Seymour DavidDAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Well thank you Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of ACT in opposition to this Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill. I just begin as I have on previous readings of this and other similar bills with a simple statement of philosophy that the history of this country is a history of foreign investment. The facts are there. Kupe showed up with a waka hourua and a couple of kunekune pigs and we've never looked back; we've been importing foreign capital ever since. The reasons for that are very simple. Again productivity—that means better and more interesting jobs and better futures for our people—depend on capital number one. Number two there's a lot more capital in the other 99.8 percent of the global economy than there is in the 0.2 percent that's here in New Zealand. Any sane person seeing those basic facts and that history would say the future of New Zealand just as its past depends on free flows of capital and investment from overseas.I say to the xenophobes and those that want to put up walls and close us off: if you don't like other people foreign investment is for you because see immigration is when people from other countries come and live in New Zealand. Now if you're a xenophobe and you don't like that then foreign investment is where all those people you don't like stay home and just send money. It's a good deal. But I'm not a xenophobe; I want New Zealand to stand proudly in the world and trade value for value getting stronger together with like-minded capitalists around the globe.When it comes to the current circumstances we more than ever need foreign direct investment. We need capital so that New Zealanders have the capital to create jobs and be prosperous and able to provide for themselves and their families by producing goods and services that consumers actually want to buy with real money and that requires investment now more than ever.And what's this Government doing? Well instead of upholding the rule of law and free flows of investment into our country it's introducing a bill that gives absolute ministerial discretion on practically all investments. They've made it a little bit better in the select committee. Some businesses will be able to go through a slightly quicker process. But the signal to people around the world is that New Zealand really has a wish to replace Fiji as the largest group of Pacific Islands—that actually we're going to put in place more arbitrary rules for people who want to send us capital and it's absolutely the wrong direction to go in.Now I happen to be on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and I asked the officials—I pleaded with Deborah Russell the chair of the committee—if there is a real threat if it's true that President Xi is sitting up there in Beijing and he's been waiting to take over certain assets. You know they talk about strategic assets by the way. I've never heard a person who talks about strategic assets tell us what the strategy is. Too many people use that word because they think it makes them sound smart but eventually they get found out. But maybe President Xi is sitting up there in Beijing saying Jeez I've always wanted to take over some strategic assets in New Zealand as part of my quest for world domination. I've just been waiting for the market to fall a bit so it's cheaper because I'm a bit short."And when we asked well maybe we could get the experts in—if they really have identified if they've really got intelligence then they can come to the select committee and tell us in secret confidentially just to the MPs; under the rules of Parliament we'll never reveal it. But we as MPs want to know what exactly the Government is really worried about that made them bring in this legislation. You know what? They wouldn't tell us even in secret. They couldn't tell us because the truth is they don't know. The truth is that this legislation doesn't have a public policy purpose other than fumbling legislating one step at a time with no strategy and no forethought that makes our country more bureaucratic and more hostile to foreign investment and makes New Zealand workers who want to create jobs with good capital to provide for themselves and their families and their communities poorer. We can't afford as a small open country to have such myopic stumbling lawmaking because we actually need a strategy and clarity and we're not getting it from this Government.I oppose this bill. Thank you Madam Speaker."