O'Connor Damien: Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Connor Damien: Taxation (Land Information and Offshore Persons Information) Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 08 September 2015. Volume:708;Page:6323. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman): It is indeed an honour—and a responsibility in fact—to speak on this piece of legislation. I have to say that it is with some concern that I see we are supporting the bill. I guess half a loaf is better than none.I was just up on the Kāpiti coast today talking about the Pike River tragedy and I did a little bit of homework and referred back to notes on the 1992 health and safety legislation. You see it was a proposal by the then National Government to step in and provide a new regime that would give better security in health and safety. I do draw some parallels with this piece of legislation because the Government is pretending once again to come in with a new regime of accountability and accounting for what is a growing level of overseas ownership of New Zealand homes and in fact farmland as well.We cannot lose sight of the fact that it was Labour—and we are very proud of itin fact—that stood up back in the 1930s for the right to a home for each and every New Zealander. And although a lot of time has passed and there will have been many many hours of debate—millions of hours I guess—in this Parliament we are now in the situation in 2015 where the Labour Party is having to battle for the right to protect New Zealanders’ access to homes. This Government would have sat on its hands and done absolutely nothing if it had not been for my colleague Mr Twyford being prepared to take it on the chin and expose the growing reality of investment levels into the Auckland housing market in particular and the flow-on effect right throughout the country.The Government hastily rushed around like chooks with their heads chopped off trying to work out a way of coming up with a piece of legislation that might look OK that might do something but that would not offend any of its mates who were happy to come and invest their millions and millions of dollars—hundreds of millions actually—into the New Zealand real estate market.The drivers of that investment are still here. That is there is no capital gains tax in this country—no capital gains tax. And until that is resolved there will be ongoing interest in investing in our country. That must be put on the table. Until we know accurately who owns the houses now who is trading the houses and who is interested again we will be in the dark and will leave the door open for opportunistic investors who have the option.In Europe if you want to deposit your money in the European Central Bank you will be paying that bank for the privilege of looking after and securing your money. You will be paying them a fee—not receiving interest but paying them a fee. If you go elsewhere around the world you will see zero or very very low rates of interest. So for anyone with some capital looking for a place to park it New Zealand is a very positive proposition. It has no capital gains tax. It has got interest rates that drive up house prices across the board so that people can afford to pay back their loans on the basis of a capital gain and it is this merry-go-round that is driving up the price of houses in Auckland at an unrealistic and ridiculous rate.What we have got here is a situation that will not in any way be subdued by this token piece of legislation but what does the Opposition have as an alternative? Well we do not have one at the moment. We have put up some very good ideas for the Government that have been rejected. We have put up good ideas and will do so in the Committee stage of this piece of legislation no doubt. But for the moment the best that we can do is to support this piece of legislation but point out the flaws in it and hope that the Government is prepared to make the proper amendments in the Committee stage to give it some real teeth because at the moment it does not have the proper teeth.The confusion over things like offshore or active overseas investors is a bit beyond belief. These things should be very clear. We welcome migrants. In fact we are now welcoming refugees and I welcome that. More refugees today—we welcome these people into the country. So people are coming in who want to reside in and commit to New Zealand and we want to provide them with an opportunity to buy a house at an affordable rate. But if you want to park your backside in Zurich or in Berlin or in London or in Chicago or in Shanghai then we say that we do not really want you. We do not want you inflating our market to the point where New Zealanders can neither buy nor afford to rent homes. That social dislocation and the uncertainty caused by that have huge flow-on effects.Although the members of the National Party will jump up and down about the costs of social welfare the costs of special education and what they are having to do through so-called charter schools and the rest—all of these things can be improved and can be assisted by providing people with a home with access to a house that they can then turn into a home. When we have got legislation that does not even define accurately a main home that does not even clarify exactly whether a person is offshore or onshore or whether they are a Kiwi or not I say to you that the register the Government is going to form here will not be worth the paper that it is written on.We need decent legislation in this area. There is no doubt about that. We need homes now as much as we did in the 1930s. I say that everyone in New Zealand should read carefully the minority report of the Labour Opposition on this bill pointing out that we do support it at this stage but pointing to the flaws in it.We believe that all parties anyone involved in a residential property transaction—because after all you have got to pay the lawyer; you have got to go and check your land information memorandum with the local council; you have got to go through all this rigmarole to buy a house—should have to meet the same requirements. If there is an overseas tax number that should provide information as part of the transaction as well. That is so that people will be identified by who they are and where they live. They do not necessarily have to state what they have bought the property for. That may become evident because if they live in Zurich as their main home it is unlikely they will also be buying a property here in New Zealand for their main home. That would then deem the person to be an investor and I guess would add weight to the view that Labour has that the doors are too open.Access into the New Zealand property market has been encouraged by the National Government because it does not care where money comes from; it just wants to see money. Under the current structure that it has for this economy the money flows to the people at the top and makes it harder for those people at the bottom. That kind of Tory philosophy is part and parcel of every piece of legislation that this Government passes in this House. Let us not forget that. This piece of legislation does nothing to stop that flow or the division that is occurring in this country between those people who have the capital—those who can invest in rental properties assisted by overseas investors—who then come in and pay a bit more and then we give them a bit of profit and allow them to go. And so the merry-go-round continues.But what about the young Kiwi family? What about these refugee families that John Key is going to let into the country? What chance will they have of buying a house and turning it into a home if the Government continues to have an open-door policy for foreign investors? This piece of legislation is tokenism. It is tokenism to try to get New Zealanders who are struggling to buy a home to believe that the Government really does care.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Well why don’t you vote against it? Have some courage and vote against it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: That member down there is calling for more land in Nelson—a ridiculous statement he made on the front page of the paper down there. He made a fool of himself. The Government is making statement after statement that is wrong and that is misleading in this whole area of homeownership and security for New Zealanders. This piece of legislation will be exposed for what it is but the Opposition must support it as one small step in the direction in which we need to go—that is accurately identifying who is buying houses what they are buying houses for and what that is doing to prevent New Zealanders having their own homes.