Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. Well I come down to take a call on the second reading of what is an incredibly poorly designed badly conceived poorly implementable piece of legislation that is a response to the issue of housing affordability yet it comes from a place of total misunderstanding and misrepresentation of the realities of the housing issue. This whole approach came from some dog-whistle politics that said it was all because of foreign buyers. That was the reason New Zealanders couldn't buy houses! Foreign buyers were the problem and if we just stopped that everything would be fine!Well here's the problem that the Government has: the data just doesn't bear that out. Under the National Government we put in place data collection to understand exactly how many foreign investors were buying residential properties and do you know what that data told us? Well I can tell you that for many consecutive quarters now it's shown us around 3 percent foreign buyers in any given quarter.Hon Members: How much?Hon AMY ADAMS: Three percent. But wait; if you take off the number of foreign sellers the net number—the net increase in foreign ownership—is sitting at around 1 percent. One percent and yet this is the big panacea from this bumper sticker slogan Don't worry about the data. We don't read evidence we don't like. Why would you bother with evidence? Let's just stick to the nonsense we've been pedalling for a few years despite what the data tells us."If this Government was serious about housing affordability here's what they'd do: they would grow the supply of housing and they would be relentless in ensuring that they did everything they needed to do to make it easier to build houses to create developments to hire workforce and to create a market where people wanted to buy and invest in houses. And what are they doing? They are doing everything they can to turn off the landlord market through changing negative gearing through bringing in capital gains taxes through changing the costing on landlords so that frankly landlords are going out of the market in a roar. They're turning off the tap on foreign investors. Foreign investors are saying to me just about every day—certainly every week—"Why would we invest in New Zealand? New Zealand has the 'Closed for Business' sign up. We're not interested in investing in a country where the Government is going to be this unpredictable uncertain and punitive based on so little good information. We're not interested in funding developers." That is why we're seeing—and my colleague Judith Collins knows this very well—developers struggling to get developments up.So what's happening now? You've got Phil Twyford riding in on his white—well I would say horse but it's probably a donkey. He's coming in saying "Well all of those developments that now can't proceed because the developers can no longer get finance because of the actions of this Government—we'll rebadge a few of them KiwiBuild." and somehow that's adding to housing supply! We've got news for Mr Twyford and Mr Parker: if you're not growing housing supply you will never fix the problem of housing affordability. This bill is quibbling around the edges of demand. If you're mucking around with 1 percent of the residential housing market you're not seriously making a difference. This bill does exactly that. The answer lies in growing supply.If you look at the work that happened under our Government led by my colleague Dr Nick Smith and others here's what we did: we put in place the Auckland Unitary Plan to make sure that land could be intensified; we put in place special housing areas across the country to bring land to market quickly; we put in place the Housing Infrastructure Fund so that houses could get built; we supported the construction sector by enabling people to bring in the workforce that they needed; and we absolutely made sure that the international development market was available and wanted to come to New Zealand. That is why when the previous Government left office when the National Government left office we had a forecast of 100000 houses to be built not in 10 years Mr Twyford; in three. In three years New Zealand was looking at another 100000 houses being built by the private sector because we supported them.This legislation will slow down development—make absolutely no mistake about it; the signs are already there. Just today I've had two more developers and a foreign investor come to me saying they are now not proceeding with major developments that they had planned because of this legislation. This legislation will make the problem worse. We heard that at the Finance and Expenditure Committee time and time again—people coming before the committee who are in the business. On this side of the House we listen to those who invest their money and make things happen. We don't think we know better than Treasury the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment and everyone else who talks to the Government. The developers came in and they said "This will slow down development." Now my question for the Minister is: how does a bill that slows housing supply possibly help with home affordability? It absolutely does not.Then look at what's in the bill itself. This is the really interesting thing because here's what the bill despite all the big talk about how it is going to crack down on foreign ownership and apparently stop the insidious nature of this 1 percent or so of good people who come to New Zealand wanting to be part of and grow our economy actually does: well first of all we had a last minute intervention from the Minister to include an Supplementary Order Paper that would bring forestry into the overseas investment process. "Oh" we thought "well forestry's coming in." But look a bit deeper and no sooner does forestry come in than the Minister effectively carves it straight out. So here's what players in the primary sector need to know: forestry land which is already 72 percent foreign owned—apparently that's not enough of foreign ownership and this Government is doing all they can to make sure that the touch is as light as humanly possible.Forestry land under a forestry right with a profit-à-prendre will only come under the Act now if it's more than a thousand hectares being bought. But what's the equivalent for non-forestry viticulture land for example? Well the threshold for viticulture land in the same circumstances is five hectares. Five hectares is the threshold. For forestry land even if you're over a thousand hectares all you have to do is go through a pre-approval checklist a self-certified checklist to say "Don't worry; we'll plant some trees." and you're OK. You buy an investment into viticulture land over five hectares and it's the full bells and whistles Overseas Investment Act process. As my colleague Stuart Smith has mentioned already it will actually likely drive people into owning more viticulture land because why would you go through a profit-à-prendre where you can do that. It makes no sense it is illogical and it doesn't achieve any of the principals it says it seeks to achieve. That's just the beginning of the carve-outs.If you look into this legislation it's like Swiss cheese. David Parker has achieved the almost unimaginable in that he has a bill that is a cold handbrake on development while still having so many holes in it. Anybody that is in favour will apparently be able to get their developments consented. We have this new beast in the legislation now called "standing consents". Standing consent effectively means you go to the Minister you convince them that you're someone that they would want to deal with and you get an open ticket to go and buy up as you will for the period of that consent. That doesn't sound like good process and a Government that wants to stick true to its word to me.You've got a process now of exemption certificates where certificates will be granted to developers if the Government chooses to allow some sales off the plans. For those apartments and those residential properties they can be foreign-owned and they can be foreign-occupied. So for all the big talk again if you get an exemption certificate from this Government—under what sort of process we do not know and we have to wonder—you're OK. There's even more: the Government can now carve out by regulation anything it decides to let through. So next time there's a tough negotiation between Winston Peters and the Labour Party or Shane Jones and one of his pet projects you know it's going to get an exemption certificate or a regulatory carve-out. That is not good process. That is not the sort of principles-based legislation that this Parliament should be looking at.Then finally we have this very questionable process of the exemption that the Minister tried to put in place for a single development in Northland—75 percent owned by a Queenstown developer and an American developer. Isn't it interesting that David Parker took a pot shot at Hamish Walker for standing up for his community when that very Minister told us today in question time that he tried to bring an exemption himself through Cabinet against Treasury advice for a Queenstown developer for high-end properties to be sold into the American market? There is no good reason why that would be granted—none at all. There are going to continue to be some very serious questions asked about how it is that this Minister who stands here and tells us that he is opposed to rich Americans buying our land tried to do exactly that against all advice: against Treasury advice against Office of the Clerk advice and certainly against the strong concerns of others on this side of the House. This is a matter that there is going to be a lot more said about over the coming weeks."