Edmonds BarbaraBARBARA EDMONDS (Labour—Mana): Fa'afetai tele lava. I stand to take a call on the Overseas Investment Bill (No 3). I've just returned from a family service for one of Porirua's finest with a family service being a prelude to a funeral for Tauiliili Tumuafa'aetemanu Tuvale Uluilelata or Joe as many of us in Porirua knew him. Tonight hundreds of people gathered at the EFKS Ketesse Manu Church or the Samoan Congregational Church on Spicer Hill to remember a good kind and humble man. Joe was a taxi driver in Porirua for Porirua Taxis for 40 years and he was a father figure to many but most importantly a husband to Sera a father to Eddie Philippa Magele and papa to many including his great-grandchild Lenny. Manuia lou malaga Joe. Now some may ask: how does this story of a humble taxi driver called Joe link to the Overseas Investment Act and bill? To me it's simple. Joe chose to bring up his family here in New Zealand the land of milk and honey a place where children can receive quality education experience the stable political system and one could get ahead with support or hard work. The purpose of the Overseas Investment Act recognises that we are in fact the land of milk and honey where we can grow cultivate and harvest our food where our land is productive and our fisheries forestry and natural and physical resources are a rare privilege that is worthy of protection. It seeks to protect the privilege we have here in New Zealand. So this bill as the Minister has said is the final stage in the Government's reform. Hence the title—it's (No 3)". This bill endeavours to balance the protection of our important assets while still being attractive to productive foreign investment. I would like to focus my contribution on two specific protections within this bill that the committee took a lot of time scrutinising and I'd like to take the time to thank officials from Treasury and the Overseas Investment Office for their time on the bill. So the first one I want to focus on is the information for tax purposes having come from a tax background. So clause 16 which adds new section 38A proposes a section to make regulations to impose requirements where an overseas person who makes or applies to make an investment in sensitive New Zealand assets must provide information to the Commissioner of Inland Revenue. Information that the commissioner considers necessary or relevant for the administration or enforcement of an inland revenue Act or two for the administration or enforcement of any matter connected with the lawfulness of the powers of the commissioner. What that information is by whom etc. etc. will be set out in regulations so that particular clause gives an Order in Council - making power. Now during the select committee process there were some concerns raised around privacy and whether this section removes the right to privacy for an individual or an entity who's an overseas investor. So we sought the advice from the Privacy Commissioner who confirmed officials' advice for us that clause 16 was actually consistent with the Privacy Act because it established a lawful purpose and that for the regulator was the Overseas Investment Office to collect tax information to support compliance matters and then share that information with IRD. If we want foreign investors to invest in New Zealand then surely we want them also to be compliant with the tax laws that apply. In the second part of my contribution I just wanted to focus briefly on the national interest test especially in relation to the call-in powers. So the urgent measures Act that came in last year added a national security and public order call-in power to overseas investments. The call-in power enables the Government to screen overseas investments in significant strategically important businesses and it also allows that the Government can impose conditions or in extreme cases actually block investments that pose a significant national security or that pose a public order risk. The call-in powers are actually due to come in once the temporary emergency notification regime which is in the urgent measures Act once that's repealed and once this bill has come into force and some submitters during the select committee stage raised their concerns about the scope of the call-in power. They advised that it was too broad and therefore it would inadvertently capture transactions which were never intended to be covered by the provisions. We heard from submitters that this would include routine purchases that are retail in nature. So the committee gave it great thought and decided that what we did was we would recommend amending the bill to limit the scope of the call-in power. This power would then only apply to transactions that actually pose a risk to New Zealand's national security with two specific exemptions. So the committee spent a lot of time with this. We'd like to thank the number of submitters that came to us and who provided really in-depth and considered submissions. As the Minister said New Zealand continues to be open for business. The purpose of this bill combined with all the other changes that the Government has put through is to improve New Zealand's economic settings and to achieve a balance between welcoming investment and the need to protect our most sensitive assets. That means it will set us up to be able to make the most of the coming decades of economic change and transformation and most importantly to ensure we protect our land of milk and honey. So I commend this bill to the House."