Hon Christopher Finlayson

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON (National) : Minister Clayton Cosgrove is certainly not Theodore Roosevelt, who used to say that he would walk softly and carry a big stick. This Minister yells and screams, but in the end carries a twig, because Supplementary Order Paper 243 indicates there will be many changes to this bill that will water it down and change it. I must say that many of the changes proposed make quite a lot of sense.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Will you support the bill?

CHRISTOPHER FINLAYSON: I will come to that. I say to the Minister he should put some Sellotape over his mouth and sit there quietly and listen, because he may learn something.

The first point I want to make is that I thought the Justice and Electoral Committee worked very well on this bill. I had some real concerns because of the number of submissions that we had received. As the Minister said, we received about 1,300. I thought it would be pretty chaotic to try to deal with all those submissions. But, generally, I thought the select committee worked very well indeed. We met in Auckland and in Wellington. We dealt with submitters by videoconference and also by telephone. By and large the submissions were very good. But I do say, and perhaps it is applicable not only to this bill but also to some other bills, that standard form submissions were generally most unhelpful. I did not derive much assistance at all from a standard form, 15-page submission that may have been generated in some head office. When I asked certain submitters particular questions on particular aspects of the submission I was disappointed to find on occasion they had not even read their own submission. My advice to submitters is that if they make submissions—and we on select committees, as we all know, derive a great deal of benefit from the select committee process—it is helpful to make the submissions reasonably short and focused on particular points. Standard form submissions were unhelpful.

The chair of the select committee and the committee clerk entered into an arrangement whereby submitters were grouped together, and I thought that that procedure worked very well indeed. Generally there was good discussion and good debate as we teased through the various issues. At the end of the day, my concerns about the way in which the select committee would work given the number of submissions were not borne out. I thought it went pretty well indeed. Although it is late in election year and perhaps Lynne Pillay would faint if she heard praise from me, I would say I thought the chair did a reasonably good job, certainly in comparison with her performance over the Electoral Finance Bill, which, as the president of the Electoral Commission says, has a chilling effect this year on the electoral system.

Let me say something about the Real Estate Agents Bill. As the Minister said, it creates an independent real estate agent’s authority. This body will be responsible for overseeing licensing, complaints, discipline, the general enforcement processes, and, importantly, providing information to consumers. The authority will have very wide investigative powers and widened powers to order penalties, and the Minister has mentioned some of those, and various other remedies. The bill creates an independent disciplinary tribunal to deal with serious cases referred to it by the authority, and in that respect the bill mirrors to a large extent the kind of procedures introduced to the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act. The authority will be able to cancel licences and to award compensation. The authority will represent complainants before the tribunal, and, importantly, establish a public register of real estate agents and sales people recording any breaches of standards, because that, of course, is important.

The bill removes certain regulatory functions from the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand, and removes the requirement for compulsory membership. It makes people convicted of dishonesty offences ineligible for licences. It increases entry requirements, and requires licensees to undergo certain professional development training. That is the kernel of the bill, and the National Party certainly is in favour of improvements to the Real Estate Act, but it continues to have some very grave concerns about this legislation. I will go through those now.

The first concerns the transitional period, which, as the Minister said, is set out in clause 2. Certain sections come into force on the day after the date on which the bill receives the Royal assent. The rest of the Act comes into force on a date that is 1 year after the date it receives the Royal assent. The Minister indicated this morning that Supplementary Order Paper 243, which he will introduce, will extend that period from 12 to 14 months. I still think that is too short. The Lawyers and Conveyancers Act was passed in 2006, and it had a 2-year transitional provision. It is only now coming into force, following the intensive work undertaken by the New Zealand Law Society. When dealing with new codes of conduct for barristers and solicitors and new structural arrangements that that legislation introduces, and so on, it is no easy task. There will be major structural changes to the way in which the real estate industry is to be regulated on the day after this Act comes into force. We continue to maintain our concern about the relatively short transitional period, especially compared with the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act.

The second concern we have relates to the bureaucracy, especially the complaints assessment committees, the costs of which we are concerned will be passed on to the consumer. We have no problem in principle with the idea of complaints assessment committees, but there are a great number of complaints that do not even get to the threshold because they are so minor. Our concern is that the cost of setting up what could be three or four complaints assessment committees will be excessive.

The third concern we have, which came through many of the submissions before the select committee, is that property management is not included, although, in fairness to the Minister, it was acknowledged that there is an agreement to review and to address issues of property management at a later date. It could well be that will proceed fairly quickly, although I do not think the Minister addressed the issue in his second reading speech, so that needs to be addressed.

The fourth point is that the Minister made a couple of sensible comments about auctions, and certain provisions in Supplementary Order Paper 243. I must confess that in my quick reading of it I had not picked it up, but certain provisions of the Supplementary Order Paper will delete references to auction requirements. I think we are talking about clauses 136 to 141. It removes provisions relating to auction requirements. I think it is high time that the Auctioneers Act 1928 was reformed, so perhaps I will look at that more closely in the Committee stage.

Fifthly, the experience required for a licence has been increased to 3 years in the previous 10 years, and we are not so sure that that is the right way to go. We think it should be 3 years in the previous 5 years, but we can look at that at the Committee stage.

There are still problems with this bill. I have problems with the ability of lawyers to be engaged in real estate work. I think lawyers should be lawyers and real estate agents should be real estate agents. Lawyers get themselves into trouble when they start mixing professions in this way, but that is not a party view—it is a personal view—and that will probably go through anyway. It is contained also in the Lawyers and Conveyancers Act, but it is not good. So some concerns with this bill remain, particularly in regard to the relatively short transitional period. Although the bill is greatly improved on the bill as introduced to the House, and although the select committee certainly did a great deal of work on it, the bill remains inadequate, so National will continue its opposition to it.

• Debate interrupted.