Carter DavidRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to take part in this debate as we discuss the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill because I was one of those that sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee throughout the hearings. The first point I'd make is I don't think in my parliamentary career I've seen a more shambolic process for a piece of legislation and if my parliamentary colleagues want proof of it pick up the bill and have a look at how it's had to be changed as it's gone through the select committee process. You heard the chair of the select committee Michael Wood arguing with some passion a minute ago that this is about fixing the housing crisis. The evidence that came before the select committee is that it'll do exactly the opposite. Most of the big apartment blocks being built in Auckland currently are done with overseas investment. Mr Wood shakes his head. That's how out of touch that member is with his own city. Even the Minister realised that he had made a mistake because we've had to change it through the select committee process to allow foreign investments into apartments because otherwise they weren't going to succeed. We heard submissioners promoters and developers of apartments come before us and say The only way we get this up and running is to get some pre-sales. Many of those pre-sales are to overseas investors. Once we've got the pre-sales we're in a position to go to a bank and finance the whole project."Many of those overseas buyers don't hold the apartment for long. It's about increasing supply and even the Government ultimately recognised that as it went through the select committee process. They've had to come up with some basis of amendment to allow this apartment development to continue with overseas investment and now we've got the nonsense whereby the bigger apartment blocks can allow the investor to buy one apartment provided he or she doesn't live in it.I don't think I've ever seen a more shambolic process in my time in Parliament and what you've got to realise is what's driving it. It's a socialist point of view—Michael Wood: Well that's true.Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: —and Mr Wood accepts that—where "Property owners are deemed to be wealthy and therefore we'll do what we can"—this is the Labour Government's attitude—"to hit them. Let's hit the rich." It's a real envy piece of legislation and it will do nothing—nothing at all to increase housing supply.Then you look at the reports we've had from the officials and I want to say I've never seen a bigger bevvy of officials either in the Chamber tonight for the committee stage or—if you want to go and have a look members go and have a look—in the offices in the lobby. They're full of officials. They're here because they know they might be called on to fix shambolic amendments—the need to try to fix this legislation. But the first point I want to make is in the report they gave to us they said 28 submitters were generally in favour of the legislation. I think it's higher than that. Nearly every submitter came to us and said "We're in favour of this legislation. We can understand what you're trying to do provided you exempt us."—provided you exempt us. So we have the telcos: "Yeah this is good legislation but just make sure you carve out the telcos." We had the retirement village sector saying "We understand what you're trying to do. You don't like foreigners so let's stop them investing but carve us out." We had Progressive Enterprises a supermarket chain saying "Carve us out." And then we had the doozy of them all: a particular iwi in Northland. It came along with a developer—Te Ārai developments limited—and suddenly there was a realisation that this was a Northland-based iwi that we were led to believe in the select committee was a large owner of land and they would not be in a position to reap the benefits of a zoning change they'd got. They presented their case and suddenly they became eligible for an exemption that was ruled on personally by Mr Michael Wood the chair of the select committee. Thank God we've realised it's a private benefit—probably not to the iwi but to the developers backing the iwi—and it's now been ruled out and cannot go any further.Mr Parker took a contribution and talked about the necessity of bringing this legislation forward now that we've signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)—now that we've agreed to go with the TPP. He talked about the semantics of adding two particular letters before "TPP" so then we can proceed to pass this legislation. Mr Parker protested on the streets against the TPP whilst he was in Opposition. I do admire that he's prepared to change his mind and recognise the value of TPP and we're now progressing with it but that is no justification for presenting legislation that is as bad as this before the committee.The ones I do feel sorry for are some of the people with relatively expensive lifestyle blocks who are going to find their values are substantially decreased—probably halved—by this legislation. There are people who have built around Queenstown on some of those lifestyle blocks quite—[Time expired]"