Curran Clare: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6351. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):In relation to the debate on the referral of the Taxation (Bright-line Test for Residential Land) Bill to the Finance and Expenditure Committee the truncated period of time that is being allocated here by the Government is why we need to debate this issue. It really goes to a fundamental point about how this Parliament operates and the lack of respect that the Government of the day has for the parliamentary process.I for one in this House—and I would think all of the people on the Opposition benches—actually do take that parliamentary process seriously. But increasingly this Government is disrespectful arrogant and demonstrates hubris around the importance of the parliamentary process and the need to scrutinise legislation and have a proper select committee process—to get experts and people who want to have a say about laws before a select committee give them the opportunity to have their say and then to have the opportunity to get good advice and to have a decent amount of time to do that. That is why we are having this debate tonight in the House and that is why this Government is lacking in its respect for the fundamental democratic system that we have in New Zealand.I just want to refer to a comment that was made by the Minister of Revenue Todd McClay on 3 News on 18 May this year.Hon Simon Bridges: Oh that’ll be in context then.CLARE CURRAN: Well he is welcome to get up and dispute that he made the comment. What he said in relation to this bill was this: “despite only being a month in the works it was carefully thought-through.” The quote is—and I am sure there is video footage to prove that he actually said it—“Over a four- or five-week period we looked very closely at not only what the Reserve Bank is doing but what other measures may be there from a tax point of view.” I ask you whether that is in a rhetorical sense a decent amount of time—a month 4 weeks—for there to be a substantive piece of legislation put before this House. I actually feel a bit of sympathy for officials for being put in the position of being given such a short period of time to bring a bill before the House.There are times when short amounts of time are necessary—when there is a matter of great urgency such as the debate that we have been having around the refugee quota and the importance of responding in a compassionate way to issues of great moment in our time like humanitarian crises. It is also true that we have a crisis in the housing market in this country that we have a major issue of housing supply in Auckland and that we have a major issue with property speculators.This bill for which we are debating this motion on the truncation of the select committee process is an issue of great importance. It may be that a bill needed to be brought to the House in a hurry—and a month is a hurry—but it should also be given the opportunity to have a decent amount of time for there to be a good select committee process. That is the problem. We are not being given that. So 22 October is what around 6 weeks away? In order to advertise for submitters to actually get the submitters in the room how many days are we going to have for submissions?And not only for the actual physical submissions on this bill but how many days then does this select committee get for a response from officials and for the opportunity for members on that select committee to ask questions and to get adequate responses?This is a travesty. It is treating Parliament as a joke and it is happening over and over and over again. It is an embarrassment and anybody listening to this debate tonight should be deeply concerned about the “third-term-itis” that this Government is demonstrating—about the way it is treating the whole parliamentary process with absolute disrespect. The Labour Party is supporting this going to the select committee because we want to have this discussion but we are not going to get the amount of time that we need to have the discussion. Instead it is going to be rushed through. It is going to be sent back to Parliament and then the Government will say “Tick. Move on.” and actually there will be very little effect.I notice that Government members have all got their heads down over there because they know that that is what is happening and it is happening increasingly. It is an embarrassment. They should all be embarrassed to be representatives in this House with the amount of legislation where this kind of process is happening—where you are not getting proper public input where the officials are being disrespected and where the experts are not being brought in or if they are it is as a token gesture.This is a truncated period of time for a select committee process. I do not know how many times the Opposition members have got up and argued on these issues. It is an embarrassment. The Minister of Revenue himself says the legislation has been only a month in the works. The Prime Minister did the usual shrug of his shoulders and said: “Oh you know I might have said something 4 or 5 years ago but you know we’ve only just come round to the idea and oh what the hell. We’ll just give it a tick and move on and people will forget about it.” Well it is a matter of great moment. Parliament should be taking this seriously and we need to extend the period for this select committee process.