Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): The motion that the House considers is the extension of a number of bills of which I want to particularly talk about the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill for which the Parliament is being asked to extend the report-back date to 21 June. I want to remind the House what this bill is about. This bill was one of the 100-day programme bills. It was a bill that was presented by Government members as a very simplistic straightforward exercise of just ensuring that homes were only able to be purchased by New Zealanders. The issue is that this is the third extension that has been sought to this bill—that is the Government's programme is so confused and the Government's original policy was so poorly thought through that here we are over six months after the Government coming to office still messing with the timetable of passing a bill.Now I perfectly understand why the extension is being sought. You see the core issue here is that overseas investment in the property market has been quite critical to supporting the massive growth in house construction. Over the last five years we've seen 20 percent compound growth and where the Government today in question time admitted that a major problem in continuing the rapid growth in new home construction is the issue of the access to finance and is the issue of the access to investment and that further confirms—SPEAKER: Order! Order! I did indicate while Mr Lees-Galloway was speaking that I would from now on require members to speak narrowly to the motion. We're not going to speak at all about the benefits of the bill or the reasons to be for it or against it. We are only going to talk about whether or not it should be extended. This is the second warning.Hon Gerry Brownlee: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Isn't it a little hard for the House to consider whether or not it should extend a report-back date on a bill if there isn't some discussion about the rationale for the bill existing in the first place and perhaps some of the reasons why the extension is being sought? We haven't heard from a select committee chair. We didn't hear anything from the Leader of the House. We didn't hear anything from his associate.SPEAKER: Well I thank the member for his intervention. I think Dr Smith is well past that point.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: Thank you Mr Speaker. So the issue for the House is whether we should be further extending the time frame for this bill to be resolved. We have seen contradictory issues around the detailed importance in this bill and the issue around housing. It should not take this Government until 21 June—next month—to finalise these issues. I'd further point out in terms of the time line that Government Ministers have made the point that they want this bill passed quickly in respect of the programme around trade negotiations and the Trans-Pacific Partnership which was the original justification.We're also considering the extension for the Trusts Bill. That is to be extended by the Justice Committee to 5 September. Those of us that are members of the Justice Committee will know that there is an enormous workload before that committee with a whole range of bills. But it reflects very poorly on the Government that a piece of legislation that literally involves hundreds of millions of dollars of investment—the way in which trusts right through the banking and the private sector work—is to be delayed by a further three months. We need to acknowledge that by making that extension we are extending the uncertainty for those tens of thousands of trusts that high level of interest in that trust law and the implications for so many in the sector. In this House today we've been talking about the decline in business confidence that is driven by uncertainty and the further extension for the Trusts Bill will add to the business uncertainty that there is about law in that regard.The third bill that we are being asked to extend the time frame on taken through to 31 July—another three months—is the Financial Services Legislation Amendment Bill. Again I have to ask the question of Government members to justify as to why in an area of financial services—an area again where there are billions of dollars of investment and of issues of uncertainty—the House would want to grant that further extension. This is not a new bill; this is a bill that's been on the Order Paper and that's been through processes of public consultation going back all the way to 2015. Why is it that it is not possible for the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee to get on and consider that bill to report it back by its timetable and not to further extend that programme to 31 July 2018?What we see in this motion is a Government only six months old and its programme of legislation is facing delay after delay after delay because of a lack of finalisation of the policy in three bills all of which actually have substantial financial implications whether those financial implications are in respect of the trust law whether those financial implications are in respect of the large scale of investment that's taking place in cities like Auckland in respect of housing development or whether it's in the financial services sector in the bill before the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee. So my challenge is that Government members need to justify the delay justify why it is that these bills—I can hear the words of Opposition from only two years ago that banning foreign buyers was very straightforward and the Government could do it yesterday. Well actually this piece of legislation—SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member has for the third time gone off the topic of this and on to the quality of the legislation. His speech is terminated.