Dyson RuthLAND TRANSFER BILLThird ReadingDebate resumed from 27 June.Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): When I was unfortunately interrupted during my earlier contribution on this third reading I had just acknowledged the original Minister the Hon Maurice Williamson and I was a bit devastated to hear a number of National members say: Who?". The Hon Maurice Williamson is still a member in this House and he deserves credit for the work that he did way back in 2010 in getting this bill to the situation that it is at now. I do hope that he is able to join the debate and take a call later in the proceedings. He has not got long left if he wishes to so I would invite him to take a call as soon as he possibly can. I also want to acknowledge our former parliamentary colleague the Hon Simon Power who also made a very valuable contribution to this bill and is no longer a member of the House. He has gone on to greater and more glorious things.First of all the Law Commission work on this led to a report that was tabled in the House in 2010. It described basically a big bold step to modernise what was a hopelessly outdated system and that was our system of land transfer legislation. I do not think anybody in the House has disagreed with the fundamental point but I want to say that at our select committee we did not give it the once-over-lightly and then pass it along. I want to commend all the members of the Government Administration Committee particularly Paul Foster-Bell and also my colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove who subbed in for a number of these hearings. We did find during our committee consideration that there were a number of issues that needed resolving and we did by a good process of listening and talking with each other in a respectful way get to a much better outcome at the end. I am pleased that our committee was able to make that contribution.We had primary concerns from the Bankers' Association and the Law Society about matters contained in the bill. One of them caused a lot of debate and that was the issue of mortgage fraud that was considered in clauses 54 and 55 of the original legislation. This was probably the most contentious not in terms of party policy but it was contentious in terms of who was right and who was wrong and how we might best deliberate to protect the people who deserve protection. The Bankers' Association was pretty upfront with us. It said: "Those clauses aren't necessary. You're trying to fix a problem that doesn't exist. It will cost a huge amount of money and by the way our customers will pay." Well that quickly focused our attention so we tried to determine whether there was a problem and we agreed with the Bankers' Association that there did not seem to be one.Should we be protecting against a problem that could arise in the future? Well yes but you would not want to protect against every possible outcome of every possible situation so we parked that. This could potentially be a problem but in the end we decided that having banking customers paying to solve a problem that did not exist and may not exist in the future just was not worth it. Unanimously the committee agreed that those clauses would be deleted. I think that was a very good decision and I hope the Bankers' Association is proud of the representation it made. It was a bit of proof that often members of Parliament across parties will listen to submissions consider good contributions that are made and then change the original premise of the legislation.As I said right at the outset of my contribution the original Ministers the Hon Maurice Williamson and the Hon Simon Power deserve commendation for their work on this bill as does the current Minister the Hon Mark Mitchell. He has picked it up right at the tail end and he will get all the credit but so he should because he is the Minister responsible for it. This is an important step forward.I do not know why it has taken 7 years for a bill that does not really arouse much contention. It is pretty dry. It is pretty technical. We did have some debate on it but not on party political grounds. I cannot imagine why it is being passed only in July 2017 and I am sure some member of the Government—perhaps a member of the committee—will be able to make a contribution and explain it. It is work like this which is based on Law Commission recommendations that should be able to be taken up into the House pretty promptly.It has taken 7 years since that Law Commission report. I know that the Government has had other matters on its mind and this might not have seemed to be as priority but consider the number of people who are involved in land transfer every year consider the amount of money that is spent in that process and consider that after this third reading our Parliament will have made that process more efficient will have made it easier and will have made it probably more transparent—and we remain ever hopeful of that. But also with that efficiency hopefully it will be cheaper for people. This is a good step forward for our Parliament and I am pleased we are taking it."