Lorck Anna; Salesa JennyANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to speak in favour of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). In doing so I'm very pleased to say that this is the third time I've risen and spoken in a row where the Opposition National have also been supporting the bill that I've been speaking on. It shows that this is the type of work we are doing in select committee. It shows that in select committee where the work is done we are prepared to work together to create better laws. We had 46 submissions on this bill.New Zealand continues to be open for business. Productive foreign investment continues to be central to our economic wellbeing now and into the future. This bill combined with all our other changes to improve New Zealand's economic settings achieves the balance. The balance between welcoming investment and the need to protect our most sensitive assets. They will together set us up to make the most of the coming decades of economic change and transformation.This bill is about improving the efficiency of the overseas investment regime while ensuring New Zealand assets are protected particularly farmland. Over nine years the National Government made the overseas investment regime more and more complicated while taking a lax approach to protecting valuable New Zealand assets like farmland from foreign ownership. We are now incorporating a bill that will ensure we do both. Now this bill is an accumulation of the Government's work to reform New Zealand's overseas investment regime and to ensure that we continue to attract the productive sustainable investment we need to both boost economic growth grow jobs and protect New Zealand's assets. Now I want to talk about what this bill also does to simplify the approval process for most transactions to ensure that the limited resources are dedicated to reviewing transactions most likely to pose risk. Under the national interest test it will be better targeted so no longer automatically applying to investments by State-linked pension funds similar in nature to the New Zealand Super Fund that operate at an arm's length from the Government. In addition to lifting the requirements for overseas investment in farmland the bill better ensures that New Zealanders have a regime of opportunity to purchase it by requiring that it is publicly advertised before an overseas person can enter into an agreement to buy it unlike the status quo where this often occurs after the deal has been signed. By doing this it makes sure that everybody knows when this land is up for sale.I'd also like to talk about the purpose of the Overseas Investment Act which the deputy chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee Barbara Edmonds spoke at length about in her speech earlier in the week. The purpose of the Overseas Investment Act recognises that we are in fact the land of milk and honey; where we grow cultivate and harvest our food where our land is productive and our fisheries forestry and natural and physical resources are a rare privilege that is worthy of protection. It seeks to protect the privilege we have here in New Zealand. This bill endeavours—again I reiterate—to balance the protection of our important assets while still being attractive to productive foreign investment. These are the reasons that I'm standing to support this bill. We must make sure absolutely that we continue to further cut red tape but we must always always do what we can to protect our land which is what we have in our country of milk and honey. Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): The next call is a split call. I call on Nicola Willis.