Wong Pansy: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Wong Pansy: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21558] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 Madam Chair I hope that you will be very generous about accepting many calls because Part 2 is basically the bulk of this legislation. 
First of all I would like to raise some questions for the Minister in the chair Michael Cullen to answer because I really really want to get some assurances from him. As I pointed out in my second reading speech a lot of the resentment and negative public perception towards overseas investors particularly those purchasing buildings or investing in business is a result of some high-profile cases. There was some disproportionately bad publicity about some company that was supposed to move in and start mining or carry out some other operation and after many years nothing came of it. Officials came before the Finance and Expenditure Committee and said their hands were tied because the previous enforcement monitoring regime did not provide enough tools for them to be able to carry out their task. 
Part 2 Subpart 4 “Monitoring” talks about the role of the regulator. The select committee as a whole was quite concerned about the wording and the use of “may” as in clause 39 “Regulator may require consent holder to provide information for monitoring purposes” and clause 40 “Regulator may require any person to provide information for statistical or monitoring purposes”. I would like the Minister to take a call and explain to us whether it is really true in the past that the regulator found it difficult to obtain information or to actually monitor or to just pick up the phone to see why some of those investors’ plans had lapsed or whether the conditions had changed and what the reasons were. I think that created a lot of negative perceptions for the public which has not been helpful. 
So if the Minister can assure us that the word “may” in the legislation will be interpreted as an encouragement now that the regulator will be placed under Land Information New Zealand and that he or she will carry out the monitoring and enforcements that will relieve a lot of the negative perception towards overseas investors. In some cases the failure to fulfil the original conditions could be beyond the investors’ capabilities or circumstances could have changed. 
The select committee also requested that there be action on additional information and activities such as starting the collation of statistical information and the release of that for the public. Sometimes it is a fact that when information is not available people tend to have suspicions about what is happening. If information is available for public inspection that would be helpful for the public perception towards overseas investors. 
Of course the other thing I noticed was that 10 pages have been struck out of the bill— 
Brian Connell 
: The “Mugabe clause”! 
PANSY WONG 
: My colleague the very very learned hard-working and robust representative for Ashburton says it is the “Mugabe clause”. 
David Parker 
: I raise a point of order Madam Chairperson. Some people here have had relatives murdered by the Mugabe regime. That is true. I take offence at having a clause that is being associated with that despotic regime and would ask that you bring the member to order. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley) 
: Would the member withdraw reference to that please? 
PANSY WONG 
: I withdraw. Suddenly this bill will become a lot skinnier. Ten pages of it will be struck out. They relate to clause 21 which is entirely the effort of the member for Otago David Parker who is soon to be replaced by National’s Jacqui Dean. He put in 10 pages of legislation to create marginal strips without compensation. I could not believe it. The member explained this to us in the select committee. He said that it did not matter and would not affect the value of the property just because a marginal strip had been created. 
That is very very strange and I think the member might like to take a few calls. He seemed to be quite anxious to explain this himself and I invite him to do so. This is the Committee stage and all members are invited to explain and defend their position. So I invite the member to do that.