Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): I am very happy to rise and speak on the title and commencement clauses of the bill. It is difficult after the tour de force that Damien O'Connor has offered us on the title looking at it from many many different angles but I think there are a few things that we do need to consider here.What I want to suggest in respect of the title is that we do actually look at a different option and one of the things that I know many of us have valued about this debate is that we have actually learnt a bit more about the importance of land transfer in our economy and our society and some of the core principles that underpin it. The most important one which we have spoken about a lot today actually is the Torrens system. It has been raised by a number of members in the course of the debate and actually we had a very good discussion about it from the previous Minister in the chair Christopher Finlayson who some of us might note was in a relative sense a little bit more active in terms of engaging in the debate. He gave us a very good exposition of the origins of the Torrens system and its importance in terms of New Zealand having a settled and secure and trusted system of landownership.As Mr O'Connor said this bill goes back to 1952 in New Zealand—there were previous iterations—but the principles of the Torrens system go back to the 19th century. It was explained to us that Mr Torrens—Paul Foster-Bell: Sir Robert.MICHAEL WOOD: Sir Mr Torrens?Paul Foster-Bell: Sir Robert Richard Torrens.MICHAEL WOOD: Thank you Mr Foster-Bell—he never misses a beat. He was based in South Australia at that time sort of in a frontier country as New Zealand was at the time and there was a real importance in terms of establishing a secure system of landownership and transfer. So my suggestion in terms of the title of the bill is that we could amend it to be the Land Transfer (Torrens System Security of Ownership) Bill". That to me would really point to the historical roots of what we are talking about here in terms of our system of landownership.We discussed the fact that the Torrens system has embedded within it that important principle of indefeasibility—that notion that basically you cannot turn it over. You can take it to the bank. If you own a piece of land and it is on the register that is controlled by the State and it says "Here's this piece of land here's how big it is here's where it is here's when it was transferred." that is it. You basically cannot dispute that and that is absolutely essential to the way that our economy and our society operate.So I do want to move on to a question that arises actually in the commencement clause and it would be outstanding if the Minister in the chair Michael Woodhouse could give a little bit more guidance on this. I will just bring up clause 2 "Commencement" here. Clause 2(1) says: "This Act comes into force on a date appointed by the Governor-General by Order in Council." Clause 2(2) says: "One or more orders may be made under subsection (1) bringing different provisions into force on different dates." I am happy to stand here and say that I am a relatively new member so it may be that this is quite a common provision but I would be interested to know in respect of this particular piece of legislation the reasons that we think there is value in bringing different bits in at different times and what parts of the legislation we might think might come in first and which might come in later and the rationale that sits in behind that.That does seem to me to be quite important because if we go back to what this bill is about it is about people understanding how land is owned and how it is transferred. It goes to a whole range of matters around how the people who are involved in transactions such as banks mortgagees and mortgagors interact with one another and I think for security for certainty we should know which bits of this bill will come in at which times and what the sequencing of those will be. This is a many-latticed thing and one part of the bill interacts with another part of the bill. So we want to have some certainty I think as a Committee before we know that this bill is signed off that that question around when different parts are going to commence has really been thought through by the Government before this bill comes into effect. So it would be really good if Minister Woodhouse could give us some guidance on that and answer that question. In wrapping up those are the two key points. I think we could be a bit more expansive with the title to recognise how important this is and some of those key principles including the Torrens system that underlie it and there could be some certainty around the commencement. This bill has been developed in a collaborative way with a Government Administration Committee process that Labour members have been very happy to engage in and there has been a range of really sensible changes that have come into it here. We think it is a shame some of the Supplementary Order Papers have been shot down today—they would have improved it—but overall it is a good bill that modernises our land transfer system. With those changes that I have recommended I am very happy to vote for it this evening."