Little AndrewANDREW LITTLE (Leader of the Opposition): I want to pick up a point that David Seymour had started to make and then abandoned in favour of some more insubstantial comments when he took his call recently—that is his claim that this provision is not retrospective—but also in the context of the earlier comments I made about the constitutional significance of what we are doing and I do not think that can be overstated. This House should never be called upon to pass under urgency legislation that cuts across the rights of citizens except in the most extreme and rare circumstances. It is not about saying we should never have legislation that denies the ability to compulsorily acquire land or exercise some other sort of coercive or intrusive power. But no power like that should ever be legislated without proper full scrutiny over the proper length of time that we would expect legislation carrying such powers to be properly debated. The justification for this legislation is that there may be—and it is unspecified because key parts of the Cabinet paper discussing it have been redacted—some legal risk. It is interesting what the paper goes on to say. It says that the reason for the legislation is to remove the uncertainty and to mitigate the risk of legal challenge. For Mr Seymour's benefit I say that the risk of legal challenge can arise only out of transactions that have happened in the past. It is unusual that people litigate over things that have not happened yet but I do not know what goes on in the caucus meetings of the ACT Party and anything could happen. To mitigate the risk of legal challenge is about dealing with actions of the past. And the Minister in his paper to Cabinet specifically states that he is proposing the amendment in relation to the offer back obligations to former owners for what he describes as to avoid doubt that they have never applied". The fact that there is doubt at all suggests that there are issues arising from past transactions and whether there are genuine legal threats and therefore legal risk to the Crown or whether it is just in the mind of the Minister and who can answer that question the reality is we are being asked in this legislation to pass—Kris Faafoi: It's a riddle.ANDREW LITTLE: —ha ha—a provision that cuts across citizens' property rights. The most disappointing thing about some of the contributions to this debate or in fact all of them really from Mr Seymour and the ACT Party is that when I look at the founders of that party—because let us face it the driving forces came out of the Labour Party because we in the Labour Party have been incubators of political talent for some years now and some of those people went off to establish the ACT Party. But whether those people were coming out of the Labour Party or were even those coming out of the National Party in the form of Derek Quigley and some of those others and Don Brash when he decided which party he actually came out of or was aligned to they are people who faced with this situation were people of deep principle who would never tolerate being part of a Parliament that allowed legislation like this knowing what it does—traducing citizens' rights—to pass through urgency and to pass without the scrutiny that ordinarily would apply to legislation such as this. For Mr Seymour's sake I say that this is legislation that does have retrospective effect. There will be people who will have rights and interests in land that is being compulsorily acquired under the Public Works Act that will likely be the subject of offer-back provisions and this bill if it is passed in its current form will deny them the opportunity or the right to have that offer back made. So we simply should not allow this provision to pass in this form and I simply ask the Minister in the chair Michael Woodhouse: what exactly is the precise need for the urgency on this basis? Why cannot this part of the bill go through the proper parliamentary process with the full scrutiny that the select committee allows it and allow members of the public and especially those whose rights and interests will be affected by it to have their say and inform members of this House exactly how it will have an impact on them? The members of this House deserve nothing less but most importantly the citizens affected deserve nothing less."