Williamson Maurice: Address in Reply 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: Address in Reply 
[Sitting date: 07 February 2012. Volume:677;Page:106. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (Minister for Land Information) 
: 
 I want to spend my time in this Address in Reply debate addressing just the one issue and that is to do with the sale of land to foreigners. I want to start by just putting a bit of my personal credentials on the table. I am a sixth-generation New Zealander. The Williamson family came here in the mid-1800s from Scotland and settled and have been farmers along the way. So I do not think that anyone could say I am some great desirer of new foreigners taking over because I have a family history of being from this country. My 89-year-old mother lives peacefully in Matamata where I was brought up in a dairy-farming town and I must say that I think probably 97 percent of the people there will disagree with the decision that I have taken recently. I think I said to her that I have now got 97 percent of New Zealanders who hate me and she said: “Is that down from 98 beforehand?” so who knows? 
What I want to make clear in this debate is that Ministers have some discretion when there are issues of doubt but it is very clear from the Act and it was very clear from the advice that was given to Ministers from Crown Law that no discretion exists if the applicant meets every one of the criteria that are in the current Overseas Investment Act 2005 passed by the Labour Government and the corresponding regulations that go with it. Ministers cannot just say: “Well I don’t care what the law says; I’m just going to exercise discretion and say no.” I have to tell members that there is such a thing as a judicial review and you would simply lose the case. If the Minister was taken to judicial review he or she would lose the case if they were not able to say: “Mr Judge I declined this because…”. Now in the case of the Natural Dairy bid to buy these Crafar farms I am happy to say that I put my signature to the decline. It failed to meet a number of the criteria under the Act. Some members of this House have claimed: “Oh yeah Williamson just rubber-stamps them.” I did not rubber-stamp that application. I declined it because it did not meet the requirements. 
In the case of Kim Dotcom wanting to buy the Coatesville mansion again it got a decline. It got a decline that was able to be substantiated based on character and as members will have seen from what has been playing out in the media in recent days there may have been quite a good decision taken. But in the case of Shanghai Pengxin looking to buy these farms it met every one of the criteria that are laid down in the Act passed by the Labour Government and it met every one of the criteria laid out in the regulations—and remember that National even added two more criteria to try to strengthen the Act and the regulations so that we did have a little bit more say and all of those were met as well. So my frustration first today is with any one of the members of this House or of the public who say: “Oh you just should have said no.” When David Shearer and David Parker from the Labour Party said that they would have said no my very first question to them is on what grounds they would have said no. Remember you do not just have the final say in this; there are courts and Governments have been found by the courts to have acted inappropriately on a number of things and they have overturned Ministers’ decisions. Take Chris Carter and the Whitianga waterways— 
Hon Kate Wilkinson 
: Whangamata.  
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: —or the Whangamata whatever it is. The Minister got overturned by the courts because he did not follow the proper procedure.  
The next thing that I find really difficult—because I do know there are some absolutely genuine people who do not want foreigners buying land in this country. I do understand that. I do not think there are many but I actually fully respect those individuals who truly are consistent all along the way and say: “I do not want foreign ownership of our land.” But I think they are few and far between. The first one I do not understand is from those who were born in another country and spent the vast bulk of their life in another country. Russel Norman for example was born in Brisbane grew up in Australia and was an Australian all his life until he came here to write his PhD on the Alliance yet he is getting up in this House and saying he does not want foreigners to buy land and he is going on  
Breakfast 
 saying he does not want foreigners to buy land. I first of all want to question his definition of what a foreigner is because if he says it is as long as people come here to live what about those ones like Shania Twain who came here bought a huge high-country estate and had the Prime Minister Helen Clark walking with her across it for the photo opportunity? New Zealanders celebrated that. We celebrated Shania Twain’s purchase of this beautiful big South Island high-country estate saying: “Wasn’t it wonderful?”. I never heard a mutter not a murmur not a whisper from anybody about how dreadful that was—not one and I have checked all of the newspaper articles. I have checked all of the speeches in this House— 
Chris Hipkins 
: All the newspapers? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No I am sorry; I got the research unit to go through them and I have found not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper of how evil that was.  
There have been lots and lots of others to the point and let me give you some figures. First of all I want to give a stern warning to the news media which used so many figures during this debate that were wrong. And I will tell you why. There is a whole range of different numbers that you can use. For example there is gross sale to foreigners or there is net. Now gross in my view does not matter because gross is where a German sells the land to a Swiss a Swiss sells it to a French person and a French person sells it to an American. Those do not really matter because they were already owned by foreigners; they were already in foreign ownership. For me the number that I think does matter is net because net is where the land has been transferred from the ownership of a New Zealand entity to that of a foreigner. That I think matters because it makes a difference; the other one did not. You may think there is a difference between a Swiss and a German owning the same piece of land but I do not think there really is. Here are the numbers. During Labour’s 9 years in office it approved the sale—and this is net; I will stick with net figures for the rest of this debate—of 660000 hectares of land net to foreigners.  
 One of my favourite years was the year 2006 when Winston Peters was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the then Government. He was the Minister of Foreign Affairs in the then Government and it approved the sale of 375000 hectares of land to foreigners that year and not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper. So I have to say there is something funny going on here. It is one of these sorts of “Mahareyisms”: “Oh that was then but this is now. It is all right when we did it but it is all wrong now.” I have to say the public have woken up to that sort of dual view of the world—I think I can call it that; I cannot call it the “h” word—of “When we were doing it it was all right.” 
Then the next one is the fact that if they were Canadian Swiss or German—or the United States is a big buyer of land here—again there was not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper. Not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper. And I have checked again through the news media. They have been happening on a regular basis. I do two or three of these a week and suddenly it is the Chinese. If you think it is so wrong—if you think it is so wrong—why did the Labour Party not make such a hue and cry? Why did Helen Clark walk the track with Shania Twain and look at the beautiful high-country estate that was sold to— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Nothing was sold he said. No sale was stopped he said.  
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: We are actually talking about farmlands here Mr Goff. We are talking about farmlands and Labour did not have a problem with it. Labour did not— 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Why doesn’t the member tell the full story? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I am telling the full story; I am most certainly. I will tell the full story again for the benefit of this House. Under Labour 660000 hectares were approved for sale—that is of land to foreigners—and the Crafar farms with 7000 hectares. So let me give the figure again—I will try to do it graphically—there were 660000 hectares under Labour and 7000 with the Crafar farms.  
Michael Woodhouse 
: You’re being generous mate. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well no I cannot get my fingers close enough to get the graphics looking good. I want to make it clear: I would much prefer that New Zealanders had bought those farms. I would much prefer it. It is everybody’s preference I would have thought but in the end the Government has to abide by the law of the land. And did Labour campaign at the last election on changing the Overseas Investment Act to block foreigners from buying?  
Hon Phil Goff 
: Yes. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it did not. No it did not.  
Hon Phil Goff 
: Oh yes they did. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it did not. No it did not—not a mutter not a murmur in their policies of blocking foreigners from buying land in New Zealand. No it did not. No it did not. So I want to send a clear message to everybody that we should welcome the investment that comes from foreign investors and the growth that they can create for our economy. We should welcome it as long as they are quality investors of high character who are going to benefit this country.