Cunliffe DavidHon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn): From one geek to another it is really quite endearing to see Minister Finlayson taking such pleasure in his role and being both joyous and excited about the Land Transfer Bill. A word of advice to the Attorney-General—you really need to get out more. Labour supports this bill and I know that if this were a Committee stage debate Mr Assistant Speaker you would be holding us to every comma in every clause but it is an opportunity at the second reading to just note the why and the how before we get into the detail of the what. Labour supports this bill because it is a long overdue update of the land transfer mechanism and a restatement of some of the core principles that govern indefeasibility of title and our Torrens system of land registration. It is the second bill that I have had the pleasure of supporting in the House this evening but it is also the second bill that has had its genesis in a review that has been conducted by either officials or an independent agency—in this case in 2010 and in the previous case in 2009. I would observe that the wheels on the Treasury benches are not turning quickly—either that or the Government is resting so firmly on its laurels that it has got down to that pile of long-awaited legislative reform that has hitherto been buried in the bowels of the Law Commission or some other worthy institution. This bill did have its genesis in a Law Commission review in 2010. It was a good piece of work. It has been I think it is fair to say heavily engaged with by the legal and conveyancing communities particularly with the conveyancing section of the New Zealand Law Society. I think it is a fair point to say that the committee that reviewed the bill the Government Administration Committee chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson took a great deal of notice of the submissions of the Law Society. And no doubt Crown Law itself was heavily engaged. So this might be—the Minister said a geek's paradise; certainly a lawyer's paradise. Although it may not be perhaps the most contentious piece of law in the country it certainly is very important because all of us—well perhaps not myself because I do not currently own a property but people who do own properties want to have certainty of title. That has been the fundamental principle that has guided the law—that people can rely entirely upon their land title because that supports the mortgage and that is terribly important to the banking industry. It is one of the fundamentals: we get up in the morning we have our breakfast and we clean our teeth and we go to work and we just take it for granted. But it is important. The law needed updating because it had three different Acts governing it the earliest of which was written in 1952 which was not only before the internet but before the computer and certainly now that we have the Landonline system at Land Information New Zealand and we have the electronic passage of title the law was several generations old. Labour is supporting this bill because in general terms we realise that this is a necessary update. However here is the real political context of the bill. Not only is it a worthy piece of detail heft that has been hauled from the basement from 2010 but it is also a little bit of a dance of the veils. Everybody knows that the real issues around land transfer are the massive swathes of land that are being bought up by overseas interests and that is not necessarily bad—Brett Hudson: Oh rubbish. Come back to planet Earth.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: Before members opposite have apoplexy let me finish the sentence. It is not necessarily bad to have foreign investment. We need foreign investment but we want an on-to-it Land Information New Zealand and an on-to-it Overseas Investment Office. I challenge any member opposite to rise to their feet and give a 10-minute defence of the Overseas Investment Office because every member of the Government benches knows what we know—that it is currently a wasteland that is barely functioning that it is a wet bus ticket that cannot even do an internet search and that in order to catch somebody out you have basically got to be wanted by Interpol. That is how bad that part of the land transfer system is. But notwithstanding that piece of political context the substance of this bill—rather aged like a good wine and certainly worthy of the Attorney-General's detailed perspicacity—heads in the right direction. The bill updates the law and it allows for a reconsideration of issues like compensation indefeasibility of title identity verification covenants in gross withholding information on people's safety liability of estate administrators for certain costs and issues around the adverse possession process. But I am going to concentrate in the balance of my remarks on the two or three major issues that the Government Administration Committee so ably chaired by the Hon Ruth Dyson considered in its extensive deliberations. The first was the issue of mortgage fraud. The draft as introduced had the perhaps laudable aim of requiring mortgagees—in this case the banks—to have taken reasonable efforts to satisfy themselves that the identity of the mortgagor the borrower was in fact real. That is particularly important in respect of overseas transactions. It is also important for the integrity of the law domestically. However unsurprisingly the select committee room was full of the well-coiffed representatives of the banking industry who were at pains to point out that the transaction costs and the compliance costs of those obligations might in some cases be extensive. The committee took some note of those submissions and looked at the differences between Australia which has introduced similar requirements and New Zealand which has an electronic Landonline system and it decided on balance universally around the committee table that the costs of the measures were not yet demonstrated to be worthwhile relative to the benefits. The committee has adopted a wait-and-see approach agreeing with submissioners that those clauses should be struck but urging the Government to take an active review to ensure that we do not get increasing levels of mortgage fraud.Denis O'Rourke: Not good enough.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The cynics amongst us—the member may choose to count himself amongst that throng—would say that a Government that cannot even maintain a register of foreign buyers or look through shell companies might not be the kind of Government that you want to keep tabs on the family silver.Denis O'Rourke: That is a good point.Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: The member might not be wrong. But in an unbelievable show of generosity the Labour Opposition is willing to give the Government a chance to prove itself once again in the eyes of the public to be the kind of Government that could do something like this in less than the 10 years it has taken to get this bill to the House. That was our view on mortgage fraud. Manifest injustice: that is when somebody swindles somebody else and there is a tension in the law if I can put it really simply between the need to protect indefeasibility of title—when you have got it you know you have got it—versus having some protections for people who are just out and out swindled. The committee wrestled with some very learned submissions from the Law Society and from our departmental advisers none of whom is still in the Chamber to witness this exposition of the argument. On balance the committee felt that there should be a high bar around not just fraud but a very high grade of fraud for it to be sufficient to overturn the historic principle of indefeasibility of title. By consensus the committee worked its way to some amendments which I am sure with the Chair's help we will consider on a sentence by sentence comma by comma basis in the Committee stage of the debate. Compensation issues arise in that context. Time will not permit me to go into them but when we get into the Committee stage we will go through the interface between manifest injustice indefeasibility of title and the compensation regime. To sum up this is a good little bill. It helpfully updates the law some of which is even older than members opposite. But it has taken rather a slow track—a 2010 Law Commission review. It is a bit like the last bill on agricultural chemicals with its 2009 review. Either the Government has not got anything better to do or it should learn to do these reviews a bit quicker. Thank you.