McKelvie IanIAN McKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): Thank you Madam Speaker. I was going to say it's a pleasure to take a call on the third reading of this Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill but I'm not sure whether it's a pleasure or not—but I'm taking it anyway. I've taken a number of calls on this today. It's quite interesting when you go through stage after stage in the course of one day you've got to remember what you said before and not say it again and it's quite difficult.Hon Member: Or say something different.IAN McKELVIE: I know; you can try. I'm trying to say something different but like so many pieces of legislation that go through this House there are good bits and bad bits of it and there are some bits of this legislation that we certainly support. And in the committee stage I got the opportunity to speak briefly about the fishing quota and the fishing sector of it and the food sector is a very important part of what this bill is trying to achieve. But none the less there are some reasons that we don't support this bill and they were very eloquently outlined by Paul Goldsmith earlier on and I'm sure Andrew Bayly will follow and outline them even better.The bits that particularly concern me about this bill—and they're a bit obscure some of them—are things like the protection of intellectual property and the protection of I suppose the assets of the businesses that are being scrutinised in the course of this process that we're going through to establish whether or not they're critical to New Zealand's future. I've seen in my lifetime far too many times where that information is not protected adequately and gets scurrilously used in the future by someone else. And I think that's one of the big concerns that I have about this bill and one of the reasons I have a concern about it is because of the time we've had to scrutinise the legislation and make sure that it effectively doesn't leak I suppose for want of a better word—I don't think that has been adequate. So that's one of the reasons that we oppose it—that we think that the time frame has been far too short. And I do accept that if you take this to the extreme there is a case to be made for some urgency in inserting a piece of legislation like this and the Minister has gone as far as to put this piece of legislation in place and then follow up with another piece of legislation which effectively will confirm the actions of this piece of legislation and give Parliament the time to scrutinise it properly and put those bits that I have some concerns about in place in a more appropriate manner.None the less the other thing that I particularly don't like about this and I know that the National Party don't like about this bill is that it really stifles the ability of some New Zealand companies to adequately get overseas funds and keep themselves going or the capital that they so desperately need to keep themselves going particularly at a time like this when we're under significant pressure. I think just earlier in the day I spoke about the food industry and if you think about food security around the world and the need for countries to secure their food supplies our food industry is probably critical to New Zealand but it's also an opportunity for us to grow and diversify our products. But to do that we need capital and many of those countries that have food security challenges would be very interested in assisting some of our businesses to grow change and diversify. And if they are precluded from doing that under this piece of legislation that will be a great tragedy for New Zealand in the future. It will be a tragedy for those people who have the opportunity to work in them.I think one of the ways we can get our economy moving right now is through much more investment in added-value products. If you just take the timber industry a very simple one there will be no expansion of the timber industry without the Government either building it themselves or a significant injection of foreign capital into that industry because there is no appetite in New Zealand—nor the ability in New Zealand—to invest adequately in timber infrastructure or in infrastructure to make wood do better. So that's just another example of where we desperately need investment in New Zealand. This bill won't necessarily stop that investment but it certainly in my view like a lot of these other bills we've put in place will significantly impact on people's decisions when they come to look at investing in New Zealand for one reason or another.The other thing I have some concerns about in the course of this bill is how in fact the bill will be policed. Because we've got to remember that every transaction will be looked at from a dollar to whatever. And so every transaction that involves some segment of overseas investment beyond 25 percent is going to be perused by the Government. So there's a massive amount of effort that needs to go into getting to that point and then deciding which businesses are relevant which ones aren't and which ones the Minister—and this is the other interesting point about it—will make these decisions about. So effectively one person whoever that Minister is is going to be making these decisions. The Minister also has the ability to call up these transactions so they can take a look at it from a distance and decide I like the look of that. I don't like the look of it; I might not like the look of it but I need to look at it further." And I think that's a little bit—I wouldn't say it's dangerous but it's not how we do things in New Zealand necessarily for the better. I accept that we're in unusual times but I don't think that that's the answer to our future either.So the bill does some things—in an odd way—that are probably quite useful and when I say an odd way it's like a strangled process because it happened so quickly and I'm sure there will be as I've outlined already mistakes made with intellectual property. There will even be decisions made that we will later wonder why we made but that will all resolve itself in the future. So from our perspective the principle of it is probably good but almost everything else about it goes against where we want to be as a country. I think the reason for that is that we're in these extraordinary times where we need to be expanding our economy or giving our economy the opportunity to expand in a constructive manner that creates jobs for New Zealanders as quickly as we can. This bill I don't think will add to that ability; it'll probably detract from it.So that's really my contribution to the third reading of this bill and as I said earlier we can't support it. We look forward to the next bill coming—it's already in the House and it's in front of the select committee now. That will be there for some time. We look forward to that coming in. We'll have some vibrant debate on that no doubt as we go along and I'll leave my more intellectually disposed colleagues to deal with that at the time. So that's my lot and we are not supporting this bill."