Goldsmith Paul; Rurawhe AdrianHon PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker—Hon Willie Jackson: Kia ora. Kia ora. Kia ora.Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: —and thank you Willie Jackson. It was good to hear—we had some comments on this bill on overseas investments from the New Zealand First member Mark Patterson. He talked about core New Zealand First principles which of course is an oxymoron. I'm reminded of Groucho Marx: I've got my principles but if you don't like them I've got some others." That seems to be the approach of New Zealand First when it comes to principles.However having said all that what we're dealing with here is the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill which has been rushed through Parliament under urgency—a major piece of economic legislation of significant economic consequences being rushed through this House which seems to be the hallmark of this Government at the moment. We've had two or three days' select committee consideration. A few people have been able to submit on it and make a few comments but there's by no means in any way shape or form any detailed analysis being done. Treasury has thrown a few things together but hasn't really dealt in any way substantially with the costs and benefits of this decision.So what are we doing in short? Well there's three basic things. One is introducing a national interest test to the screening of overseas investment. Now in so far as that relates to things that may have a dual military or information technology component which may affect national security we agree with that broadly—we've got no sort of problem with that. But how that is defined is actually quite important. Many of the submitters and we agree made the point that the definition of that was pretty loose. So that's a sort of a broad intent that we accept but the detail being rushed through Parliament is bound to lead to disaster.Now why is that broadly important? Because investment is the core bedrock of our economic success. Everybody understands that we're in a time of real economic challenge and crisis for the country right now. Massive debt is growing out. We've just heard statistics this morning saying that we'd lost 37000 jobs in April more than a thousand jobs a day. So you know these are really worrying times for New Zealanders.Well how do you get back on track as an economy and as a country—and as families and communities—in terms of having strong jobs and strong opportunities for New Zealanders? How do you get back on track? Well the biggest thing that gets you back on track is investment—private sector investment: individuals small businesses and large businesses deciding and having the confidence to invest their money to grow their business hire a new person take a new chance buy a new piece of plant or machinery and expand their business in some way. That is how you get jobs back. That is the core driver of economic prosperity.Now if we rely entirely on our domestic savings that's fine. We can do that but we'll grow slowly because there's a limited pile of domestic savings. If we want to grow faster if we want to get those jobs back faster well then we need to import some capital as well like we have for the entire history of this country. Anybody that doesn't understand that doesn't have any idea of how this economy has been built how this country has been built. It has been built on both domestic savings and drawing in capital from around the world to create jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders. Now if you don't understand that you don't have a clue of how the economy works.This bill in its extremity brings in a filtering regime a notification regime for every single dollar potentially that comes in to help New Zealand businesses grow and that is our point of contention with this bill. We can understand the introduction of a national interest test in so far as it applies to military and national security—yes—and we can also understand the broad concern that has been expressed in many countries around the details of the COVID crisis where particularly publicly listed companies the value of those companies has dropped substantially and can be cheaply purchased on open markets. There is a legitimate concern around entities from overseas countries particularly State-owned entities with opaque ownership structures coming in swooping in and buying those companies cheaply. I can understand that concern and the National Party would support measures to respond to that.But surely any sensible person would say "We would have a concern about major entities—a $50 million enterprise or a $100 million enterprise." Yes you could have a regime that looked at that and ran a filter through those sorts of transactions for this emergency period but what we've got here is everything right down to so and so having a small restaurant in Hastings or Eketāhuna who's really struggling has run out of working capital and is in a desperate situation. He's got a sister-in-law living overseas an overseas person who's happy to tip some money in and help get that business through this crisis. Well under this legislation if it was only $10000 to take a 25 percent ownership in that little tiny small business in order to get it through this situation and survive and keep employing people well it has to go through this notification process. The Minister says "Oh it's only 10 days or maybe 40 days if we have some issues." You've got to put in all these forms. Any forms like that and you've probably got to talk to a lawyer or an accountant—it's dollars; it's thousands of dollars. It's delay. It's uncertainty. It's sand in the gears of investment that will drive this country back to progress and prosperity. We don't support it. We do not support it. It is an overreach and a ridiculously cumbersome imposition of regulation and cost and difficulty that will block the foreign investment that we need to grow this country and so that is why it is muddled and confused and is not a piece of legislation we support.The third element of it is giving the Minister all sorts of wide-ranging powers that we don't necessarily agree with either. So the point is that there are elements and ideas and concerns recognised by this legislation that we understand and are sympathetic to. What we cannot support is this piece of legislation with no exemptions impacting every single potential piece of investment coming into every single small business in this country and creating difficulties and blocking the flow of investment that is critical to turning around the economic prosperity of this country. On that basis we do not support it because it will cost jobs and right here right now at this time of New Zealand's history there is nothing more important than saving jobs and creating an environment where they can be recreated. This piece of legislation notwithstanding all the talk from the Minister of Finance about how he cares about jobs—and we hear the Prime Minister talking about jobs day in day out—will mean that we will lose more jobs and we will take longer to build—Hon Member: Scaremongering!Hon PAUL GOLDSMITH: It's true—it's true. We will take longer for the private sector to have access to the capital that they need to grow new jobs. There's no magic about where you get jobs from. It comes from investment. You can talk you can have all the programmes in the world which take a billion dollars of taxpayers' money to create jobs killing possums and things like that. That's fine but they are not sustainable jobs that are created and sustained by the realities of the global economy in which we live. We either as a country are based on an economy that is about creating goods and services that the rest of the world wants to buy or we aren't. So this legislation which makes it more difficult for businesses to get access to the capital that they need to grow and hire new people and support jobs and opportunities for New Zealanders is going to make it more difficult and on that basis we do not support it. Thank you Mr Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): This is a split call. I call Priyanca Radhakrishnan—five minutes."