Guy Nathan: Real Estate Agents Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Guy Nathan: Real Estate Agents Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:649;Page:18423] 
NATHAN GUY (National) 
: 
 Well after 5½ hours of debate today on the Real Estate Agents Bill we have finally heard from the Minister. What a lot of piffle we have heard! The Government has had to put the House into urgency—we are sitting till midnight this evening and having 13 hours of debate—to get through this bill. 
This Minister could have had a chance of reforming this Act but what a shambles! I cannot believe that he actually took a sledgehammer to crack a walnut as my colleague Kate Wilkinson described this Minister doing in her very very good address. This Minister had the opportunity to win over 18000 to 20000 real estate agents’ votes for this election. But do members know what? Labour will not get any of those votes because it has made an absolute shambles of this legislation. We are seeing that here today with the Government having to move the House into urgency to get this bill passed. It is just so interesting that the Minister had the opportunity to get this legislation right. One of my constituents presented a submission to the Justice and Electoral Committee—and I acknowledge the good work of Christopher Finlayson Kate Wilkinson and Chris Auchinvole on the select committee. My constituent went home and rang me that night and said that he had presented a pretty good submission but that it seemed to be just the National members who had their heads around the bill. He said that the members of the select committee who are sitting on the other side of the House did not have a clue. 
Christopher Finlayson 
: What did he say about Lynne Pillay? 
NATHAN GUY 
: Which one is Lynne Pillay? I want to talk about Part 4 because that is all about complaints and discipline. All of the real estate agents from the region where I live Horowhenua and Kapiti have a complaint for the Government. They have a complaint about the reform of this legislation—that the Government should have got it right. This process is not right and the House needs to acknowledge that today. This part is so bureaucratic. Is that not typical of this Government? The way to correct things is to have more bureaucracy—just put more bureaucracy in the way of trying to correct the complaints and discipline procedure. It will not do it. What it will do in my opinion is encourage a culture of more complaints and that is where we have a real concern about this part. 
I think the Government had a wonderful opportunity to get this reform right. The industry wanted it and the sector wanted it but it is not right. We have some real concerns about this legislation. This part addresses the nub of the issue which is the Government creating more and more bureaucracy to try to address the problem—a sledgehammer that is cracking just a walnut. 
It is an embarrassment that the Labour Government is ramming this Clark-Peters legislation through in urgency tonight—we are debating through to midnight. We are coming to the end of the term of this dying Government. It just shows that the Government has had to put the House into urgency to rattle through the legislation when it could have done it a lot sooner if it had been able to get the numbers. The Government has managed just now to do a deal with New Zealand First to get its support through Parliament. 
We have some real concerns about Part 4 “Complaints and discipline” and about how there will be this wonderful panel of 20 persons who will try to administer the complaints procedure. I heard Chris Finlayson talk about clause 97. He made some wonderful contributions on the establishment of the Real Estate Agents Disciplinary Tribunal which in part we are supporting. But fundamentally we have a real issue with this legislation this afternoon and with the House being in urgency to yet again create more bureaucracy.