Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I have been waiting patiently for an opportunity to respond to the many interesting points that have been raised in this debate. I will address my comments as tightly as I can to clauses 9 and 10 which are currently on the Table but it is worth considering various provisions in both the Housing Act 1955 and the Public Works Act 1981 because here in the real world those pieces of legislation all interact. They influence the property of New Zealanders not only their land that may have become Crown land acquired under the Public Works Act or some other Act in the past but also the homes that people have recently bought that have been built on that land. I look across at the Labour Party today which is an embarrassment to the giant who built it. It is a party that wants to build 100000 homes through the Government but it will not seriously consider engage with or understand the legislative underpinnings that would be required to do so. The fact of the matter is that under sections 40 to 42 of the Public Works Act as it stands the first right of refusal is exempt in a number of circumstances including where the land has been developed. Under the 1955 Housing Act it is possible for the Government to use Crown land to develop and build housing. Those are the facts and that is what Governments of both stripes have been doing for a very long time. It is no doubt what the Greens would have done had they ever made it into Government. So when we inherit this history we have to think very carefully about the different stakeholders involved and how the law will influence their interests going forward. There is an inherent conflict between the Public Works Act and the Housing Act. There is a conflict in saying that the Government has a role in developing and building housing on Crown land and yet the Government also has a requirement to give a first right of refusal to people who may have had their land taken compulsorily under the Public Works Act in the past. That conflict does not sit easily with me because unlike the Labour Party I do not believe that the Government should be in the housing development business. There is no public policy justification for the Government to be building houses. There are many reasons why the Government might compulsorily acquire land. One might imagine a Government attempting to build a road from Auckland to Wellington with one or two people opportunistically holding out and preventing their property from being sold for any price hoping to gain a rent off the New Zealand public in the construction of the road. For those reasons we can understand why there might be a Public Works Act and why the Government might compulsorily acquire private citizens' land but there is no good reason for the Government to acquire land simply so it can do housing development. That is something that Parliament needs to address in the future but none the less it is not something that could be addressed in the current time frame. Let me explain a little bit about why that time frame is so tight and why I cannot support the Supplementary Order Papers that have been put on the Table by Metiria Turei to delete clauses 9 and 10 and the amendment by Phil Twyford I think it is to have Part 2 of this bill sent off to a select committee. As I have said there is an inherent conflict between the Public Works Act and the Housing Act and what that inherent conflict opens up is the possibility of an opportunistic legal challenge where land that has been taken at some past time and subsequently developed by the Government—which the Government should never do even though Labour thinks it should—is then sold to people who are now homeowners. Often working-class homeowners—whom the Labour Party should stand up for—who are trying to pay their mortgage may find themselves subject to an opportunistic legal challenge where they could actually have their property rights and their livelihood under threat. The thing about property rights is that they tend to conflict with each other. This is just the real world which is affected by the legislation that we are making today in this House. But then other members have asked why we cannot at least take more time. Well what if we were to send this away to a select committee for say 6 months? Within a year we might have actually managed to pass legislation somehow clarifying this problem but the reality is that leaves a year of uncertainty and a year of potential legal challenge to people's livelihoods and I think that would be an absolute disgrace. It would be imperilling the rights of New Zealanders and that is not the sort of thing that this Parliament should be doing. None the less I agree with the new-found belief in due process in private property rights that Metiria Turei has recently exhibited. I agree with what Annette King has been barracking from the other side of the House which is that due process in private property rights is important. I hope she will remind Labour's caucus of that next time it has a KiwiBuild discussion. It is wrong for the Government to take land for anything other than a tightly circumscribed set of public policy purposes where there is a genuine market failure and the taxpayer is frankly at risk of extortion. Housing development is one of those and this area of the law needs to be tightened up over a longer time frame than is currently available because right now having put this bill on the Table in public in the House we have invited opportunistic legal challenges to people who have already bought homes on what was formerly Crown land. So what I have done is negotiated with the Minister to support this bill on the basis that we will improve public policy in the long run. People opposite have scoffed at the fact—Grant Robertson: You know it's retrospective don't you?DAVID SEYMOUR: Yes and the current scenario would also be retrospective Mr Robertson. You are so petulant and puerile you trip yourself up and fail to engage with the real issues. Mr Robertson would look a lot more dignified in his mistakes—Grant Robertson: I raise a point of order Mr Chairperson. I take offence at being described in the way that the member just described me and I ask him to withdraw and apologise.The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Well this is a pretty robust debate—[Interruption]—and I am on my feet. The member has taken offence. I ask the member to withdraw the comment.DAVID SEYMOUR: I withdraw the comment. Thank you Mr Chair. Is it not interesting how thin-skinned and sensitive those members are when it really gets going? Mr Robertson's various errors and mistakes could be made with so much more dignity if he only carried himself in a more dignified manner normally. Members opposite have been saying that it is a poor deal to have a 10-year review. Well let me just explain to members opposite why a 10-year review is a much shorter time than they might otherwise imagine. People from the Labour Party are not normally accustomed to being in business but let me explain to them that when you do a development—particularly a property development—the cycle is roughly 10 years. What this means is that any future developments that are going to be contemplated by folks out there are going to run into the very uncertainty that this bill looks to clarify and they are going to run into it very soon if they are going to begin a development in the near future. What is being achieved by the amendment that puts a 10-year sunset clause on clauses 9 and 10 is that it will force this House to revisit not so long from now the fundamental questions of when—Chris Hipkins: A decade.DAVID SEYMOUR: Honestly it is actually really quite difficult to get anything across to their education spokesperson. He really has not managed to hear the very simple things I have been saying for the last 30 seconds. Yes it is a decade Mr Hipkins but if your lead time for development is a decade then you need to start thinking about it now—Grant Robertson: It's retrospective.DAVID SEYMOUR: —and the House will come under pressure to resolve this issue very soon. If I could just reply to what Grant Robertson is saying—