Goldsmith PaulHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Chair. Just in response to Minister Damien O'Connor's statements about being in favour of New Zealanders but not in favour of foreign investment he seems to have forgotten that the whole economic history of this country has been built on foreign investment over many many decades. If we want to grow and have jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders that requires somebody to make an investment either to start a new business plant a new set of trees plant a new bit of horticulture hire a new person—take a risk. It requires somebody investing. Now if we want to rely on our domestic savings that's fine but we'll grow very slowly because there's not many of them. If we want to grow faster we import capital as we have over many many decades and that is why this bill is so dangerous for the economic prospects of this country.I also wanted to respond to the comments from Mr Jones the last time this bill was before the committee a couple of days ago where he talked about why forestry was exempted from this bill in Part 2 as we're discussing at the moment. Mr Jones—this is the same Mr Jones who doesn't like being asked pesky questions about his involvement in the Provincial Growth Fund. He gave a long and detailed speech about why it's important to shrink red tape for the forestry sector and that was what he was going to go about doing. He's going to shrink the red tape through this piece of legislation and he also waxed lyrical about the need for investment in forestry. The thing that was left hanging was: what is so unique about the forestry sector that that needs to enjoy the shrinking of red tape but every other sector of the economy does not whether it's housing all manner of other primary produce whether it's golf resorts and tourism spots—all those other things that benefit from investment and can provide jobs and growth? Somehow that same logic doesn't apply and I think most New Zealanders are scratching their heads and trying to figure out what is so special about forestry. The obvious answer to that is it is something promoted by New Zealand First and this is a political jack-up that's been dealt with in this Government in an unseemly way. No normal Government would get away with legislation that is so unprincipled as this.It's always a good place to start to go back to the regulatory impact statement and I dug this out because that's where Treasury officials have the opportunity to have a look at the draft legislation and just check some basic questions about how it was developed and how it's put together. In this regulatory impact statement the first thing Treasury says is it was done very quickly in order to fit the time frames of the 100-day plan. That has meant that there has not been any opportunity to consult with private sector organisations or the general public to inform the development of this policy. Well that's obvious because we've seen that there has been certainly no involvement from the population. Then it asks whether there was a range of options considered and the answer to that is well no—because of the Government's commitment to a specific policy no other housing policy measures or wider overseas investment regime issues were raised or discussed. And then thirdly the assumption underpinning this impact analysis was that it was constrained by a lack of empirical data including around current levels of overseas investment. So basically the only conclusion you can draw from the regulatory impact statement is that Treasury completely washed their hands of this bill and would have nothing to do with it.So the question that I have for the Minister in the chair Damien O'Connor is: has there been any further analysis asked for from Treasury as a result of the many detailed recommendations of the Finance and Expenditure Committee in terms of the costs and benefits of this part that we're dealing with at the moment and the exemption of forestry? Has there been any further work done and has there been any subsequent effort on behalf of Treasury particularly in the regulatory impact unit to try and get a better understanding of what we're dealing with here in this particular part?Now I have a couple of amendments relating to If it's good enough for forestry why is it not good enough for barley and for rye?" and I'd be interested in the Minister's views on that. He's a man of the soil and he'll understand that we all need our barley sugars and that those particular crops are important to New Zealand. There is a logic that Shane Jones explained to the committee that we do need to have investment from around the world in order to grow our economy and we want to be slashing red tape so that people can get on with it and make the investment and draw upon global pools of capital. It's good enough for—[Time expired]"