Goff Phil: Address in Reply 
Goff Phil: Address in Reply 
[Volume:677;Page:418] 
Hon PHIL GOFF (Labour—Mt Roskill) 
: 
 The member who has just resumed his seat Mr Groser claimed to have a plan. Well he and I attended in November a meeting of Business New Zealand where two-thirds of those present New Zealand businessmen condemned the Government for having no plan. Although I waited with much anticipation for the Speech from the Throne following the election I have to concur with the media verdict that this Speech from the Throne told us very little. It told us nothing about where the Government wanted to go. There was no vision no sense of direction and no plan—and that is rather sad.  
I want to correct the member on one other thing. He claimed that National had inherited a poor legacy. That is not what Bill English said on becoming Minister of Finance. He said we were in good shape because a Labour Government had prepared for the rainy day which was the global financial crisis. The fact is we had paid off our debt. We had zero net Government debt. Now National is borrowing to the tune of $300 million a week. We had the lowest rate of unemployment in the OECD and we had a credit rating that the agencies put up not down which was their verdict on the adequacy of the National Government’s response.  
Mr Assistant Speaker Tisch can I acknowledge your election to your position as Assistant Speaker and also welcome new members to the House. I congratulate them on their election. Can I particularly congratulate the four maiden speakers for Labour who gave I believe great speeches last night. They talked of their vision of where they had come from and about why they were in this House and where they wanted our country to go in order to be a fairer and more effective country for all New Zealanders—and I emphasise “all”.  
But today I want to focus on a momentous decision made in the High Court by Justice Miller. What Justice Miller did just 2 hours ago was set aside a decision made by Ministers Coleman and Williamson to sell 8000 hectares of some of New Zealand’s best dairy land to foreign investors. He set it aside and thank God that we have got a High Court judge with the guts under law to stand up and act in New Zealand’s interests when weak and incompetent National Party Ministers had failed to do so. The judge was absolutely clear in his conclusion that the Ministers’ decision was thoroughly inadequate. He said that the Overseas Investment Act requires the benefits of foreign investment to be identifiable and substantial but that the Ministers had failed—had failed—to ensure that the Shanghai Pengxin Group application met that test. In fact he was scathing about the Ministers’ decisions. He said that the Ministers had “misdirected themselves”. That was his learned legal opinion. He said they had ignored the clear evidence that benefit would accrue if the land remained in New Zealand’s ownership. There was no need to sell it he said. The Ministers ignored the benefit that would accrue if it remained in New Zealand’s ownership and he said that they had accepted evidence about the economic benefit of the Shanghai Pengxin Group sale that was materially overstated. In other words the judge was very clear that the Ministers failed to do their job. They let New Zealand down and in that they were aided and abetted by Prime Minister John Key.  
Mr Key argued this: “The law would not have allowed us to reverse the decision made by the Overseas Investment Office.” Not only was he wrong but he was proven wrong in law. Far from the law not allowing the Overseas Investment Office to not accept the application he said the law required it to look at criteria that should have led it to reject that application. Mr Key was absolutely wrong but he will not accept responsibility. I have been in this House for a fair long time. The last person who exhibited the characteristics of Mr Key was one Sir Robert Muldoon. He was wrong was proven wrong but he was never prepared to accept responsibility for wrong decisions and misstatements of fact that he had made.  
In fact the obligation on the Ministers was to ensure that they exercised their judgment over this purchase bid not to be the puppets of the Overseas Investment Office which Mr Key implied when he said that they were simply following the Overseas Investment Office’s advice. They do not get paid a quarter of a million dollars a year to rubber-stamp what the Overseas Investment Office says; they are paid money and given the responsibility to make decisions that are correct according to law and to apply their judgment and they failed absolutely to do that. 
 Then Mr Key claimed that the China free-trade agreement required that this decision be approved. The judge’s decision explicitly rejects that and says that the Ministers were advised that that was not correct. The Overseas Investment Act is an agreed exception to the agreement in the free-trade agreement that foreign and domestic investors will be treated alike. It is specifically set aside and Mr Key is wrong and misleads New Zealanders in claiming that the free-trade agreement required us to sell out our heritage and pass ownership of that land to this Shanghai-based company. Has Mr Key— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: How many pieces of farmland did you sell when you were the Minister of Foreign Affairs? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —or Mr Henare—ignored the fact that no New Zealand company can go to China and buy land in China? No New Zealand company can buy land in China. I congratulate the Chinese on that because the Chinese Government at least can recognise that it needs to act in the interests of its own people—something that the National Government in this affair has failed to recognise altogether.  
Labour says that now is the time to draw a line in the sand. At the end of last year we sold $100 million of prime land in Southland around where Mr English lives to German investors. Then the Government was intending to approve $200 million in the sale of land to Chinese investors. I do not care whether they are Chinese German American or whatever— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: Oh yes you do. 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: —what I care about is whether that decision was going to be in the interests of New Zealand and that is where the High Court judge—I say to Mr Henare—said absolutely that it was not in our interests. How can it be in our interests to become tenants in our own land? John Key stood up and said that we will not become tenants in our own land. What does he think happens when we sell off those 8000 hectares of land and the Shanghai Pengxin Group becomes the landlord and Landcorp becomes the tenant? Is that not becoming tenants in our own land?  
The fact is that that sale would not have increased our productivity and wealth and it would not have improved the way in which the animals or pasture are managed; all it would have done is push up the price for Kiwi farmers. It would have risked the value added being transferred overseas it would have risked transfer pricing where taxes were paid not to our Government for activity in our country but to overseas Governments and it would have guaranteed that the money profits from our land flowed out of our country to the benefit of foreign investors.  
I want to say one other thing. It is about the sale of the State assets. Mr Key said that the reason to do this was that he had a mandate to sell and that this would improve the performance of the companies. Again neither is true. Massey University did a properly organised scientific survey. It found that 75 percent of Kiwis were against the sale of our energy companies. 
Hon Parekura Horomia 
: How many? How many? 
Hon PHIL GOFF 
: Seventy-five percent were against it and 9 percent were for it. DigiPoll on Television New Zealand last night found that 88 percent of the people surveyed were opposed and 8 percent were for it. There is no mandate and if this Government had the courage of its convictions it would take this decision to a public referendum to see whether or not it had its mandate. But it will not do that because it knows that at least three out of every four New Zealanders do not want to sell.