Davidson MaramaMARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): So I am—what do you know—still opposing this Housing Legislation Amendment Bill. What we are talking about in this Committee stage is Part 2. I have just been talking to my colleague Maureen Pugh to confirm that she and I are the newest members in this House at this moment and for some of the longer-serving members it might be less than obvious that as my colleague pointed out the way we talk about the processes in here is not always accessible to all of the public. I think it is really important as sexy as Parliament TV is that we ensure that the processes are clear. We are still coming to grips—sorry I will not speak for my colleague. I am still coming to grips with this process. So this bill and Part 2 which we are talking about right now is being rushed through under urgency in the House. It is being rushed to be passed. What this means is that from 3pm yesterday we have been here rushing through the House all of the stages of passing legislation that will apply to our New Zealanders. This is not ordinary. So we are rushing it through. This means that there is no longer the time between the readings to ascertain what is in this legislation to hear from officials and experts in the area to deliberate across the parties about this bill and to go into what we call a select committee to sit down and pull this legislation apart deliberate on it and hear from the public—hear the public submissions on this bill. That is necessary in a democratic society so that we can make the best legislation hear all the things and make sure that we are protecting New Zealanders' rights. This bill is being rushed through under urgency to wipe out all of that process. It absolutely denies us the opportunity to really suss out how this legislation is going to impact on people on all the different groups of society. Further to that there is ordinarily another report that is done by Government departments. They sit down and they really go through it and have a look and prepare a report for all of us members of the House. For Part 2 the very part that we are discussing right now this was not completed. That is how rushed this legislation process is for this particular bill. So we are really sort of not upholding the best democratic process with this particular piece of legislation. There are times when legislation does need to be rushed through the House but this process is important for this Part 2. It is of deep concern to the Green Party that this part of the bill is being rushed through the Committee because it pertains especially to and is about the offer-back provision which I will explain. This bill wipes out—destroys—the offer-back responsibility that the Crown has to the public when they are landowners or descendants of land that was owned in their whakapapa in their whānau. So just very quickly the offer-back provision is when the land was taken from or gifted by any owner under the Public Works Act. When the Crown no longer needs that land any more it has to ordinarily offer that land back to the previous owner or their descendants. Oh and by the way the land has to be offered back at the market price or below. If they do not want it then—and only then—it can be sold on the open market. So Part 2 of this very bill that we are discussing destroys that obligation of the Government and that is why the very fact that we are rushing this bill through under urgency and the very fact that there was no departmental report on the impacts of this part of the legislation—this is the thing. This is a big thing. I want to quickly acknowledge what my colleague Kelvin Davis was referring to which was the right of first refusal under Tiriti o Waitangi settlements. Part 2 also contains a so-called protection of the right of first refusal which is when iwi must be offered first before anyone else the whenua. However what my colleague Catherine Delahunty raised at the Māori Affairs Committee today is that it is not a true right of first refusal; it is a right of second refusal in practical terms in some of the Treaty bills that are being put through the House. So again Part 2 of this legislation also does not uphold the absolute right of absolute first refusal. So I wanted to acknowledge that as well. Part 2 of this bill has huge consequences. I want to pick up on where a number of colleagues—Grant Robertson my colleague Metiria Turei and Denis O'Rourke have asked the question: why? Why this Part 2 and the destruction of the offer-back provision? Why has that happened under urgency? Such an important and huge consequence to landowners and to the public—why are we rushing this through under urgency? I want to refer to the Green Party officially on 28 June this year asking the Minister concerned Nick Smith because we knew that the State housing law was about to wrap up. We officially asked the Minister what his plans were—this was on 28 June—after the expiry of this legislation that establishes special housing areas. What are your plans Minister after this expires?". His official reply—so this is 28 June—was that he had not received any official advice or correspondence. OK—28 June. Then just over a month later on 10 August he took this bill to Cabinet. So either he and his officials rushed this bill up in less than a month or the Minister did not tell us the full story. We have a right to ask what the full story is and what is actually going on. If in fact you rushed up a bill of this consequence in a month there are no skills there. That is not good governance—that is not good governance.Metiria Turei: Mistakes will be made. MARAMA DAVIDSON: Absolutely—mistakes will be made as my colleague has just said. Mistakes will be made—that is not good governance. There is a reason why we have good governance processes particularly when the consequences are huge. So I have just outlined that the Green Party officially asked the Minister what his plans were going to be. He said "Nothing nothing" and a month later: "Oh we have this huge bill." Hey—skills? No skills. There are some very serious questions that we should be asking here and I am thankful for taking this call because this is the thing: it goes to both how we want to uphold our responsibilities as representatives and for good governance and the actual content and how it will impact in the future on landowners and on the New Zealand public. So there are a couple of things going on there and the Minister surely can tell us what the full story is. We are asking what happened. Why the rush—or were we not given the full story when we officially asked for advice from the Minister and his officials? Thank you."