Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in support of the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill the Regulatory Systems (Commercial Matters) Amendment Bill and the Regulatory Systems (Workplace Relations) Amendment Bill. These three bills which arise from the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill will now go to separate and different select committees so that they can be properly examined by the select committee process and submitted upon by the public. I would just like to come back a little bit to the comments that Mr Cunliffe made that it has taken 2 years from the report that led to the topics in this legislation to a bill going before Parliament. The fact of the matter is that it may have escaped Mr Cunliffe's attention that there was a lengthy period when an exposure draft was given to people affected by the bill people in the sector and actually anybody in the public who might have wanted to give feedback on the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill as it was then and indeed a number of people made contributions and comments that were helpful to the formation of the Regulatory Systems Amendment Bill. I would also like to come back another step to talk about the importance of regulatory reform. I am very proud to be the Parliamentary Under-Secretary to the Minister for Regulatory Reform. On behalf of the ACT Party I am very proud that there is such a Minister because it is something that ACT brought about. The reason we thought it was so important to bring this about is that Governments can effectively do one of three things: they can either tax and spend money—money acquired using the sovereign power of Government; they can own assets be it land buildings businesses or anything else that a Government might own; or a Government can use its sovereign power to regulate all of those things that are private property that it has not already taxed or decided to own on behalf of the people. The interesting thing is that we are lucky as New Zealanders to have inherited very good institutions around taxation and expenditure and ownership. Our Fiscal Responsibility Act which is now part of the Public Finance Act is world class. One of the reasons that the Government changed in 2008 was that Ruth Richardson's bill which required an opening of the books in the form of a pre-election fiscal update with full cost accrual accounting revealed to the public just how badly managed the Government's finances were at that time. I believe that was one of the things that precipitated a change in Government. So we are very well served to have full cost accrual accounting published regularly when it comes to our Government's use of taxation and expenditure of Government money. Although ACT would argue that the Government owns far too much in the way of capital assets we actually have pretty good rules and processes around managing the things that the Government actually owns. We can find from the Crown Ownership Monitoring Unit and its successor how many businesses the Government owns and even if we do not like the returns that the Government gets from those—we find that actually we get pretty weak returns—at least we are able to assess what it is that the Government owns and what benefit the public gets from public ownership. But when it comes to the third activity of Government—not expenditure and not ownership but regulation—it has to be said that we have a lot of work to do on improving our institutions so that we have a better regulated society and so that we can use the private property that the Government has not taxed and does not yet own more efficiently. If you look at some of the challenges that we face in New Zealand at the moment I cannot think of many challenges that would not be dramatically lessened had we had functional regulation of housing markets. The fact that we are a country that is 0.8 percent populated geographically but has managed to manufacture an artificial shortage of land on which you can build and push house prices through the roof is at the root of many of our challenges today as a country whether it be concern about immigration house prices inequality or all the infrastructure costs rates or whatever. Many of the challenges we face are due to the regulatory failure. So I pick up on what David Cunliffe said which is that it is very important that this Government has a regulatory reform agenda. I am very proud that ACT has helped to bring that about working with the National Government over the last two terms of Government and this one and I am proud today to see that we have regulatory systems legislation that shows that this Government is prepared to commit House time and is prepared to make a commitment to tidying up some of the impediments to good regulation. People might be wondering for instance what exactly some of the concrete examples of this are. One of them for example is what we see in the Regulatory Systems (Building and Housing) Amendment Bill. When it comes to the Unit Titles Act we see for example—perhaps for good reasons at the time the legislation was made many years ago—that it is very difficult to subdivide a unit title. We see that it is very difficult for an owner to give the right to a body corporate or for a body corporate to give an easement for someone else to use a unit title when there is no sound reason for that restriction to exist. We see this throughout the three bills—on it goes: there are regulations that have not been made for sound reasons but none the less constrain what people are actually able to do with the private property that the Government has not already taxed or decided to own. We see throughout each of these bills that we are making it easier for people to get on with their lives use their property become prosperous and flourish. For that reason I am very proud to be part of this regulatory reform kaupapa and to be standing here in support of this legislation today which the ACT Party commends to the House. Thank you.