Coddington Deborah: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21550] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 That was a great speech from “Michel Foucault”! The member said that property rights are whatever one decides they are and whatever anyone wants them to be. He is from the party that says: “We’ve got principles; what principles do you want to have today?” as they dive into their bag of all sorts of different principles. 
Property rights are absolute. They are not whatever one wants them to be. When that member goes on about people who have a property right not having the right to sell it to an overseas person that is absolute emotional claptrap because a property right means that a person has the right to sell a property to whomever he or she wants. I remind the member to read his history. Anyone who has read history might be aware of the Australian historian Geoffrey Blainey who wrote that in 1900 New Zealand had the highest standard of living in the world and had no restrictions on foreign investment. So David Parker is absolutely wrong when he goes on about what constitutes a property right and about the fact that it does not include the right to sell to whomever one needs. 
Foreign investors should be subject to the same rules as New Zealand investors. If those rules are wrong or they are being broken we need to look at them and ensure that everybody obeys them rather than tweaking them around to come up with all sorts of different definitions of what a sensitive asset is and who should be buying what. The member for New Zealand First who spoke before was going on about ACT and the National Party wanting to sell the whole of New Zealand to anybody who comes through the door. That is also a total misrepresentation of the truth. When has anybody said that? 
John Key 
: We didn’t say that did we? We were talking about lattes. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: No I am talking about New Zealand First. 
There are restrictions on anybody purchasing land in New Zealand. For a start one has to have the money to do so or the guarantee of the money from whoever is lending it. There are all sorts of laws and restrictions relating to the sale and purchase of land. The Minister of Finance Dr Cullen implied that legislation like this is necessary because New Zealanders have been led to believe through reading advertisements in an airline magazine for the sale of Poronui Station that the purchaser would have the right to the waterways. If we passed legislation every time some real estate agent came up with an over-hyped description of a piece of land or property that was for sale we would never get out of this place. I am still looking for a piece of Tuscany in Avondale. Are we going to pass laws saying that no New Zealanders should be led to believe that they will be able to buy a piece of land in Avondale? 
I come back also to the issue of overseas investment in significant business assets. Craig McNair dealt with that before when he talked about the fact that we should restrict investment in New Zealand businesses to New Zealanders because they are the only investors of good character. I remind that member of the wine-box inquiry which was brought into the House by his leader. Not one overseas company was involved in the wine-box inquiry and I wonder why that was. Well it is usually because people or companies that invest in a company a business or a corporation in another country are usually—I am not saying always but in the majority of cases—good corporate citizens. The mere fact that they are putting their money where their mouths are means that they will look at obeying the laws. That is what I mean when I say that if people do not obey the laws no matter who they are—whether they are foreigners or New Zealanders—that is when we should deal with it. We should not deal with it on the basis of the country where they live. 
I come back to the principle of property rights. It is all very well for Dr Michael Cullen to sneer at principles and to say that just because I personally am not coming back to Parliament I can afford to be fast and loose with principles. The ACT party is the one party—apart from the National Party—that is standing on principles and is debating this bill on the basis of principles. It comes back to the basic principle which I repeat to David Parker of whose land it is. Whose land is being sold here? What gives that member just because he has been elected to Parliament the right to breach property rights?