Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Madam Deputy Speaker thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate. It's actually a very important debate despite the contribution from that member who's just sat down Damien O'Connor. I thought he could've done a bit better possibly even got to somewhere close to 10 minutes but I guess he just ran out of puff.Tonight we've heard some of the issues that this Government is trying to solve. However a lot of those are around the housing market and as someone who is interested in the housing market obviously as the National Party housing and urban development and planning (RMA reform) spokesperson but also—Matt Doocey: Long title.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —it's a very long title a very long title; thank you—as someone who has been a keen observer in the market particularly as a lawyer for more than 20 years before I came into Parliament and also someone who has been deeply involved in commercial and tax work for many years when I look at this bill I see a bill of compromise. It reminded me of the Land Settlement Promotion and Land Acquisition Act 1952. Unlike some members in the House I wasn't actually around at that stage. However I did have to in practice in law in the 1980s deal with that bill until the then Labour Government got rid of it. It's very much like that. In the bill as introduced and passed in 1952 the Government had the right to take people's land to use it for other purposes—for servicemen coming back from the war which was obviously a good thing to do to give people a chance in life—but the issue is that over the years that changed.What we heard tonight is that the Government which opposes foreign investment in property now no longer opposes foreign investment in property as long as that property is in apartment blocks and is in hotel units. The weird thing is that somebody who wants to bring their money into New Zealand—a country which they must be wondering if they can ever take their money out of given the behaviour coming from this Government in only nine months—will bring this money in and they'll buy off the plans for apartments within an apartment building. It's up to around about 60 percent of that apartment building we now read rather than the 30 percent that we were told last week; so who knows what it could be by then. They will do that and they're not allowed to live in it. They will do it so that they can then rent it to New Zealanders. So you're going to have to turn up with your passport to prove you can rent something now? And the answer is apparently yes. That's exactly what it will be. They can't live in it themselves but they can rent it out to others—nothing to stop them from going and renting something else though for that time but just not live in their own property.Who's going to check all this? Was there going to be a little army of people running around checking who's in which room who's doing what? Are they there? Should they be there? Where's their passport? I think this is a mess of a bill and it's a mess of a bill because it seeks to deal with an issue that we have found out from Statistics is not actually the issue.We heard the previous member who was speaking Damien O'Connor refer to the 20 percent of houses in central Auckland that have been owned by foreigners. What a load of codswallop. Actually it is 20 percent of dwellings" and since central Auckland is primarily composed of apartments—if you're looking at dwellings—I think that is actually going to be exempted; so I'm just not sure what the problem is here. And they're talking about Queenstown. Well Queenstown's got a lot of apartments too. Apparently that'll be all right too. So essentially the reason that there is this exemption is not because they're trying to lessen the blow of this but because even since this Government has been in power even before this bill becomes law the building of apartment blocks has entirely stopped. And if you sit down with Phil Twyford as I do every Friday morning before breakfast on The AM Show—Hon Member: Puts you off your breakfast!Hon JUDITH COLLINS: —you need an empty stomach for that one. Ha! We talk about issues like apartment buildings primarily because I raise the issue. He has admitted to us that the issue around foreign investment has actually closed down all these apartment block buildings—the building of them I should say. What that means is this: even without the law it stops. Investment has stopped. It's stopped in the very apartment buildings that we're supposed to be wanting to encourage. So it's stopped. What is the message that's gone out to people who might want to invest in New Zealand? "Go away." "Oh we'll want you today; tomorrow we won't." "Bring your money here; we might pass a law to stop you taking it back."?Certainly there was a time in New Zealand when that was true back in the early 80s—absolutely. In those days we actually had to get permission from the Reserve Bank to send money overseas. I can remember doing some research on an issue and I needed to send some money to a university in America to get the—they used to be photocopies in those days or Gestetners or something and I had to get the permission of the Reserve Bank to send over what was probably the equivalent of a couple of hundred dollars. That's the sort of administration quagmire that this Government is wanting to bring back whether it's in foreign investment or whatever.Now we heard today from the Hon Phil Twyford in Parliament something that made all this side laugh a lot and quite a few of his colleagues smirked as well and that was that he said that the Government has always supported foreign investment. Well who could tell? Who could tell? Well what's this bill doing here then? What's this bill doing here? The bill is here to tell people wanting to invest in New Zealand "Hey we're going to have the same rules"—or very similar rules—"to Australia so you may as well just go there." We're going to have more people in Australia. They've got 25 million people; we've got not even 5 million. Where would you rather go if you're going to invest? You might invest there instead of in New Zealand if you were really after making some money. Then you might say "Well what has been the effect of these rules brought into Australia?" Tell me about the prices of houses in Sydney. Are they higher or lower than say in Auckland New Zealand?Hon Dr Nick Smith: Higher.Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Oh they're higher? Fancy that! They've got a lot of apartment blocks too haven't they and still they're higher. Fancy that! So it would possibly be about demand and supply.The best way for a Government to make housing more available to people is to increase supply. If we have more supply—more people investing into building apartments or more people investing into development of property—that supply will start to overtake demand and then we will end up with prices going down. That sounds a great thing if one is out in the market looking for a property. It is not such a great thing if someone's already got their property and they've got a big fat mortgage on it. That's not such a great thing. And in fact what we're likely to see under this Government is that it won't be too long before they're putting the begging letter out to foreign investment to come back to New Zealand please and buy something because suddenly a whole lot of people will leave.We're already starting to see people moving back to Australia after we'd stopped that flow brought people back home and they're already starting to go back. Tradespeople are going to start to go back too. And I think what we're seeing in New Zealand now around the construction industry is something that might actually be worthy of the pre-crisis mode. Construction of housing in New Zealand is 10 percent down on what it was when we left office—10 percent down—and that's after all of the rhetoric all of the money the $2 billion KiwiBuild budget and everything else. It's down 10 percent. You start dropping 10 percent a year like that Government is and we're going to end up with a crisis all right. That will be their crisis. We've already got the State housing waiting list up by 2000—the highest it's ever been—under this Government. This bill won't help any of that."