Taxation (Annual Rates for 2017-18, Employment and Investment Income, and Remedial Matters) Bill

Under Standing Order 176(1), I move, That it be an instruction to the committee of the whole House to restrict consideration on Supplementary Order Paper 13 in the Minister’s name for one month to allow the Finance and Expenditure Committee to seek public submissions on the Supplementary Order Paper’s provisions.

This is an important Supplementary Order Paper (SOP), which changes a significant piece of the legislation, in effect. It’s come into this House post the return of the legislation back to the committee of the whole House and to this Parliament, and there hasn’t been an opportunity for the public to make submissions on this. It is important, when you’re dealing with a change of this magnitude and this effect, particularly given the concerns that have been raised about the breadth of the SOP and the effect that it will have, that there is the important opportunity for the public to give the matter proper consideration. And so the point of order that I have suggested—the motion that I am moving—is one that will allow this House to ask that that SOP not be considered further until there has been that opportunity for public input, and for the Finance and Expenditure Committee to consider the matter and report back to this House so that when the committee of the whole House does consider the Supplementary Order Paper and the matters contained within it, it does so with the benefit of understanding the potential impacts of the change, the potential unintended consequences of the change, and the public’s very view on the change.

None of those opportunities have been afforded to date, and it is incumbent on this House, in my view, to ensure that when we debate such significant changes, we do so in full knowledge and understanding of their impact and the public view on them. To date, that has been denied to this House, and I think it is important that this House turns its mind to the impact of that and takes the opportunity of this motion to remedy that situation.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Mr Speaker.

There’s no debate on—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Yes, there is debate. It’s a full debate.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): There is debate. My apologies.

I rise to support the Hon Amy Adams in her motion calling on the House to instruct the committee that they should take no further action or have no further consideration of Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 13 laid on the Table by the Hon Stuart Nash extending the brightline test on residential property from two years to five years.

The reason for the brightline test in the first place was to remove speculators from the market, to get rid of people who come in and buy a chunk of, perhaps, a residential offering—whether it’s a new apartment building or a new subdivision or whatever it might be—and put them into the category of being a trader in property, because those who do trade in property do pay tax, and always have, and then, effectively, tax them if they sell that property within the five-year period.

Now, you might say that actually that’s not an unreasonable thing. Why shouldn’t someone who does trade in property have to be caught this way? But then what we do know is that people do make investments, and those investments can be quite reasonably made, and there is a trade-off, because at the moment, while they don’t pay a capital gains tax, they don’t get depreciation on that, and the extent of their write-offs was somewhat limited by tax changes in recent years. So it seems to me that that is a matter that needs to be discussed by the wider community rather than just the narrow position that would be taken inside the House.

We all know that there are ma and pa investors across the country, particularly people who might get to their late 50s who decide that they want to do a little bit with the equity that they have in order to enhance their position in retirement. This will be a huge impediment to those people being able to make that sort of progress. You’d have to ask what the advantage is to any community in that, particularly when it’s lined up against the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill that’s currently going through the House—currently before the select committee—

💬 Hon Shane Jones: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I direct your attention to the actual legislation before us. It is not dealing with overseas investment rule changes or law changes, and if we’re going to continue with this time-wasting, direct the member to talk about what’s in front of us.

Speaking to the point of order, this is a debatable motion, and material relevant to the debate on this motion is most certainly able to be introduced into the debate. I’m simply making the point that we have here a proposal that brings in a brightline test for property purchases in New Zealand that prohibits people selling them without a tax consequence for five years. At the same time, we have an investment act going through the Parliament that allows exactly that.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Thank you. I thank the member.

Can I finish my speech?

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’m going to rule on the—

💬 Hon Members: Point of order.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, I’m going to rule on the point of order, thank you. I thank the members. This is a debatable motion. It is restricted to the instruction, and it’s my opinion that the member has traversed within the instruction. There’s a little bit of latitude within that, but the Hon Shane Jones is correct; it is not a debate on the content of it, but on the instruction.

That is quite true, and thank you very much for that ruling, Mr Assistant Speaker. The point, though, that I was making is that the instruction, in fact, is to allow the public time to try to line up these two very, very different positions that have been taken through the legislative programme of the current Government.

It’s not an attempt to say that we want to encourage property speculation. By and large that’s not a good thing, but it should be a point that we recognise that those who do engage in legitimate property speculation—in other words, people who invest on a large scale, frequently, regularly, and in very vast numbers of properties—do, in fact, get caught by our current tax laws. There’s no need for the brightline test in those cases. Anyone, for example, who’s registered for GST and has claimed GST against a property because it is going to be part of future development is caught by our current tax laws, and untroubled by the brightline test. The people who will be caught by the brightline test, extended particularly to five years, will be those people who, in a very small way, have decided to use the equity that they have in their property, or perhaps some inheritance that they’ve got, to invest in a property—which, of course, does add to the pool of rental properties available in the market—and then, of course, now are finding that if they were to exit that property to a buyer, perhaps a first-home buyer, in those first five years they would be subject to tax.

Now, it’s not unreasonable that the committee accepts the instruction and says, “OK, we will send it back to the select committee for the one-month period. We’ll call for public submissions on this, do the work that’s necessary to hear from either those who are in favour of it or the many who I know will be opposed to it, and then consider whether or not it’s still worth pushing through the House.” Even today this House has had questions asked about the availability and supply of new property into the market, and I would like to suggest that one thing this instruction does is allow consideration of what the brightline test has done so far to inhibit some of the development of new property in this country. You can’t have a Government going around saying, “There’s a shortage of 70,000-odd residential dwellings.”, but then at the same time bringing in tax provisions that prevent an expansion of that particular supply in the New Zealand market.

So I think what the Hon Amy Adams has done today is present a fair opportunity for this Parliament to pick up the concerns that some New Zealanders have, to tidy those up inside a consideration of all the other factors that are going on at the moment in a constrained housing market, and to see what is going to be good for that housing market to expand. It would be unfortunate if this House were today to simply go about its business and push through this piece of legislation and inflict the five-year test upon New Zealanders without ever hearing what those New Zealanders thought about that particular proposal.

And it’s not acceptable, six months after an election, to say, “Well, we said we would do something about it.” If it was so important, it would have been done in that 100 days, and it would have, I think, at that stage, when the Government had a view about being a little more transparent and open and up front with people, probably had a short select committee period. It could have been sent to the select committee at any time when they were having hearings over this particular taxation bill, but it was not. It slipped into the House, because everyone who is promoting this bill knows it is not a good thing for housing supply in this country. So I would hope that the House this afternoon can say, “One month is not going to make a huge difference. One month is not going to make or break.” We’ve had six months with no new affordable housing being built by the current Government, so one more month won’t be such a bad thing, but it could be that by going hard at it today it is many, many, many months before hard-working New Zealanders who have small amounts of capital to invest in the housing market don’t decide not to do anything because of the pernicious regime that this particular measure brings in.

I certainly hope that those who are listening to this debate are not going to be just dyed-in-the-wool, do-as-they’re-told, follow the—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: Sheep?

—well, I’ve got to be careful about my words here. I don’t want to be insulting to anyone—follow the ideological lead of some in Government who believe that anybody who buys any asset, other than the State, is somehow out to rip everybody else off. That is simply not the case. Everyone knows—and particularly I would expect Mr Nash to know—that if you really did get stuck into the residential property market in this country, in the way that we suspect the tax working group wants to do, then the supply of that housing to New Zealanders who need it would almost certainly either dry up or become massively more expensive, and I think it would be well worth taking that one month for that broader consideration about the wisdom or otherwise of this particular initiative.

The instruction has been ventilated. I put it to you, Mr Assistant Speaker: put the motion to the House now.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise to support the motion that the particular part of the bill that’s being proposed to be introduced today—Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 13, around the brightline test—be, in fact, sent back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, so it can be properly aired in front of and with the people of New Zealand but also to get the benefit of the expert advice that we are very fortunate to be able to receive in New Zealand from the tax practitioners and also those involved in the building and construction industry, the real estate industry, and those who are better placed than many people in the House to actually advise on this matter. I am particularly concerned that the bill, which was previously in my name—a very fine bill—

💬 Hon Member: That’s right.

—a very fine bill—working on the excellent work that the Inland Revenue Department has been undertaking over the course of some years, is proposed to be actually hijacked by an addition which is all about making it harder for people to buy properties in terms of being able to sell them again and to invest in them.

I am very concerned because I know that even the brightline test that there is at the moment for two years’ ownership has caused quite a lot of administration costs for law firms and, therefore, for their clients. I know this because, as a lawyer, lawyers have advised me of this—that it has actually added quite a lot to the cost of doing business.

If we take a situation where it makes it even more difficult for those who own properties for up to five years to be able to sell their property when they need to, I put it to the House that when we consider these matters, that’s why it should be with the Finance and Expenditure Committee, because, quite clearly, relationships break down and people’s mortgage payments suddenly become less able to be made. There are people who are going to find that they won’t invest in property any more. They won’t be able to because they can’t take the risk that they won’t be able to sell a property earlier than five years without taking a substantial hit to what they would have expected.

We could say, “Well, surely this is just going to be around speculators.” Well, who are these speculators? Well, actually, they’re often mums and dads who have got some money together, they’re in the stage of their life where they want to add to their retirement income, and they even, in some cases, want to be able to provide a house for their children or a child to live in and that child’s family. These people are the people who will be badly affected.

People who are property developers already pay tax on their sales, on their profits. We already have a provision in the Income Tax Act that allows, in the sale of a property, for a tax on any gain in the value of that property if the purpose was, in fact, to buy the property for gain. Also, of course, that becomes available at the moment for anything like planning decisions that have changed the use of the land that can be used. That’s been there since about 1976. It’s already there.

The Inland Revenue Department has made some comments, I understand, and so has Treasury, around the efficacy of bringing in this five-year brightline test. It is absolutely important that the people of New Zealand, who have heard a lot of promises about what can be done with housing, get a chance to hear some experts and what they actually say about this. I think it is all very well to take some rhetoric from an election campaign and pop it into a bill and then ask for submissions on it, in the normal course of events. But what’s not all right is to take a bill like this, which is very much about, obviously, the annual rates for 2017-18—which is really a past event—and also around the excellent AIM procedure, which is all about an accounting income method for PAYE and tax generally to make it easier for small businesses to be able to operate and to get rid of some of the issues that they have around provisional or terminal tax, and hijack it with some form of attempt to skew the market of housing. It is simply not appropriate.

When we look at that particular skewing, I think it is very important that the New Zealand public not be skewed by a Government that is not interested in having this—

💬 Hon Paul Goldsmith: Skewered.

—skewered, yes; thank you—by a skewed attempt to actually use a very convenient method to bring about a major change in tax, particularly around the administration of it. Let’s be really frank here: nobody who’s going to be caught by this is going to be one of your big-time developer-speculators, or speculator-developers—or whatever you want to call them—that the Government wants to hit. Nobody will. The people who are going to be caught by this are very much mum and dad investors, and it’s those mum and dad investors who have a right, I believe, in this liberal democracy to be heard on what this Government is wanting to do to their assets.

I think it is absolutely incumbent—I know it is incumbent—on this Parliament to take a major piece of legislation, which changing the brightline test for five years is, and put it in front of the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I think any Government that is too frightened to do that—too frightened to hear from the people—is a Government that’s too frightened to be the Government. This is a liberal democracy, and people expect this Parliament to follow its normal course of procedures. When we hear about the need for transparency in Parliament and what we’re expected to hear, people would like to say, “Well, hang on, why is this suddenly going to be rushed through without the benefit of a select committee hearing?” Now, my colleague is not asking for six months; she’s asking for one month. What’s the problem with having four weeks of a select committee to look at this, to get some submissions quickly, and to ask the experts for advice? What’s so wrong with that?

I would contend to you there is nothing wrong with that, and that even to attach the proposed brightline test changes to a bill which has nothing to do with the brightline test is actually a cynical attempt to push through and ram through legislation without giving the public of New Zealand, the mum and dad investors, the lawyers, the accountants, the tax advisers, the real estate agents, and the people who have to work and live in the property market every day—why can’t they have a say? And the answer that we’re getting is nothing, really. “Let’s shut down the debate on it.”—that’s the answer we’re getting. Why shut down the debate?

This is a Government that has been in office for, what, five months, and we are already seeing a tremendously arrogant move towards actually treating New Zealanders, who, by the way, pay the taxes that—

💬 Hon Carmel Sepuloni: Oh, my goodness! Who’s talking about arrogance?

And the Hon Carmel Sepuloni laughs at that. She laughs at the fact that New Zealanders want to have a say. You know, that’s her right to do so, but do you know what? She can have that right, doesn’t she? She can say what she wants in Parliament. The people of New Zealand, those mum and dad investors, they’re being told now: “We don’t care. It doesn’t matter. We’re not going to let you have your say. We’re just going to do this to you, anyway.” And if that’s what this Government is like after five months, imagine what they’re going to be like coming up to their three-year limit—

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Transformational—transformational.

—because that’s what this tells us.

Business transformation, as the Hon Stuart Nash has said, is an excellent piece of work. That’s why this bill should not be sullied with a desperate political attempt to take mum and dad investors out of the housing market. Who’s going to replace them? Tell us that. It won’t be other mum and dad investors. It’s going to be the big players, or else the taxpayers are going to have to do it.

Five years is a long time to commit to when you’re 65 or 70 and you’re buying something for your kids. It’s a long time. I think it’s really important. Just one month—that’s all we ask.

I move, That the question be now put.

No. This is a debate.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. Look, I’d like to speak in support of this excellent motion from my colleague Amy Adams, which is very much focused on the simple question of allowing this Parliament to have more time to consider the proposed extension by this Government of the brightline test from two to five years. One of the advantages we have as a small developed nation is that because of our compact nature and the closeness of our democracy, we have the opportunity to actually engage effectively with the industries which we regulate through Parliament.

Over the years, New Zealand has developed one of the world’s most highly respected tax development processes, whereby Governments come up with proposals, the industry—the tax industry—engages in a detailed way, and the officials and the Government actually listen to what the experts have to say on the potential consequences of the tax changes. Now, in many big countries and huge economies around the rest of the world, it’s very difficult to achieve this, given the immense scale of those countries and the widespread nature, whereas New Zealand—it is one of the few real advantages we have, as a small, compact society, where we can actually engage sufficiently.

So that’s the normal process, and so when tax changes come up—and anybody who has tried to engage with tax legislation knows how complex it is and how easy it is to have unintended consequences as a result of tax changes. That is the process that’s developed, and what we find such an affront in this instance is a significant tax change is being made through the back door and slipped into a bill that was halfway through the parliamentary process already, has been through the select committee process. So this significant change will not—there will not be the opportunity for either Parliament or the general public, and, indeed, those tax experts and those who have full understanding and engagement of the industries that we’re dealing with here, to have their say. That, inevitably, will lead to a poorer outcome and significantly increases the risk of mistakes being made.

I’m not going to get into the policy details of the changes, but going from two to five years is not a simple mathematical change; it is a significant move. A lot can happen in five years, and that will have—

💬 Hon Stuart Nash: Three years.

Yes, in two years you have a constrained period of time where speculation can be shown. When you’re looking at five years, all sorts of events in life can intervene, and so there is a real prospect that much more than what was originally intended could be captured by this change. So it behoves us as a Parliament to take the time to consider those potential consequences, particularly given the intensity of the issue in terms of housing affordability, particularly in our big cities, in Auckland. We want to ensure that we have continued investment in the housing stock, and we need to be very careful that any changes that we make in the tax situation don’t make that problem worse.

That is why I firmly believe that if this Government was sensible and listened to the broader sector who are concerned about this, they will take that extra month and give the opportunity for the Finance and Expenditure Committee to get some advice from officials. Most of the advice that we have in the regulatory impact statements from officials at the moment say, “Basically, there wasn’t time to investigate and we don’t really know—there was only one option, and we don’t really have a clear understanding of the potential costs of this.”, because they haven’t had a chance to deal with it properly. That is not satisfactory, and there is no reason why we should be exposing ourselves as a country to this risk when, if we took the time, gave the opportunity for officials to brief the select committee, and gave the opportunity for the industries directly affected by this legislative change to have a say and point out to the Government what some of those consequences would be, I think we’d end up with a better result. So I support this motion.

I move, That the question be now put.

💬 Andrew Bayly: You can’t do that; it’s debatable.

There can be a closure motion. I will call Andrew Bayly, but I just want to tell members—remind them again—that this is a narrow debate on the instruction. Most of the content has been OK, although straying outside the boundaries of the instruction itself but relevant nonetheless, but I want to make certain that members know that if they do continue to do that, that will be the end of the debate.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is that a new ruling from you, because it would seem to me that it’s almost impossible to talk about the instruction without considering the reasons for the instruction. It would be ridiculous if all we could say is, over and over, “The motion instructs the committee …” and then repeat it. It is a debate about whether or not the instruction should be given, and therefore the merits of the intention behind the instruction can surely be debated. I have also had a look at the Standing Orders, obviously, in this case, and I would have thought that you are relying on 176(6), which says that the “purpose of the instruction is to increase the number of questions”, etc., etc., then there could be “no amendment or [no] debate”. But there is no other restriction in here about what can be spoken of in an instruction. It would be unreasonable for the House not to hear the reasons for an instruction.

Yes, within the boundaries of the instruction. So that’s not a new ruling, but this is not a full debate on Supplementary Order Paper 13.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): No, that’s right.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I’d hate to be known as a stray. I’d like to, first of all, acknowledge and support this motion put up by the Hon Amy Adams, because, in my view, this was a relatively straightforward bill that the Finance and Expenditure Committee took a great deal of time to work through. It’s a very complicated bill and it traverses a number of issues. That in itself was fine, and there was a lot of agreement within the committee. However, this Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 13 that was slapped on the table, in my view, is an absolutely callous and quite deliberate move. At the time that it was introduced by the Minister, I too stood and put a motion that this SOP should be debated by the select committee, because this deliberate attempt to wait until the select committee had completed its final deliberations, after some months of working through the elements of this bill, and then to complete its report, and within a matter of hours this SOP, which goes to seven pages—it’s not an insignificant SOP, this. It covers, I think, about 15 sections, and it covers seven pages. It’s a very unusual and substantial SOP. For me, as one of the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee, I find this whole motion, turned into such a substantial change without allowing the committee to consider that, is a travesty.

But, more than that, it raises the question of why a Government would even do this, when it says it’s been flagging policies but does not allow people to make an input and be consulted on it. I think that’s what vexes me the most.

I think, if you look at this bill—and it actually states in the SOP, on page 6, “The objective in extending the current bright-line test from 2 … to 5 years is [about ensuring] speculators pay tax on the gains”. Now, the thing that I think, in a contextual way—as soon as you go about making this change without allowing people to be informed of it and allowing people to be consulted on it and allowing input on it, we run the risk of seriously deviating from good legislation.

I’ll just highlight some of the likely parties who will want to show interest in this. The first thing about this SOP: it is likely to have an impact not only on existing housing, and ownership thereof, but it also is likely to have substantial implications for new houses. Secondly, it will have implications for social houses and, thirdly, emergency houses.

Now, in the context of what we’re talking about today, we heard a Government who is saying that they’re not about to undertake any new housing until after 1 July, until they’ve got their money. But if you take this bill on face value, I now know, without even thinking about it too much, that the likely parties who will want to be heard on this bill will include Government agencies, particularly those relating to social and housing outcomes; councils; property investors; renters, and I think the renters will have a lot of concern about this bill; lawyers; conveyancers; bankers and financiers, particularly those who already finance houses that people have acquired; and developers. I just think, you know, there’s a list of—what—10 parties who would be almost guaranteed to front up to this select committee, if it has the opportunity in a transparent way, and make very substantial submissions on this SOP. I just find the issue of why this Government would choose to callously not allow that to take place—because this is not a simple issue.

We’re not talking about one little SOP. This is a substantial, complicated piece of tax and has implications not only for tax, which is a purpose of the original bill, but also in terms of social and economic and housing policy. I think that just dictates, in fact justifies, or even stronger than that, that we must hear from those people, that the committee should have the opportunity to do that in a robust and open way, and that the press should be allowed to report on that when that process is completed. This is an issue that will cut to the core of many, many New Zealanders who own property or potentially want to own property or are in the process of owning property who may actually now, if this SOP is adopted, find themselves in significant financial difficulty. So on those grounds alone, I think it’s absolutely imperative that the committee has the opportunity to do that.

I think, if this was truly representative—and I believe I remember the words of the Hon Clare Curran, who said she wanted to make this party, her party, the Labour Party, the most open and transparent Government in New Zealand’s history. I may be slightly out with my quote, but words along those lines. How does that reconcile with that statement? It does not reconcile at all. This is an issue that should be before the select committee and the public and should be debated openly, because it is quite significant and it demands an approach where everyone can have their say.

💬 Kieran McAnulty: Mr Speaker?

I call—

💬 Hon Amy Adams: He’s had a call.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Sorry, I call Lawrence Yule.

OK, I am new to—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. In my experience, where members have sought to take a closure motion and that closure motion has not been accepted, they have been able to take further calls in the debate.

💬 Hon Members: No.

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: Well, I have seen that occur on several occasions.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): I’ll make the ruling. I’ll decide who is speaking next and I have called Lawrence Yule.

It gives me—

💬 Hon Iain Lees-Galloway: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. I draw your attention to Speakers’ ruling 77/4, which states that in procedural motions for an instruction to the committee of the whole House “[this] is a narrow debate.”, and “The only matter under debate is whether the committee should have the power to examine and adopt [the] Supplementary Order Paper;”—or in this case to refer it to a select committee—and “members cannot debate the content of the amendments; they are tabled for members to look at.” I would submit that this debate has been wide ranging in its nature and has ventured outside of the bounds of that Speakers’ ruling.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Yes, thank you very much. It’s my call. [Interruption] No. I don’t need any more help, thank you. I’ve already stated that three times now and we’re going to hear from Lawrence Yule.

I wasn’t intending to speak to this, but I feel I have to—I feel I have to.

💬 Hon Member: You don’t have to.

No, no. Because what we’re seeing today is a further example of a lack of transparency, a lack of openness, and a lack of accountability. I actually want to support the Hon Amy Adams for a very fair suggestion and direction. I haven’t heard what her direction was before, but I know what it is now and it seems very fair.

Actually, I’m a reasonable man, and I actually think the Hon Stuart Nash is a reasonable man. We represent a great area together. However, what’s being done here is completely unreasonable. There is a bill that has been through a whole process and is coming towards the end of it, and suddenly we’re clipping something on, like a bridge. We’re adding it on at the last minute without any public scrutiny, debate, or even consideration. And when this Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Jacinda Ardern, and the Hon Clare Curran talk about being an open Government, transparent, and clear with the people, here is an example where you could simply take one more month—that’s all that’s being suggested—to go to the Finance and Expenditure Committee to have this thrashed out.

I sit on the Finance and Expenditure Committee, and we’re currently going through another piece of legislation, the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. There are members on the opposition benches, who actually happen to be in Government—opposite to me, I should say—who have actually found the intricacies of what happens when you rush things really quickly. So in that piece of legislation there was a short submission time; it was then extended.

The point I’m raising is that if you rush things, you get unintended consequences and massive challenges. So I think this is actually a deliberate backdoor move to try and get something through that Labour has promised. If you actually look—one piece of information I have here is that in 2015 to 2016, 4,700 properties were transacted; only 6 percent of them appear to be taxable under the existing two-year brightline test—6 percent! So here we are, saying that, actually, let’s extend that out to five years.

The previous speaker behind me, the honourable Mr Paul Bayly—sorry, not honourable yet—Mr Paul Bayly—

💬 Andrew Bayly: Andrew.

Andrew—Andrew. “Mr Paul Bayly” has said to us that of all the people that would want to be influenced by this—real estate agents, lawyers, property developers, mum and dad investors, because this actually is significant, these changes. Even in the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 13 itself, in the explanatory note, it goes on to say, “These rules generally require a conveyancer to withhold tax [for] the proceeds of the sale of residential land by an offshore person” when it’s disposed of. Now, actually, that’s what it says in the explanatory note, but it actually covers every property transaction in New Zealand, which is another example of why this legislation hasn’t been thought through.

I’m new to this, but I believe in democracy. The Hon Amy Adams has simply asked for one month for the select committee. That is the direction. That’s what’s being asked for. I’m fair and reasonable, and I ask the other side of the House to be fair and reasonable as well. I guarantee if this goes to the select committee, this SOP will be changed to reflect some things that would actually make the legislation better. I think it’s an indictment on this House that we would try and pin something on the edge of a significant piece of well-thought-out legislation at the last minute and try and sneak it through. I strongly support the direction that the honourable member is seeking.