Hudson BrettBRETT HUDSON (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise and speak on this the Rates Rebate (Retirement Village Residents) Amendment Bill. I just want to start by addressing some of the comments that the member who's just taken her seat Hon Tracey Martin made.The first and perhaps most chilling were the comments she made about the role and position of officials in select committee business. I believe the words she said were the tone is set by the Minister". So the real chilling thing we hear in this Chamber tonight is that under this Government—certainly under the Hon Tracey Martin in her portfolios—officials are going simply to iterate the will of the Minister.That is actually a real problem because our select committees are not committees of Government; they are committees of Parliament and officials are there to give the committee of Parliament advice not to sing from a ministerial hymn sheet. But Ms Martin has made it clear that she is of the view that that is how they should operate. And that I contend is fundamentally wrong. It's not good governance and it's not good government.The other problem I would note in what Ms Martin was saying is that she highlighted I think without realising it an inconsistency in the way this Government is treating its legislation. You see just a short while ago we were debating the paid parental leave extension in this very Chamber. A member from this side the Hon Amy Adams saw a flaw in that proposed legislation and suggested that it would be good if parents could share a leave entitlement and take that entitlement together at the same time. After some pushing and shoving the Government agreed that they thought the intention was good. But their position was—and it was spoken by the Minister in this Chamber—that although it was a good idea the legislation wouldn't work as intended and therefore it couldn't be made as a Supplementary Order Paper to that bill; it had to be done as a separate and new piece of legislation.Well if they were consistent in their thoughts and actions they would accept the advice of officials: that the real problem with this bill is that as it's written it cannot and will not deliver the intention that lies behind it. So if they were consistent what they would do is they would set this bill aside they would allow it to fail at this reading and instead as a Government they would create a new piece of legislation that would actually have the proper provisions to deliver to the objective. Instead Ms Martin and others are saying we should continue with this flawed bill.It's not just a simply flawed bill; it's a deeply flawed bill. We can look here at paragraph three—it's pretty close to the top—of the departmental report.Hon Member: That's after one and two.BRETT HUDSON: Well indeed. So what did officials have to say? Well let me just read this; it won't take long: "As outlined in our initial briefing to the Committee the Department of Internal Affairs … considers that the Bill as introduced would not achieve its stated purpose. Additional and complex amendments would be required to do this." So the advice of officials acting impartially because this was and remains a member's bill pointed out to the committee that the bill as it's written simply could not deliver the intentions without an awful lot of work—work that they recommended could not be achieved within a select committee set of amendments.So I think for good reason the officials in advising the members stated that really the best course of action was to not recommend that this bill pass and indeed to give effect to the intent to craft a better piece of legislation. I don't believe the officials had a view on whether that should be a member's bill or a Government bill but their view was that the bill in front of them and now in front of this House cannot deliver. That intent is flawed and should not pass.The reality is that there are multiple means of contracting and title and rights to occupy in various forms of rest homes retirement villages and lifestyle villages around New Zealand. Some in the minority I believe do give full title to the occupier—to the owner—and they are entitled for instance to make capital gain on that property and that owner may very well be entitled to a rates rebate under the current legislation. But many others are more in the nature of what they call a "right to occupy" where the occupier doesn't hold a full freehold title where often they are not permitted to benefit from any capital gain while still paying management fees and what have you to the operators.And so through that structure not only do they not qualify under the current legislation but the whole structure of that and workings of that operation make it somewhat difficult to navigate a way through to identifying the occupier as the ratepayer and indeed to ensuring—which the officials and others pointed out—that even if a rebate was given on a basis of a unit within a title or a separate title within a property there was difficulty in ensuring that the relief the rebate would actually be seen and benefited from by the occupier of that unit. The reality is that in the first instance it would actually go more than likely to the operator or owner of that village and so there's a very real chance that the occupier might not get any—certainly not all—of the rebate that might otherwise be held to be valid for them.There are also other complicating circumstances too. Many of these villages have shared facilities and those facilities are available to all residents including residents that might have a "right to occupy" of an apartment-type unit in that complex. So how then for instance for the purposes of calculating what could be eligible for a rebate would they go about calculating what was shared what was theirs how much of the rates bill could be set aside for the square metreage or whatever of that and how much of the rates bill the occupier should still be up for because of the use or potential use—availability—of all of those shared facilities.So when you look at the simple reality of the living arrangements the villages the structures the bill as written can't deliver what is otherwise an extremely worthwhile intent. It's an intent we share and we would love to work with the Government across the House on a new piece of legislation that not only had that intent but was drafted in a way—with appropriate complexity as officials pointed out—to actually be able to give some greater degree of certainty some real confidence to members that the benefits would accrue to those occupiers.While we do believe in intent—and we know that this Government has founded its entire programme on intent only—we can't in good conscience cast votes in favour of a bill that is high in intentions and low in practicalities. So we will be opposing this bill but we do offer—and would encourage the Government to consider working with us on a new piece of legislation to actually give full effect to the intent behind this flawed bill."