Davidson Marama: Land Transfer Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDavidson Marama: Land Transfer Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9694. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARAMA DAVIDSON (Green): Tēnā koe. Huri noa i Te Whare tēnā koutou katoa. I am going to stand to support all that my colleague Eugenie Sage has pointed out in this the first reading of the Land Transfer Bill. As she said the Green Party will be supporting this bill to the select committee and we look forward to what comes out of the select committee consideration so we can further ascertain what we can celebrate or what we may be concerned about in this bill.I am going to particularly outline some of the Treaty of Waitangi considerations with my Māori affairs portfolio hat on. So just to quickly summarise in 2010 the Law Commission gave some recommendations around a new piece of land transfer legislation and the bill implements those recommendations. And as people have said the driver is to streamline land transfer law so that it is up to date so that it is simpler for all of us—for ordinary New Zealanders and all alike—to be able to handle these land transactions. It does away with three other land transfer statutes and puts them all together so that we have got this one collection of land transfer legislation.The whakapapa—or the background to this bill; the driver coming into play—appears to be that the current legislation is rather old and raggedy. It needs a bit of a spruce up it needs a bit of a dust off and it just has not kept pace with technology. So this bill has possibly been a long time coming and on the face of it then this Land Transfer Bill seems like good governance. It seems like a good way to overview and review our legislation and make sure that we are keeping up to pace again for ordinary New Zealanders to make such an important transfer—one of the most important in our ordinary lives.So I come now to what if any Te Tiriti o Waitangi considerations with the Land Transfer Bill are. I too like my colleague have a limited understanding of land law. However Māori collectively have extensive experience—firsthand lived and generational experience—of land transfer. Not just of Māori land—I will acknowledge that Māori do not just own or manage Māori land. We also purchase private land that will of course obviously come under the normal part of this legislation.But I am interested in looking at how this may impact particularly on Māori land including Māori freehold land and Māori customary land. It appears that—and the Law Commission itself reports it—this bill does not make substantial changes to the current law governing Māori land. But the Law Commission does go on to say that there are—well we need to understand a little bit more. Land law on its own is complex and profound and so there is actually a little bit more information that we need—for example the issues surrounding the relationship between the Land Transfer Act and Te Ture Whenua Maori Act. Those two pieces of legislation on their own are huge and complex; we need to look at the interface between the two of them and get a good grip on what is actually happening.So I agree with the Law Commission that this does need further investigation and that is just also good governance. Keeping an eye on and keeping a monitor on how these pieces of legislation how these statutes that we put before the House impact on other statutes is always a good idea—it is a good idea for the Government. So the bill apparently does contain some changes that will impact on the treatment of Māori land.I wanted to have a go at this indefeasibility concept for listeners like my mother who is wise intelligent and deeply clever but is not a land lawyer. So we are looking at indefeasibility as a core concept of the land transfer system. It protects registered owners against competing owners—that can only be a good thing on the face of it also and particularly for those people interested who are not registered.I just wanted to say that there are some principles of land law that seem to be protected in this bill. I am interested in looking at how it interplays with Māori land law legislation. We are happy to support the bill to the select committee. Kia ora.