White HelenHELEN WHITE (Labour): It's a pleasure to rise to talk about a bill in its third reading particularly after that speech from ACT. It's always actually something that really reminds me of my job because the view of that party is so different from my own and I stand with a party I'm really proud of because it has come a long way since those ideologies dominated this House. We're actually in a situation where everyone else is in consensus—other than ACT—on this to a large extent and that's because we can all see the value in leadership in the parties in this House actually doing their jobs which is to make sure that the interests—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will come back to the bill. HELEN WHITE: Sorry. It is absolutely about this bill because this bill is about the parties in this House doing their job and making sure that actually our—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! HELEN WHITE: Sorry. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): I've invited the member to return to the bill. This is a third reading speech and I'd ask the member to confine her comments to what is contained in the bill. HELEN WHITE: Thank you ma'am. Actually today I got a letter that was about this bill. It was a letter that came in after the last speech in this House asking a specific question and it made me realise just how important something like this is to very very ordinary New Zealand citizens. We tend to think about a bill like this as actually being about big business but it's not. It's actually about ordinary citizens and making sure that they get what they need out of a society. This legislation is a balancing act. It is something that in 2018 was set out in its objectives. The objectives of the Act were not to discourage investment but to channel it into the right places. So it was about encouraging investment but it was also about constraining it when that might actually pose a risk to New Zealand. My letter from a person in Auckland was simply about her worry that a property that she was involved in in a rest home might actually go to an overseas investor without comment. Of course it won't do that because if in fact overseas people or companies were to take over ownership this legislation would actually make sure that there is sufficient constraint on that. Just let me go through what this bill does. In 2018 we had a strategy that was to build up our constraint on overseas investment and that was with the dual purpose of encouraging investment and controlling investment where there was risk. It's going to control the investment over sensitive assets like fishing quota and sensitive land and actually just assets that matter a lot. In 2020 that became extremely important because we had a crisis in this country and it was very real as a possibility that there would be a dramatic drop in the share price of a lot of our companies and those companies would be subject to takeover by overseas investors. If that had happened we would have lost a lot of our taonga a lot of the things that matter to us. You've heard my colleague Barbara Edmonds talking about that specifically affecting something like crayfish. In that time some of the rules were put in place but they were put in place in a way that really needed review. So part of the job of the Finance and Expenditure Committee was to review those changes as well as look at the new ones. The submitters gave us a lot of good feedback and we have struck a good balance here. So what we have now is we have an investment regime which for example curbs the call-in powers. So the call-ins will be in places where the Minister can block or impose conditions on acquisitions where there is significant vulnerability and it will be constrained to that. It is going to mean that things like ports or electricity or investments that would actually do some damage if they went overseas into foreign ownership could actually be protected and stay within New Zealand. We heard the Minister talk about his rather deep thought about how monopolies happen in this area and how important it is that those monopolies really sometimes happen within the constraints of our country and we don't lose control of those. We have made changes with regard to farmland. It does sound like a little thing but it was kind of absurd to hear in the select committee that people were advertising farmland after having sold it and the objection of some submitters was that what we would do if we changed this would be to stop that process and that this would be just somehow red tape. We concluded it wasn't red tape; it was exactly what the purpose of the bill was: to give New Zealanders an opportunity to actually buy that land to actually allow the people selling it to realise its true value but within New Zealand hands if possible. We had a change with regard to leases. Now that one was one where we really struck a really good balance I think. We've gone for controlling leases that are over 10 years and that includes the right of renewal being within that time. It would be possible to lease land without really engaging if it's on those sort of short-term bases but it will stop the kind of perpetual leases and long-term leases that really alienate that land from New Zealanders. With regard to foreign ownership and foreign control I thought that was another situation which really was a good example of striking the balance making sure that the investment was going into the right places. We now have a rule that says that foreign control if it's over 25 percent will need to be screened but we really distinguished between control and passive investment. The real valuable money for us is in things like as my colleague Mr Bayly talked about sovereign wealth funds the super funds the buy-backs of CEOs. Those things will all be able to be done without red tape and my colleague Barbara Edmonds made the point that this is intended to mean that there's a 30 percent reduction in the applications needed under this Act. That's a huge streamlining that's going on. With regard to adjoining land to sensitive land again there's been an easing there. Because it's not really a worry that adjoining land there isn't the need for people to go through the process. There's also a streamlining over fit and proper persons so that once you've actually got that approval and you've been through that rigorous process it doesn't have to happen in the same way again. With regard to non-productive land I thought this was a very interesting one in terms of the values of the Labour Party. Non-productive land on the edges of cities which could be used for housing is one area where we heard from submitters on rent-to-buy schemes and they talked about how that land was land that they really saw as potential in terms of them building houses. We also heard from a lot of the rest homes with regard to that land. That is a priority for this Government just making sure that there are houses for people and affordable houses for people. So there's been an easing up with regard to that too. Finally I wanted to just go back and thank the people we heard from because it was an extraordinary range of people. I am new to this House and what I was extremely impressed by was the skill of those people the fact that they were willing to share at a level which was not just about protecting someone's interests; mainly it was actually about sharing a vast deal of knowledge. They very much came often from a point of view—particularly the law firms—of actually trying to make this country a better place and trying to make sure that we were actually getting that balance right we were actually encouraging investment where it should be and we weren't stopping people at the door if they wanted to pour money into this country but we were making sure also that we weren't alienating things that are taonga from New Zealand. I really appreciate the insights I got from them and it made a big difference in that process so thank you. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): A five-minute call—Simon Watts.