Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's been an interesting afternoon at the beginning of the debate around this piece of legislation. I was rather intrigued when the list MP for Hamilton East Jamie Strange stood up and talked about 99 percent of people in the street of Wellington. It would probably be a good idea to actually go and speak to the people in Hamilton. But what intrigued me more—what intrigued me more—was when he got up and said that all of the real estate agents that he talked to actually are agreeing with the statement of the 99 percent of people in the Wellington street. Well the real estate agents have just put out some information that is similar to the information that we found that identifies that it's somewhere around 3 percent of people.On this piece of legislation when is a ban not a ban? It's not a ban when the Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government wants to implement the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. This bill is not a ban and we've already heard about the out clauses around people who want to buy into rest homes. There's a whole range of things that have been put to us around this bill that show that it's actually not a ban. We've also heard from our speakers that it's about process and about process that's been badly badly designed because it's been rushed through. We also heard from the Hon David Parker when he got up and did his initial speech that it is rushed legislation. All it's designed to do is to put more red tape in from a red party.This previous Government in the National Party introduced regular monitoring of foreign buyers throughout New Zealand which showed that they were a very small percentage. Willow-Jean Prime when she got up before said we need to collect real data. Well actually we have started collecting real data. We've collected data that shows it's 3 percent. So when Shane Jones stands up and says that it is the Government's prerogative to make big fundamental calls—yes this might be a fundamental call and we've heard a lot of rhetoric on the other side today about the fundamental call but actually I wouldn't call it a big call. If we're talking about 3 percent and then we take the 3 percent who actually are selling the houses off that 3 percent it doesn't come to a very large number at all. It's a badly designed piece of legislation. It's being rushed through around trying to get this piece of legislation completed before the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) or the newly branded version of the TPP comes through.So there have been quite a lot of risks highlighted. The main risk that I see when I look at the regulatory impact statement and the stuff that's been put forward is about the design choices. They may be suboptimal and they may have unintended consequences which is really interesting in a bill where we're talking about housing. If we talk about housing and we get bad design choices around housing that may be suboptimal or have unintended consequences then we're not going to end up with very good houses.So if you apply this to a piece of legislation it's exactly the same—bad design choices which may be suboptimal and have unintended consequences. I'm actually concerned about the people who work for our Overseas Investment Office because they're only going to have limited time to operationalise the policy. We all know that when we have limited time to operationalise policy things are going to fall through the cracks. So are people going to be flying blind? Is this policy going to be completely prepared? Is the operational part of this policy going to be completely prepared? Is the Government prepared for the things that are going to be falling through the cracks?We heard also from Shane Jones before. He calls it a done deal. He says that this bill is going to go through so he's been telling those people that are interested in this topic that if they come along to the select committee their views are not of value. That is I think a bit arrogant. It's one thing to be arrogant in terms of voting numbers in this House but it's another thing to give the public the view that if they come along to the select committee they won't be heard.I'm concerned at the limited time—and it's been pointed out in these documents—to educate the real estate agents all of the conveyancers and all of the general public. Over 3 percent of people—so we're talking about 3 percent of buyers minus 3 percent of sellers equals zero and we're going to this big fuss because we think it's going to make a difference. This from a party over there who during the course of the last three years has voted against pieces of legislation to free up land to build houses and then pretends that this piece of legislation is going to fix everything in the housing market when of course it's not.So to me it's just—other comments have come through today. The other side the Government says We fought an election on this issue." and "Floods of people from overseas—floods of people from overseas". Well right at the moment in this country we're in the middle of a drought and I would say that if we got 3 percent of our rainfall in the course of a year we certainly would not call that a flood. So I'm not sure how you can actually apply—Hon Todd McClay: Unless it all comes at once.BARBARA KURIGER: Exactly. It's a bit of a flawed theory. So I'm not sure how you can say that 3 percent of people buying houses in the housing market causes a flood.Hon Todd McClay: Especially if 3 percent of them are evaporating at the same time.BARBARA KURIGER: Absolutely. They're disappearing at the same time and we all know about evaporation because the heat outside is pretty hot and the heat on the other side of this House is pretty hot.I think the other thing that really concerns me as a person who's involved in the primary industry and knows that this country really really depends on trade is that we are rushing this through for the purposes of what the Minister says about getting his newly branded TPP done. We know that there are exceptions for Australia. We've heard in the House this afternoon that there's going to be some big conversations going on with a number of countries. Singapore is already having the discussion. How many of those free-trade agreements are going to actually cause this Government some grief going forward? That's what happens when you rush legislation and you don't think things through.So again if we're going to apply it to some trade agreements and we're not going to apply it to other trade agreements or we can't apply it to some other trade agreements then it goes back to the original question that I posed when I first stood up. When is a ban not a ban? It's turning into a great big confusing piece of legislation that's designed to meet a little problem—a little problem that we've defined this afternoon that potentially could be as small as zero. So just 3 percent minus 3 percent equals zero.So I hope that when the select committee process takes place there will be a time when people will have their concerns listened to and that the public will have the opportunity to have a say on this because this piece of legislation is about as clear as mud. It's designed to clear up a problem that actually doesn't really exist. It won't be so long when people are talking about the cost of housing. They're going to be coming back and going "Where are all these buyers anyway?" because the housing market is cooling off.I'm also concerned really about how the Government—there's no mention in here about how much extra funding the Government intends to give to the Overseas Investment Office. They're talking about having limited time to put it together. So first of all there's been no indication of how the Overseas Investment Office is going to be resourced. So you give people an extra job you give them limited time to do it and there's no commitment to how much money that the Government is going to give them. In my time in Parliament there has been no shortage of criticism of the Overseas Investment Office from those members on the other side of the House.So I would be concerned that this current Government is looking at setting up the Overseas Investment Office to fail on a project that is worth somewhere next to zero. So thank you Madam Assistant Speaker."