Bishop ChrisCHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Madam Assistant Speaker. Can I just start by begging the House's indulgence to apologise to drum and bass listeners around the country who I inadvertently insulted this morning in launching National's COVID-19 response plan when I indicated that I didn't like drum and bass music. I was not at all meaning to insult them and I will endeavour to listen to George FM more—Hon Chris Hipkins: It sounds like they don't like you much either.CHRIS BISHOP: Well apparently George FM is creating a drum and bass playlist for me for Spotify so can't wait.So anyway I apologise for that. We will be supporting—Matt Doocey: You were young once.CHRIS BISHOP: I was young once yeah exactly. We will be supporting this bill through first reading with the caveat that this process is a shocker—it really is. I've expressed privately and I'm happy to say publicly our disappointment to the Minister at this. To have a bill drafted up go through Cabinet on a Monday be introduced to the House the next day and then set down for first reading under urgency the next day is not a good process. It was justifiable last year. You could make a case it was justifiable last year because we were dealing with the teeth of the pandemic and people had to move quickly and legislation was taking effect and having effects that we needed to delay fair enough. But a year later or more than a year later—18 months later—to not have the i's dotted and the t's crossed so to speak to use the vernacular is not good practice. And we will support it to first reading because we accept the case that there are a variety of different things that are happening that it would probably be good for Parliament to delay or alter or make changes to because COVID has had various effects on things and the alert levels are having those effects but I want to say to the House now that the Finance and Expenditure Committee will have to do a very thorough vetting job and iron out some of the fishhooks in it before we in the National Party will support this bill at second reading and beyond.I see the chair is here of the venerable Finance and Expenditure Committee. I used to hold that role. I see Dr Webb is here and Barbara Edmonds as well and I'm going to have to rely on the committee because I'm not a member—we're going to have to rely on the committee—to do a thorough job. In that regard it is not acceptable in our view that the Minister has indicated that the committee is going to be asked to report back by 14 October. That is not acceptable. That is in about 2½ weeks. And I want to flag now for the House that the National Party will be moving an amendment to the motion for the report-back date of 14 October to instead be14 November 2021. That will give the House another month or so to really scrutinise this bill properly and I think it's a fair compromise.In the ordinary course of events you would send a bill to a select committee for four to six months. Our argument will be another month to really get to grips with it and that will allow the time for the House to pass the bill through all the rest of its stages by Christmas time which the Government's indicated they want to do. We don't need 14 October. There's more than enough time between 14 November and House rising for Christmas to pass this piece of legislation so I think it's a fair request. And I'd just urge the other parties here—the ACT Party which is a long-time opponent of urgent legislation like this but also the Green Party who have spent a long time in their time in Parliament raging against the use of urgency and shortened select committee report-back dates. So I urge the Green Party in particular to join with the National Party and vote for a motion to amend the report-back time to 14 November which would be an extra month beyond what the Government has flagged.So I suppose the first point to make is why now—why this particular date? The Government has had quite a long time to get to grips with some of this legislation and one could ask: what have they been doing in the last few months? Why do we have to deal with this now? This has not been well signalled it has not been well planned for. We accept that there'll be some disruption because of COVID but really we deserve better as a Parliament than what we have got with this bill.I want to flag up two particular things that the National Party is very concerned about. The first is this little amendment which I noticed the Minister didn't speak about to the Local Electoral Act 2001. He didn't mention that and I'll tell you why he didn't mention it. It's because the bill allows the Government to change the nomination times and nomination day for local elections. So the current law says—Dr Duncan Webb: It's the Governor-General.CHRIS BISHOP: Well don't say it's the Governor-General that can do it. Dr Webb knows when it says the Governor-General that is the Government because it's the Government that instructs the Governor-General—that's constitutional law 101. So the current law section 73A says the Government can adjourn nomination day for up to six weeks—for up to six weeks right? So OK that's fair enough because you need a bit of flexibility. This says the Government can do it multiple times—doesn't set a limit for how often they can do it but multiple times for six weeks at a time including into the year following an election.So the next local body election is 2022—that's coming up and there'll be mayoralty changes round the country and it'll all be very exciting—and I know that there's one particular member of this House who's gearing up for a bid for the Mayor of Wellington and we look forward to that run and everyone will be very excited about that. And there might be other members of Parliament who want to run for mayoralties and local councils—we'll wait and see. But that's 2022 OK. But what this bill does is it says the Government can say Actually the 2022 local body elections it is possible to continue to delay them until 2023." And I'm sitting here thinking "Why would the Government want to do that?" I mean if you were being really cheeky you would say they'll just delay and delay and delay so that when the member for Rongotai becomes the Mayor of Wellington they might not have to have a by-election in Rongotai because we might get within the six months before the 2023 general election when there doesn't have to be a by-election. If you're being really cheeky and really naughty one would suggest that. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Not the Speaker—Order!CHRIS BISHOP: I would never want to do that because I'm not a cheeky person but there'll be people who speculate about that. So I think this is not a good provision. And you've got to ask yourself: is it even really necessary? Local body elections as we know are done by postal votes. We had this situation last year where the Government essentially decided to delay the election for however long it was—four or five weeks. We had a bit of back and forth about whether or not that was a good idea but that was voting in person and you can sort of accept the case that voting in person at a time of COVID was a potential spread but local body elections are done by postal votes—and some people think we should change that but as of now they're done by postal voting. There's no election day for a local body; it happens over 3½ to four weeks. The votes go out people fill them in—45 percent of people or whatever it is; we've got to get the rate higher—and they send them back. The risk of having a postal vote at a time of COVID is I would have thought not that high. So why is the Government seeking the power through this bill through the Local Electoral Act 2001 amendments—it just subtly sneaked in there in one of the Schedules not mentioned by the Minister. Why is the Government seeking this power? So that is something the select committee is going to want to have to get to the bottom of because it's not clear at first blush why the Government wants to arrogate itself this power—extra powers—and if they're actually needed.I see my time is running to an end so I'm sure that other colleagues will want to pick up on the other changes to the Property Law Act which even the Minister accepts in his speech was controversial. He actually flagged it up for the House. In a rare moment of honesty there was actually an admission that that was actually going to be quite a controversial measure—it's retrospective and it actually interferes in the sanctity of the contract between landlords and tenants. And I know that members in this House will want to get to the bottom of exactly why that is going to be the case and why the Government is advancing that. So we'll vote for this bill but with—Hon Member: I'm not sure why frankly.CHRIS BISHOP: Yeah well I'm beginning to wonder myself now but with severe caveats around the time frame and around some of the little hidden measures in the bill that the Minister didn't really want to talk about."