and those alternatives include setting a longer date and then using the Business Committee to bring it back should there be some urgency. I have to say I'd love that urgency to appear Mr Parker but you and I both know—and I'm not bringing the Speaker into this; Mr Parker and I both know—the likelihood of that urgency occurring is sadly not great if the Ministers involved can't even meet in Argentina to even discuss the trade deal that creates such urgency. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker."