SpeechHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker and congratulations on your appointment as Assistant Speaker.I'm pleased to take a call for the Green Party on the Overseas Investment (Forestry) Amendment. Bill. Aotearoa New Zealand has 1.74 million hectares of plantation forestry and about 1.2 million hectares of this is large-scale corporate forestry and only around 500000 hectares is the smaller planted forest and woodlot. I'm really grateful for the 25 submitters and the diversity of opinions that they presented to the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the bill.The Greens support this bill because of the way it winds back the changes that were made in 2018 inspired by New Zealand First to facilitate overseas investment in forestry through the special forestry test also called the primrose path" for forestry. It was a much weaker test—in fact it was described as a tick-box test—where overseas companies wanting to buy land including farmland for forestry didn't have to demonstrate benefits to New Zealand. It was very permissive. Certainly as Minister Parker noted the changes made in 2018 brought forestry cutting rights under the Overseas Investment Act regime but you still had this very permissive test.So the bill means that overseas companies or individuals wanting to buy land for production forestry—not permanent forestry for carbon farming—would have to be assessed under the general benefit to New Zealand test and that means that they've got to establish to the satisfaction of Ministers or their delegate the Overseas Investment Office that the purchase would result in economic benefits for New Zealand benefits to the national environment continue or improve public access or improve the protection of historic heritage for example. But with this bill if an overseas company is wanting to buy existing production forest then the permissive test the special forestry test continues to apply.The bill does strengthen the regime but the Green Party flags that we have tabled a Supplementary Order Paper for the committee stage which will seek to apply the farm land test to forestry so that if an overseas company or individual is wanting to buy farmland for forestry it would be on an even playing field if it was buying that land for farming. Essentially that means that the application would be assessed under the same seven criteria as I noted previously but that greater weight is given to economic benefits to New Zealand and participation and oversight by New Zealanders in the company buying the land.It's not often that I refer to the Federated Farmers' submissions but Federated Farmers and particularly their president in the Wairoa area Toby Williams really highlighted the impact on farming communities of the major change in land use particularly in areas like the East Cape and around Wairoa where you've got the hollowing out of the community when land goes from sheep and beef farming to forestry. The families go the school closes the infrastructure servicing the remaining farms becomes more expensive and so that whole hollowing-out has quite significant social impacts.But more than that it's Green Party policy that overseas investment has to deliver really substantial benefits to New Zealand Aotearoa. Our preference is that land ownership is reserved for New Zealand citizens and New Zealand residents so hence our interest as some submitters also called for for the farm land test and not just the general benefit to New Zealand test actually applying for land bought for forestry.One of the other issues that came up during submissions—and I was really pleased that in the Finance and Expenditure Committee report this was highlighted—was that at the moment under the law an overseas company can buy up to a thousand hectares of production forestland with forestry cutting rights to that without having to get any permission. And the Overseas Investment Office does not monitor this. It doesn't require the overseas company to notify it and so there's no effective monitoring of the cumulative impacts of a succession of up to a thousand hectares of cutting rights in a calendar year being purchased by an overseas company. So I really hope that the Treasury and the Overseas Investment Office look at that and work out a mechanism for better monitoring.I guess the other area where we think that it's justified applying the stronger farm land test is just the major impacts that have occurred with forestry as a land use on the East Coast. One only has to remember Tolaga Bay and all of that slash coming down the rivers.Also the Minister highlighted that the sensitivity of the farmland is part of the assessment of any application by an overseas company but in our view there's far too much reliance on production values and the sensitivity is often determined by the land-use classification—whether it's class 7 or 8 land and is marginal for farming then it may be more easy for an overseas company to buy it for forestry. But that land-use classification and productivity for farming does not in our view recognise that even if land has a low carrying capacity for stock or it's unsuitable for horticulture or viticulture and it might generate little income for the current owner it can have significant value in terms of landscape in terms of biodiversity—I can only think of a lot of the regenerating mānuka. And so we need to move—and this bill doesn't do that—away from just highlighting that land is sensitive in terms of its farming use just because it has high production values. You need to look at those other biodiversity values as well.So we support the bill because it does strengthen and fill that gap in the existing law—which has a very weak permissive special forestry test—but we want it to go further by applying on a level playing field the farm land test to land bought for forestry as well as to land being sought to be purchased by an overseas company for farming. Kia ora."