Dyson RuthHon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): Mr Assistant Speaker I hope you were not going to put the question so early in the debate.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): I was—I was.Hon RUTH DYSON: I agree with the member who has just resumed his seat Paul Foster-Bell: this bill is although largely technical quite substantial and it has certainly engendered a lot of debate and consideration by the select committee. I want to commend all the members of the Government Administration Committee for the serious way that they considered the points that have been raised by submitters. They were not easy because they were directly in conflict with the advice that we were getting from the officials on one particular point—that of mortgage fraud and the response that we should give to that. But on the rest they were less contentious but certainly really helpful submissions.I want to just go back to the genesis of this bill which was developed in consultation between the Law Commission Crown Law and the New Zealand Law Society which produced a report in 2010 that included a draft bill which is often the practice of the Law Commission. The Ministers at the time were the Hon Simon Power and the Hon Maurice Williamson so it is a bit of shame that neither of them is able to take a call in the House tonight on this debate because they did the work basically and are not here to take the credit. I know that the Hon Simon Power now works for Westpac in a very senior position but I am not sure what the Hon Maurice Williamson is doing now.Hon David Cunliffe: I thought he was still here.Hon RUTH DYSON: Is he still here? Still in Parliament? OK well there you are—there you are. He may if that is true be able to take a call in the House. I certainly have not heard him asking questions in the House lately but perhaps tonight is the opportunity to remedy that or maybe in the Committee stage.As I said this is a largely technical bill. The Attorney-General when he made his excellent contribution—I have very rarely heard anyone speak with such passion and detailed knowledge about a bill that is as dry as the Land Transfer Bill but he certainly started this debate off with style and flair. But the point that he made was that even though it is largely technical—and I agree with that—it is fundamentally important to some of the principles that we have held for many years in New Zealand around particularly the security of information of purchase and of title in regard to land transfer. So the principles remain the same; what we were doing was making the bill a bit more modern a bit more responsive to the way that we do transactions now certainly more accessible but looking at potential for illegal activity that may not have been available for people to exercise when the original legislation was developed.The most substantive amendment is around the indefeasibility of title and it provides limited grounds for compensation and redress in case of fraud. We certainly had a lot of debate at the select committee about that. Paul Foster-Bell in his contribution mentioned the very strong submissions from the banking industry. We had the Bankers' Association as well as individual banks that completely disagreed with the proposals that were in the original legislation. They explained how much additional compliance cost would be incurred which caused us a little bit of concern I must say but then when they explained that the entire increased compliance costs would then be loaded back on to the individual customer of the bank we decided that we wanted to make really sure that the additional costs that we would be imposing by the legislation were in fact justified.The comparison between the New Zealand and the Australian systems is not apples with apples; it is apples with pears. They have an entirely different system there and we in the end decided that we would delete those two provisions—I think it was 54 and 57 in the original bill—because they were unnecessary. So we agreed with the representation from the banking industry but we did also note that mortgage fraud is something that we need to keep an eye on. We had had a strong alert from the officials. It was in the legislation as proposed by the Law Commission Crown Law and the New Zealand Law Society. These are not people you can dismiss lightly. They have given these issues a lot of considered thought. So we want to just keep an eye on that to make sure that if on balance we were wrong we are able to address it quite smartly in future legislation.Denis O'Rourke: Were wrong—were wrong too.Hon RUTH DYSON: Were wrong? Oh well I am looking forward to the contribution from Mr O'Rourke. Unfortunately New Zealand First does not have a representative on the Government Administration Committee but it would be my view that the select committee would welcome the contribution of a New Zealand First member on any of these bills or on other bills that you are interested in because we want to get it right actually. And if you think we made an error we would be interested in hearing that and we might have a chance to address it in the Committee stage.Denis O'Rourke: Yes indeed.Hon RUTH DYSON: You may receive a visit from the Bankers' Association tomorrow morning I would suggest. They made pretty strong submissions to the select committee.It is a real pleasure to say that the consideration that we gave this bill at the Government Administration Committee has in my view improved it both in some technical areas and in some quite big policy areas. It is largely a technical bill. I would have liked some inclusion in the bill of the obvious deficiencies that my colleague the Hon David Cunliffe referred to in the Overseas Investment Office. It has a very poor track record of vetting investment approvals. Our party through Official Information Act requests has uncovered not just one but many examples of incompetence which has left New Zealand looking quite poor actually in terms of the robustness of our procedures. I wish that the bill had had more attention to the Overseas Investment Office because I think that with the same level of consideration that we gave to the Land Transfer Bill with that inclusion then some of the matters that are clearly in the too-hard basket for the Government could have been addressed.The Official Information Act has actually become a bit of a laughing stock. It needs some serious attention. I know that the current Minister is not up to that job. I would invite the Attorney-General to apply the same amount of passion as he demonstrated tonight for the Land Transfer Bill to amendments that clearly need to be made particularly in the vetting and the competence and the integrity of the Official Information Act. I think he is just the man to do it. On that note I look forward to the other contributions that are going to be made to this bill and to its progress through the House.