Bayly Andrew; Williams PotoANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you. It's a pleasure to be talking on this bill and this is a bill that's got a feel-good factor to it. It's a populist bill in my view and a number of my colleagues have already highlighted some of the philosophical differences we have with this bill particularly—contrary to many of the misguided participants in this House who have said it on a number of occasions the Land Information New Zealand records show that only 3 percent of sales are to foreigners. The other aspect is that the National Government has already implemented a whole raft of changes and we've heard about some of those around the foreign buyers having to get an IRD number if they're going to buy a house; the introduction of a two-year brightline test which is an increasingly stringent requirement on foreign buyers; the introduction of a tax—when they buy a property and sell it they are required to pay resident withholding tax—and of course we've implemented a number of the Shewan recommendations around foreign trusts.What I want to focus on is some of the mechanisms proposed in this bill because I think they highlight some of the difficulty in terms of the practicality around how this bill is actually going to work. Just to go back a second the current Overseas Investment Office (OIO) rules relating to sensitive land have a two-stage test to them. The first one is the investor" test and a person must demonstrate—and I'm talking about a person being a foreigner—appropriate business experience and acumen financial commitment good character and comply with certain Immigration Act requirements. The second test is the "benefit to New Zealand" test which is a general test around creation of jobs increasing investment and environmental and other factors. And of course it applies to non-rural land greater than five hectares and in regard to land with anything regarding water or historical or Māori influence 0.4 hectares.So what this means—and under the current OIO rules—is the process is that for any foreign buyer they must get prior approval and they must have regard to if they look at a piece of land what is the historical significance of that land. If it's got anything to do with water it will inevitably require a report on it. It will require a wai tapu report if there's any consideration of that issue. Often these reports cost a lot of money. It's not unknown for many of these applications to be $100000 and involve a lot of lawyer time accountants' time etc.—very expensive and the process for approval takes a heck of a long time.So my issue with this is first of all the need for these people to get prior approval—and so how are they going to enter auctions? The second one is the cost to the foreigners that are going through that process. The third one is the cost to the OIO and we've seen the reports to Treasury around what that's going to incur which will be significant. And the fourth thing is waiting for the Minister in her determination to eventually come round and actually make a determination. I think this whole thing is going to get bogged down through the lack of practicality of working through the many applications that will come through and the process relating to that.The second issue I've got is around the definition of "lifestyle block". The test is that a lifestyle block is whether it's predominantly used for residential use. In my area where I live South Auckland I'm surrounded by lifestyle blocks and the issue is "Are they economic units greater than or less than five hectares?" Of course many can argue that growing flowers or some horticulture or even having racehorses—that makes them very very economic and so I think that is an area of confusion and of course that creates an area for loophole for foreign buyers. So even if you wanted to stop them I think that's a possible area of confusion.The third area is around the responsibility on conveyancers to certify to the best of their knowledge that the purchaser complies with the new rules. So I think in the select committee we will be inundated with real estate agents lawyers etc. coming to see us absolutely against the issue of them being required to go through this process to attest that every transaction has met that test and of course there are increased financial liabilities in this bill.So I have a lot of difficulty with this. I think it's going to be a difficult bill to implement and I don't think it achieves anything other than making sure that the coalition Government has a feel-good factor around it.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I apologise—the member's time has expired. I call Jamie Strange. I understand this is a split call—five minutes."