SpeechDr JIAN YANG (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. Now National believes that the six-month full select committee process is needed to hear all views and identify any issues. Now I'll give you four reasons. The first reason is that the consultation so far has not been enough. There has been limited consultation with local governments in the general election. If you look at the regulatory impact assessment you'll find that the department acknowledges time constraints around effective consultation. The regulatory impact assessment notes that limited recent consultation with the local authorities on proposals has led to some assumptions around the cost assessments of some options. That is on page two of the regulatory impact assessment report. So the regulatory impact assessment also says that the rating outcomes of Māori land result from a complex interaction of five pieces of legislation. I know the scope of this legislation is limited yet that method itself is very complex. So it involves five pieces of legislation—three pieces of legislation under the Department of Internal Affairs and the Local Government Act 2002 the rating act and the Rates Rebate Act 1973.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry to interrupt the member. As I reminded the House earlier this debate is about the instruction to the committee not the content of the bill.Dr JIAN YANG: Yeah I understand that. I'm just trying to say that—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): So if you could refer to the instruction to the committee in your contribution please. Dr JIAN YANG: OK. So this bill itself in terms of scope is limited. Nevertheless it is important for us to have the full select committee process. As I said the consultation process so far has been limited. Why? Because the data availability has been an issue to the department. So we do have rates records in different councils—right—but we do not have a national database. These councils or local authorities have their own rates records. While these are de-centralised that's an issue. At the same time these local authorities have different practices in terms of making these records or data available. So people will find it relatively easy to find the record about one particular or individual site but it's hard to do a mass analysis. That is why when the officials were doing the research they found that it was hard for them to use mass analysis to support any particular finding or identified—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorry to interrupt the member again—one final opportunity for the member to speak to the instruction to the committee please. Dr JIAN YANG: Madam Speaker I was trying to say—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): I was listening to what you were actually saying; I have no idea what you were trying to say but if you could now actually say some words which relate to the instruction to the committee thank you. Dr JIAN YANG: I'm trying to say that we need more time to do consultation because so far we haven't done enough consultation. That was what I'm trying to say. That's why we need more time to consult people. Now if you read the regulatory impact assessment you'll find that officials often refer to prior consultations. The prior consultation" means consultation for other bills not particularly this bill. That's why we think we need more time so that the committee would be able to do a better consultation process. That's why the committee needs more time to run the whole process. The regulatory impact assessment report itself says that the time frame for the consultation is inadequate and therefore the consultations are limited. Now we have a second reason: the reason is we need to consider the implications of the bill to some people or some actors or some particular parties. So this bill could have some implications for general land owners. In the previous consultation we did not really have enough time to consult general land owners and to have a shortened select committee process would limit our capability for a wider consultation. We may not have the opportunity to consult general land owners or this bill itself may have major implications on them. For example if rates write-offs on Māori-owned land occurred well this will be subsidised by general land owners who will cover the costs of the write-offs to the councils. So the bill itself—this is only one example; there are many other areas which would have implications on general land owners and then if we do not have this full six-month select committee process then we might not be able to finish this particular work. As I mentioned the farmers and general land owners have not been properly consulted so far during the regulatory impact assessment process.The other thing is this bill—the purpose—is for the development of Māori land but we may need to consider other issues which are related to the proper development of Māori land and also we may consider what implications it may have on general land owners. I'll also mention that this matter itself is not really a very urgent matter. We do not see any particular reason why it should be rushed. As the officials have identified and have made clear collecting rates on Māori-owned land has been a longstanding issue a problem for councils and owners of Māori land. So the issue had been there for a long time. What's the rationale for us to rush and then finish quickly? It's not a very important issue that must be done within two or three months otherwise we would have major consequences. But that won't happen so why should we rush? So these are the three main reasons but there is one more reason I need to mention. That is that last week I noticed that there was another bill where the select committee process was shortened. That was the Smokefree Environments and Regulated Products (Vaping) Amendment Bill. So I want to make sure that we do not fall into a habit of having a rushed process. We want to make sure that each bill would be able to have this normal standard—you know six months full process. We're not saying that we have no exceptions. We can have exceptions but we need to have good reasons for those exceptions. So that is why I believe that we in this particular bill cannot see any particular reason to justify a shortened a truncated select committee process. Thank you Madam Speaker."