Dean Jacqui; Seymour DavidASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The House is resumed. When the House rose for the dinner break we had just completed the sixth speaker on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). Would some member like to seek the call. DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I don't like to trifle but I don't think it's fair to say we'd completed the sixth speaker"; I think the sixth speech had been completed. I'd hate to see the House "complete a speaker". That would be—well I'd hate to think what that would look like.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): So helpful. DAVID SEYMOUR: But having dealt with that minor matter I arise on behalf of ACT in opposition to the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). Let me just say a few things first about the importance of foreign investment to New Zealand. It's possible to tell the history of New Zealand as a history of foreign investment. Kupe showed up with a waka hourua and a couple of kunekune pigs and we've been importing foreign capital to New Zealand ever since. We've never looked back and it is absolutely critical that we don't rely purely on the savings of New Zealanders to capitalise the businesses the farms and the firms that make New Zealand prosperous. A little while later after Kupe's arrival Sir Joseph Ward the then finance Minister later Prime Minister had to go to London and beg for favourable terms for credit so that New Zealand could actually expand and capitalise its infrastructure. These are the stories of our history all the way from the arrival of the first person we've been importing foreign capital and long may we continue to do so. I know there's some people who don't like it much. There are some people who don't like foreigners very much. I personally like foreigners. There's a lot of good people in the world. Many of them live in other countries. Good jokers and good joker-ettes live in New Zealand and elsewhere and I think we should actually embrace them. But even people who don't like foreigners should be in favour of foreign investment. Let me explain why that is. Immigration is when foreigners come and live here potentially next door to you. Foreign investment is when they stay home and just send you money. What a great thing is foreign investment essential to New Zealand's economic future and unfortunately New Zealand has a history in recent times of being one of the most fortified against foreign investment and people want to send money to New Zealand. Recent example: Microsoft a well-known software company from the United States wanted to send money and know-how and capital to New Zealand to establish a data centre in Auckland. What a wonderful thing—our friends around the world wanting to invest in New Zealand providing the capital the know-how the infrastructure for New Zealanders to do their work—and yet oh no no we have the Overseas Investment Act to make it harder and delay and slow them down in getting their capital here. In fact we've been ranked fourth-worst in the OECD for openness to investment. So there's an awful lot of work that could be done by a Government that wanted to improve our legislation. What does this overseas investment bill do? Is it worth supporting? Will it help reinforce New Zealand's tradition of foreign investment? Will it tear down some of the barriers to foreign investment that we've recently erected that impoverish us by making it hard to get foreign capital? Well it says it's "embedding a higher threshold for acquiring farm land and ensuring that farm land is advertised in a way that best ensures New Zealanders have a chance to acquire it". I heard the Minister responsible say "We don't want to sell our farms." Well let's just think about what that means for a moment. I mean first of all "our farms"—what is he talking about? Has New Zealand secretly become a sort of North Korea of the South Pacific with one big collective farm that's for sale? No actually New Zealand individuals own farms and it's up to them to decide who they sell them to not up to someone else to decide. But it turns out that actually if you want to sell your farm to one of those terrible foreign people then you have to advertise that you're doing it in the paper."Enabling decision-makers to consider the effects on sustainability of investments that involve water bottling or bulk water extraction"—now isn't this interesting? The Minister got up and said "I don't know if there should be environmental considerations in the Overseas Investment Act because actually we have the Resource Management Act we have environmental regulations in New Zealand." Now if we need environmental regulations for foreign investors are we saying that we don't mind if local investors damage the environment? Well of course we're not. We have a robust environmental regulatory regime for people who are using land such as bottling water all up and down New Zealand. Why would it matter who the person was? It's pure politics. Then there's "requiring investors to disclose information relating to their proposed investment structure and tax treatment to Inland Revenue". Well there you go yet another hurdle another burden where people find themselves having to justify themselves to bureaucrats whose greatest power is the ability to say no to stand athwart progress yelling "Stop!" Then it says "better recognising Māori cultural values. For example the bill would require decision-makers empowered by the regime to take into account an applicant's plans to protect or enhance wāhi tūpuna wāhi tapu areas and Māori reservations." Well really? I mean why is that actually different from the regulatory regime we have for land use in the rest of New Zealand? It's only if you're a foreign investor? We could argue about the level of commitment we have to preserving and upholding Māori culture but why would we have a different regime for people to do that if they don't happen to be born in New Zealand? Surely we would want to have a regulatory regime to protect Māori culture—if indeed it needs protection by regulations—that applies to everybody. Then it goes on to say "the Government intends to reduce the burden that the overseas investment regime imposes on investors and the regulator. The bill would achieve this by: no longer screening non-residential leases of less than 10 years"—I'm sure there will be some benefits in that. "Allowing investors that have previously been screened and approved to use a streamlined consent process for future investments"—well that sounds like something that should have been done years ago so that's not such a bad thing. "No longer requiring a large range of low-risk transactions to get consent. For example the bill would no longer require consent decisions on investments in less sensitive land that is only screened because it adjoins sensitive land"—well these are sensible but minuscule minor changes. So the question is whether to support this bill. Well there's two problems here. Number one is that to justify a change in legislation you have to justify all the imposition of the uncertainty and disruption that you put on people used to doing business. That's a threshold that there has to be some substantial improvement and unfortunately overall when you look at the overall amount of restriction on investment of the people trying to send money to New Zealand—a process we're so hostile to for some reason—you'd have to say this is a mild step backwards. That doesn't justify a change so the ACT Party can't support the legislation.What the Government could have done and should have done is gone back to first principles and asked: what is the purpose of the Overseas Investment Act? Well surely it is to stop people who would do harm to New Zealanders—people who might for instance want to have a military installation people who might want to acquire land for strategic purposes or people who might want to somehow use their ownership to leverage New Zealand politics. Those might be good reasons to actually prevent people investing in New Zealand because they wanted to do harm to New Zealanders. That's what a good regime would look like—so you can invest so long as you're not doing harm. But instead we have this regime where we have to prove that an investment has net benefits to New Zealand. Well just a minute—how can anybody truly know? Which New Zealanders? What's a benefit? Surely the fact that you have a willing buyer and a willing seller already tells you something. The person who owns the property values the money offered more than the property they own. If that test doesn't make it net beneficial to New Zealand what will? We end up with a situation where in order to sell your property and get investment you have to contort yourself for a process of pure politics deciding what a valid benefit for New Zealand is. That unfortunately is pure banana republic stuff and until the Government is prepared to go back to first principles and ask what the role of Government and regulating foreign investment is and actually genuinely makes it easier for people to bring capital to this country and choose how to sell their own land and who to sell it to the ACT Party will not support legislation such as this. Thank you Madam Speaker."