Parker David: Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 June 2015. Volume:706;Page:4825. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour): There exists already within the Standing Orders the right for the Government to truncate to less than the normal 6 months the period for report back from the select committee. We are having this special debate today because the Government is truncating the report back to an unusual and normally unreasonable extent. The reasons why the Standing Orders were changed with unanimous acclaim across Parliament in order to have this sort of debate when that happens is because it means truncating one of the few protections that we have in our unicameral parliamentary system against rushed and inappropriate legislation being passed. We have one House of Parliament. We do not have an Upper House that considers legislation again as most Western democracies do including Australia Canada Great Britain and the United States to name but a few. We are more reliant upon the processes that we run through this single House of Parliament than are other countries that have more than one House. That is one of the reasons that lie behind this rule.Why do we have these rules? One of the greatest protections against inappropriate change by Government that we have in society is actually time. Once civil society sees the detail of a change that is proposed it takes time for it to get its head around the change and to respond to it. So you have to give civil society time to come up with its views on whether what is being proposed is good or bad and on how it might be improved. The normal select committee process which allows 6 months then results in select committees normally giving submitters 6 weeks after the date of advertising to reply with their written submissions on the legislation. So there is normally 6 weeks of advertising in all the major daily papers.What happens in that 6-week period? And why is it 6 weeks? Generally it is 6 weeks because most—not all but most—of the most valuable submissions that come to select committees come from reputable organisations that are themselves representatives of large groups of interested New Zealanders. Those organisations are volunteer organisations generally; they are not paid bodies. They are bodies like the New Zealand Law Society the Institute of Chartered Accountants of New Zealand and the Child Poverty Action Group. All of these groups and the people who provide the services and write the reports that are going in as submissions are volunteers normally and are doing so in their spare time.Not only that normally they are organisations that are responsible to membership-based organisations and so they cannot just do things off their own bat; they have to seek the authority of the organisation that they are representing. Often these organisations meet only monthly. So the organisations need a month to make a decision and at least 6 weeks including that month in order to go through their normal monthly cycle to decide to make a submission and to decide what should be in the submission. If you do not allow that 6-week period following advertising you are effectively severely frustrating the ability of civil society to participate in the law-making process. We all I think on all sides of this House agree that select committees make for better legislation as a consequence of those processes. So when we have the Government truncating these processes that is actually what it is attacking. It is attacking the democratic process of making good legislation in a country that already has very scant protections because of its unicameral Parliament where just about all of the power is already held by the executive wing—the Government wing—which controls the agenda and can push things through if it wants to.Against that background I have to reflect on whether this is an appropriate case for truncating those time frames given the consequences that I have outlined. That is why the Labour Party opposes this severe truncation not just the shortening of the process  which can happen within the Standing Orders but also because it breaches a rule that this Parliament agrees is the standard rule. That means that we should have this debate. That is where we do actually have to come back not to a debate about the merits of this bill but to a debate about the complexity of this bill and the issues that it addresses.This bill changes fundamentally the rule about whether you should tax capital gains on housing. It introduces some arbitrary periods. Will submitters want to get their heads around the issue of whether there are some important tax principles being changed; and if they are being changed whether they are being changed properly? Whether they are in favour of those changes or opposed to those changes they should have time to get their heads around whether they are right. This is a fundamental change. The Labour Party might say that it disagrees with the detail of those changes compared with how the Government sees it but I think that we would both agree that they are actually very significant and complex changes. So that is one area that submitters should really have the full amount of time to get their heads around and submit on.Then there are the questions that Government members raised about what they say is the sophisticated way the bill deals with the issue of trusts. From our experience in this House with the register of pecuniary interests that we have to comply with we know that the rules around trusts are still not right. Even after those rules those laws that apply to us as parliamentarians have been around for over 6 years now I think—it is probably 9 yearseven—and with many iterations actually they are still not right. I would like to think I know a bit about—Jono Naylor: Something.Hon DAVID PARKER: —about something including about trusts and in the example of our pecuniary interests we have still not got that right in terms of who effectively exercises control of trusts and that includes the people who have got the right to appoint or change trustees. We have not got that right in our own rules. I doubt that we have got that right in this legislation. I do know that because I have not had time to consider this yet but by God that is an area of complexity that we have not been able to get right for ourselves after 9 years. Yet we are expected to believe that everyone will get their heads around this that the Government through the Inland Revenue Department has got it right first time and that that line has been drawn properly. Well I think that is another example of complexity that deserves further consideration.The changes relating to the Land Transfer Act: I am someone who has called for some time to use the point of control that arises when you cannot take title to a property—you can take equitable title but you cannot take legal title to a property—until you have transferred it at the Land Registry Office. You can impose rules on lawyers to say that they cannot transact anything until they are certifying that something is being done. So I have long thought that with that right and the documents that surround the sorts of notices that are given to the valuation department and the rating authorities there is an opportunity there to gather data. I think that there are some practical ways there to gather data. But are we going far enough? Again it is an appropriate question: are we doing it properly and are we going far enough? My understanding is that there is a proper argument to be had that we need to measure what is already in overseas ownership not just what those purchases that are transacted after the date of this legislation are going to be so that we have a decent idea of what has already happened.There are proper more fundamental debates to be had here in a country that has moved to the point where more than half of all people over the age of 15 now live in rented accommodation. There is a proper debate to be had from people who are worried about this as to whether this is an adequate response. Those people should have time to form a view and make submissions. Then there are all of the issues around details. Even if the policy is right is the detail implementing the policy properly? We see time and again where that goes wrong. Obviously if this was not a rushed initiative as other people have said this would have been introduced at the time of the Budget because it was the most significant announcement at the time of the Budget. The fact that it was not introduced at the time of the Budget is because it was not ready. We had all sorts of other less relevant information passed under urgency. It shows it was not ready. It is rushed; therefore the dangers are even higher than they normally are. This select committee period ought not to be truncated.