Wood MichaelMICHAEL WOOD (Labour—Mt Roskill): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm very pleased to take a call on Part 1 of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill.Probably like many members of this House I'm a great fan of the high comedy of Monty Python's. One of my favourite films is Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It's in that vein that I want to thank a previous speaker the Hon Nick Smith for his very worthy impression of the Black Knight. Members of the House might recall the Black Knight who as his arms and legs are being cut off simply brushes it off. So as we know in this House under the tenure of that Minister as Minister of Housing New Zealand reached the highest level of homelessness in the OECD. What did the Black Knight say? 'Tis but a scratch." We know that under his watch we reached the lowest level of homeownership in New Zealand since the 1950s. What did he say? "It's only a flesh wound." We know that under his watch as Minister of Housing the average price of a house for Kiwis in Auckland reached $1 million. The Black Knight—Nick Smith—says "It's all OK. Come back and have a fight about it."We remember that Minister saying in a piece in the New Zealand Herald that he was going to fix the crisis by finding Crown land to build houses on. We later found out that much of that Crown land was actually a cemetery. It was actually a cemetery. The ultimate Black Knight—the former Minister of housing the Hon Dr Nick Smith—is fighting the battles of the past pretending still in 2018 that there is not a housing crisis to solve in this country. That was followed on by a much much better speech from the Hon Judith Collins. For most of her comments she was still fighting the battles of the past and was not particularly focused on the bill but it was noticeable the intense support she was getting from the benches behind her—support that's been lacking when other front-benchers from the National Party have been speaking today I might note.This bill is an important bill. It is an important bill because decent affordable housing is important to New Zealanders. That is what this bill is about. It is about the fundamental value that we have in this country—and certainly we have in this coalition Government—that every single person in our country should have the right to decent safe warm affordable housing and that Kiwis who work hard Kiwis who save a bit of money Kiwis who have a dream to own their own home should be able to do so in 2018. Yet as we know that dream has been slipping away from so many people.We know that that is a complex issue. It can only be dealt with—and I acknowledge the Hon Judith Collins for making this point—by increasing supply. Of course that did not happen on the previous Government's watch. We have a 40000-home shortfall in Auckland City alone so it is laughable to hear the claim that that Government adequately dealt with the supply problem. But as anyone who knows anything at all about economics knows price is a function of both supply and demand so it is very important in this respect when we have a housing crisis when we have homes approaching $1 million in many suburbs like my community—working-class Mount Roskill. Young kids in my community whether they're Kiwi Indians Kiwi Chinese Kiwi Filipinos or Kiwi Pacific kids are facing $1 million to buy a basic house in my community in my constituency of Mt Roskill and that locks them out. We believe in this coalition Government that that New Zealand housing market should be shaped by the ability of New Zealanders to buy their own homes and should not have mountains of capital flowing into the country artificially pumping up the price of those homes. It doesn't matter where it comes from from around the globe. If you have an imbalance of demand with mountains of capital coming in it is going to contribute to increased prices particularly when supply is so tight.If we go back to those figures the figure across all of Auckland that we received earlier this year is that approximately 7 percent—on the narrowest-possible definition of home sales—goes to overseas buyers. That's the narrowest-possible definition—it excludes purchases that may have come through a company it excludes purchases that may have come through a trust and it excludes purchases where there may have been a couple perhaps and there was a mixed visa - holder situation. But let's say it's only 7 percent. The point about markets is that when supply is constrained if you have an additional marginal 7 percent coming in on top of that it does have an impact on price. It's not the only impact. It's not the only thing we need to do to make housing more affordable—Andrew Bayly: Can you point me to the financial analysis of that?MICHAEL WOOD: —but it does make a difference. And I challenge Mr Bayly to address that point if he thinks I'm wrong on that. If he thinks I'm wrong on that I challenge him to address that argument in his comments when he gets up and speaks.I want to acknowledge the members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who did work on this bill. It was a tricky bill and it was a complex bill and there are real political differences that were involved but actually the members of the committee across the Chamber—and can I acknowledge on the Opposition benches in the Chamber at the moment Andrew Bayly the Rt Hon David Carter and Lawrence Yule who were part of the consideration of this bill at select committee despite the differences. The Hon Amy Adams I think came in later on in the consideration of the bill. Those members were constructive and engaging in terms of the select committee in its consideration of the bill. I do believe that we came out of that select committee process with a better bill than when we went in.So just speaking specifically to Part 1 Part 1 is a relatively narrow part but in Part 1 we actually deal with I guess the crux of the bill which is bringing residential housing into the definition of sensitive land. One really important thing to remember in this debate is that actually we have an existing Overseas Investment Office process around sensitive land. Many of the rules and many of the definitions that have in fact already been brought up in debate are rules and definitions that are already in the principal Act. What we are simply doing in this bill is bringing residential property within the ambit. There's a very good reason for that and this is a question and I guess a challenge for speakers who might follow on. If we consider farmland to be sensitive and if we consider important environmental areas to be sensitive then why would we not consider the thing that is possibly the most precious and important thing for the health and well-being of many of our fellow New Zealanders—that is decent housing—to also be a sensitive investment that we would screen in the same way that we screen those other sensitive categories of land? That is the fundamental contention of this bill—that that land is sensitive land. We should be careful about how we manage it and it is entirely appropriate to make sure that it is managed and sold for the benefit of people who live in New Zealand.There's one very specific change that the select committee made to Part 1—and this is Part 1 clause 4(1) where through the course of considerations it was very very important in respect of the definition of land that is captured that we were quite specific about that. We needed to be really tight about that; we didn't want there to be too much contention about that when it came to the screening regime. So through the select committee process we have tightened that definition to be land that is defined as residential land or lifestyle land on the district valuation rolls. That's a fairly objective categorisation of the land that will be captured under this bill and I think that was quite an important little improvement that was made to the bill through the select committee process.I want to finish my comments by just returning to the core purpose of this bill. The core purpose of this bill is to ensure that we have a New Zealand housing market that meets the needs of New Zealanders and that is largely shaped by the ability of New Zealanders to buy housing not a New Zealand housing market that is shaped by mountains of offshore capital that pumps up prices beyond the ability of Kiwis whatever their community whatever their background whatever their ethnicity—Hon Amy Adams: It's simply not borne out by the data and the member knows it.MICHAEL WOOD: —to achieve that Kiwi Dream of owning their own home. The member opposite the member from Selwyn says it's not supported by the data—the data which that Government had to be brought dragging and screaming to actually produce because for years and years in amongst resisting any admission that there was a housing crisis they refused to collect data. Their head was buried so far in the sand that they actually refused to collect the data until a couple of years ago when the intense political pressure built up and as I outlined earlier on we have the data this year which shows that at the very narrowest-possible definition in Auckland City which has suffered most intensely from the housing crisis 7 percent of purchases—at the most narrow definition—come from offshore. That at the marginal end does have an impact on house prices. That will have an impact on prices in any kind of market and I challenge any member opposite to explain to me how that would not possibly be the case.This is a good bill. It is one piece of the jigsaw puzzle in terms of resolving this housing crisis. We're resolving this housing crisis on the supply side by stopping the sell-off of State homes by investing in 100000 affordable KiwiBuild starter homes over the next 10 years. We're resolving the housing crisis by dealing with demand and supply by making houses about homes and not about an investment vehicle for the wealthy to get even wealthier. This bill is a part of that and I'm very proud of it."