Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): I'll respond to the issue that's been raised. It's deeply ironic that the National Party criticised the fact that the exemption that we were proposing in respect of the lands that have been controversial the Te Ārai lands was actually being done by new section 5 in new schedule 1AA inserted by schedule 1 because we did not want to confer a general regulation-making power of exemption. That's why—Hon Amy Adams: No you're doing that as well.Hon DAVID PARKER: No we haven't.Hon Amy Adams: You're doing that as well—that's what 61D says.Hon DAVID PARKER: We haven't. Well that's actually—this is why members should pay attention when they're on select committee because this was well—Hon Amy Adams: Don't be patronising.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well I'm actually not being patronising. I'm actually asking the member to read the bill.Hon Amy Adams: That's pretty patronising.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well actually I would have thought that—Hon Amy Adams: 61C is in there as well as Te Ārai. You know that.Hon DAVID PARKER: New section 61C—OK well the provisions that are already in new sections 61B to 61E in clause 33A the exemption provisions are very narrow and they were deliberately cast to be narrow because we didn't want a future Government to be able to do what the last Government did which was effectively by changing regulations and letters of direction enabling further sale of New Zealand rural land when they said that they were going to tighten it up after the Crafar Farms sale. So one of the purposes of this Government was to have a very narrow regulation-making power in respect of future exemptions from the ban on buying existing homes in New Zealand.Now I also share the concern that the member Nicola Willis said that regulation-making powers ought to be constrained. I have sat on a number of occasions on the Regulations Review Committee and I agree that regulation-making powers ought to be constrained rather than open-ended. In this case it's both for the reason that I don't think this particular policy if it goes through with the will of Parliament should not be able to be undone by regulations of either this Government or any future Government and so this regulation-making power is already tightly constrained. Supplementary Order Paper 52 in my name tightens it even further. We were advised by Treasury officials that it was already a tight regulation-making power that had to be related to the purposes which are to restrict overseas ownership of residential land rather than to enable it but notwithstanding that the Government thought we should be even tighter than that.I would refer the member to page 3 of Supplementary Order Paper 52 in my name which inserts new section 61BA Purpose of exemptions". This actually goes to the very issue that Nicola Willis has spoken to and it says that "The purpose of sections 61B and 61C"—which were the clauses the member complained about—"is to—(a) provide flexibility where compliance with this Act is impractical inefficient or unduly burdensome but where the purpose of this Act can still be substantially achieved through the terms and conditions of the exemption". It's very narrow. The other exemptions are in (b) to "allow for exemptions that are minor or technical;" or (c) to allow for exemptions in respect of two matters: land that's to be used for diplomatic or consular purposes—so embassies—and then the other one is for registered charities.Then there are some other minor ones that are listed also. I'll read these out for the sake of complexion. This is 61BA(c)(iii) through (vi): "(iii) minor increases in the ultimate ownership and control [of an] overseas [person] if consent has already been granted for [that] overseas [person] to own or control sensitive assets:"—so for example if they owned an overseas company or a company was 29 percent overseas owned and it lifted the shareholding to 32 percent owned then that wouldn't require a separate consent; their existing consent could stand—"(iv) security arrangements that are entered into in the ordinary course of business:"—that's not the sorts of security arrangements that the Rt Hon David Carter has referred to but the banking industry was concerned that we make sure that we didn't have mortgages and things caught up in the Act—"(v) relationship property as defined in section 8 of the Property (Relationships) Act" and "(vi) interests in land acquired for the purpose of providing network utility services."Those are the only instances where the regulation-making power can be utilised and it is very narrow. So any future Government that wants to undo this—assuming that Parliament passes it—will have to come back to this House and actually convince the members of Parliament of this House and front up to the public in New Zealand in respect of any attempt to undo this legislation."