Mitchell Mark: Land Transfer Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMitchell Mark: Land Transfer Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 15 March 2016. Volume:712;Page:9689. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MARK MITCHELL (National—Rodney): Like my colleague Sarah Dowie I am really excited to take a call on this the Land Transfer Bill. I would like to refer to the previous speaker Damien O’Connor. We co-captain the Parliamentary Rugby Team. He is a pretty tough West Coaster and he is passionate about what he does. I would like to make an offer to the chair of the select committee who I am sure will be very pleased to see him come on to the committee. I would like to extend that invitation. I know that he would like to be more involved in this bill.But there is one thing that I do want to address. It is a very serious matter. It is that I think that probably the member for West Coast - Tasman was very pleased to see a National Government come into power because what we did is we stopped the flood of sales of our land to foreign investment. And it was a flood. Under the Hon David Parker there was more land sold. In fact the biggest single transaction in the sale of New Zealand land was made under the stewardship of Labour and the Hon David Parker. So I am sure that the member was very pleased to see a National Government come in where we made sure we tightened things up and we actually slowed that down. We felt that it was really important to do that. We made sure that the Overseas Investment Office process was a much more rigorous process to go through and we have been very careful about the foreign investment that we do invite into New Zealand. It is important but it has got to be the right sort of investment.This is a very important bill and I just want to refer to some of the key messages in the bill. This Government holds an important role dealing with land transfers and ensuring New Zealanders can have confidence in their property rights. This is really important because actually most Kiwis do aspire to owning their own home and having their own land and it is actually very important that they feel their property rights are protected.Our current land title registration legislation is outdated and this bill will modernise simplify and consolidate it. I just want to make mention too that Sarah Dowie in her speech raised the fact that the Hon David Cunliffe appeared to be running some type of conspiracy theory. I totally agree. I think it would not be unusual to see him sitting in Copperfields speaking to Agent Mulder and getting the new “X-file” opened up and running—Hon Louise Upston: And they’re invisible.MARK MITCHELL: That is right—and they are invisible too. The bill will make land transfer legislation clearer more workable and more consistent with modern ways of working while retaining the core principles of the current land registration system—this is very important—and there will be new measures to improve security of property rights.I just want to talk very quickly too about the need for the change and what brought about the changes that we have made. The Land Transfer Act is over 60 years old so it is an old piece of legislation and we see many times in this House that it is time to actually modernise this legislation and make it relevant to the world that we live in today. It contains provisions from earlier legislation dating back over 100 years as my colleague Sarah Dowie also alluded to. Much of the language is archaic complex and difficult to understand. The Act is focused on paper-based transactions which is completely at odds with the modern reality in the modern world that we live in now where electronic land titles and registration should be able to be done online.The Act is to be read alongside two stand-alone amendment Acts. This creates a legislative framework that is difficult to navigate for property owners wanting to understand their rights and obligations—and I think that any property owner who has entered into a transaction would agree that things can become complicated very easily. Most people try to avoid costly legal bills when they are entering into a sale and purchase agreement or a land transfer so this bill will actually go some way towards helping to reduce some of those compliance costs.As land is the principal source of wealth and wealth generation in New Zealand the land transfer system is critical to the ongoing functioning of the economy and confidence in the certainty of property rights in New Zealand underpins economic growth and attracts good overseas investment. This is a very good bill. I am very happy to recommend it to the House and look forward to the receiving it at the select committee. Thank you.