Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Well it's been an interesting 24 or 36 hours dealing with this omnibus piece of legislation. It seems like only a few hours ago that we were dealing with the committee stage and of course that is true—it was only a few hours ago as I now look at the clock. I think that's a reflection of the speed with which this has gone through the Parliament a speed with which I would take issue.Now I'm not opposed to omnibus pieces of legislation wholesale obviously because sometimes you do need as a legislative body to make a whole lot of changes to a bunch of different pieces of legislation all at the same time. But generally it's a good idea to do that in a thorough and comprehensive way and unfortunately when it comes to this piece of legislation that was not the case: just a couple of weeks at select committee sent to the Finance and Expenditure Committee—a slightly odd committee to send it to. In fairness to the Government it's not at all clear what committee was the right one because of course it is an omnibus piece of legislation but the Finance and Expenditure Committee is good enough I suppose. Dr Duncan Webb: Oh thank you. CHRIS BISHOP: The chair sometimes comes under a little bit of heat from this side of the House but it's got the heavy hitters from the National Opposition on it and so we accept the finance committee—Anna Lorck: Really—where? Oh who's that?CHRIS BISHOP: Well don't get me started on Anna Lorck's contributions which are so famous they've made their way to other members of other committees like myself on the Health Committee. But word of your exploits on the finance committee Ms Lorck precede you my friend—don't worry about that.Anyway the finance committee looked at the bill and as an example of how little time there was for the committee to consider the bill they didn't send back a bar 2 bill; they sent back a bar 1. So all of the changes that had to be made which we just made a few hours ago had to be made by dint of a Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that the Government put on the floor of the House and the SOP's as long as the bill so that's never a great sign. I've seen that happen before—in fact I think it happened in the last Government that I was a backbencher in—and it was never a great sign when the Minister turned up with some massive SOP going Oh I just need to make the changes at the committee stage". It's evidence normally that something has gone a little bit awry and in this case evidence of a rushed process.So that's the first point I want to make—that the process was wrong—and actually the Government had more than enough time to get its ducks in a row on some of these changes well before now. Most of them are uncontroversial. The changes to Department of Internal Affairs legislation to do with charities—I mean no one's going to object to that. It's all very sensible. I would describe it as rats and mice—just stuff that's very eminently sensible but it deserves a good going over.But there are two particular things that the National Party objected to and you might remember Mr Speaker in the first reading we said "Look it's a tough one but on balance we'll send it to committee to kick it around a bit." but we're really concerned about the local electoral changes and the property law changes which were retrospective in effect. It got sent to the committee and the good news is we've had a partial victory. It's a happy day actually over this side because the changes we've been pushing for in relation to managed isolation and quarantine (MIQ)—we've had a partial victory on that because seven days is now going to be the norm for MIQ. That's good. That's good for double-vaccinated travellers coming home to New Zealand and we've been pushing for that for some weeks so that's good news.The other thing is that the Government has given up when it comes to giving themselves the power to delay local elections into—I was going to say into eternity. It wasn't quite that bad; it was at least for the next year after an election. The Government gave up on that idea so that's good news.But it's very unclear and we're still actually yet to find out how this happened in the first place. We've just had reference to it from the Minister in his third reading speech. It actually begs more questions than gives answers because he said that under the old strategy the elimination strategy—this is the strategy that the Government put all of their eggs in the basket on and has now given up on—the Government had to retain the power to delay local body elections. OK maybe that's true although frankly I doubt it because local body elections are done using postal voting and if anyone's been to a local body candidates' meeting recently it would be fair to say they don't enjoy widespread turnouts from the community. However—however—I'm willing to make a prediction: the local body elections next year that are now definitely going to be held next year because of three waters are going to enjoy record turnouts and I can tell Labour members opposite that the councils and the Government's representatives in those councils are going to endure some heat from ratepayers. I haven't been around politics too long—seven years as an MP—but this issue has the potential to be a real powder keg; in fact it already is. I think we're up to 68000 signatures on the taxpayers' petition I think we've got 55000 on our petition and you just have to look at the front page of the Wairarapa Times-Age this morning. Gee Kieran McAnulty—I like him; he's a good guy. But if I was him I'd be very worried.Anyway I digress. The point is we could have had local body elections even under very straitened scenarios and we did not see the case on this side of the House for a very broad sweeping power that the Government was seeking to give itself. We asked why that was the case and a lot of people asked why it was the case and to give credit to Minister Chris Hipkins—who despite the back and forth from this side of the House and in the spirit of a Thursday afternoon I will say generally is a competent Minister. To be fair to Chris Hipkins he's recognised that—Hon Member: Compliments coming thick and fast. CHRIS BISHOP: Well it's very rare actually that you see a Minister who says "Oh actually I got that wrong." I mean how often do you see that? Normally with the Labour Government it's black is blue and white is red and all the rest of it—they just never accept they were wrong. But in fairness to Chris Hipkins he turned up here last night at the committee of the whole House stage and he said "Yep we had an elimination strategy; now we don't. We thought we needed the power to delay local body elections and now we don't so we've removed it from the bill." I mean that is a good thing to do. I give credit to him. It's very rare that you see that and actually the last time I can remember a Government Minister doing that through an SOP at the committee of the whole House stage was actually the Hon Simon Power in 2009 who sat there and watched. I think it was something to do with the remote sittings of courts or something—audiovisual equipment—he sat there and listened to the debate and said "Well actually that's right." and he turned up and he just removed it from the bill. It's very rare so I give credit to Chris Hipkins.Anyway that's enough of being nice. Let me talk about the really stupid part of the bill and that is the property law changes because that's the reason we're opposing the bill on this side of the House. We had an extended back and forth with the Minister in the chair Kris Faafoi today in the committee stage and I think it would be fair to say he doesn't really understand what the bill does which is worrying for the Minister of Justice and he can't really explain what it does beyond that he thinks it might make a difference at the margins. Maybe that's true and there's probably a marginal group of people for whom it will make some sort of difference. I think that the solution outlined by Andrew Bayly National's shadow Treasurer is far more preferable and I suspect he's going to talk about that in his contribution.So maybe it will make a difference at the margins but here's what it comes at the cost of—and this is a really important point. Yes maybe there's a couple of people who will benefit from it but I tell you who'll be the long-term loser from the provision and that's the people of New Zealand more generally and that's the legal environment within which we operate because Governments should not just go around legislating to overturn contracts retrospectively. I just emphasise for the House: retrospective law is bad—I can't believe I'm having to kind of spell it out. Retrospective law is terrible. Criminal law is the worst but retrospective law is generally bad. Laws that interfere in the sanctity of contracts are bad. They're bad because they undermine the principle of legal certainty and they undermine the rule of law and they make it hard for people to make decisions in a legal context knowing that those decisions might not be overturned by the legislature later. That is central to a market economy. Now I know some members opposite have expressed misgivings about the whole nature of a market economy but at the moment that's what we have and it's not changing any time soon thankfully. But we need to have a market economy based on the principles of the rule of law and the reason the National Party is opposing this legislation now that we've got rid of the stupid provision around local election law is essentially wholly because of the changes to the Property Law Act. It is misguided legislation it is ill-conceived it is unprincipled and it is wrong and for those reasons we will oppose it. Thank you Mr Speaker."