Adams AmyHon AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn): Madam Chair thank you very much. I'm very happy to take my first call on Part 2.Hon Member: First of many.Hon AMY ADAMS: It will be the first of many; I can assure the members of this committee. Part 2 largely deals with issues such as exemptions processes and pathways and the like. In respect of that I want to look at the way in which exemptions are going to be granted because one of the things that is clear about this legislation in the revised form as it came from the Finance and Expenditure Committee is there are any number of ways that the Government can still pick and choose the winners that they want to come in and say are OK. For all the rhetoric about those nasty tax-dodging foreigners" as the Minister described them demonstrating his prejudices once more they have created more carve-outs where Ministers—without scrutiny without transparency who knows with what process—can pick and choose the foreigners who can come in and buy. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that interesting?We'll now have this new beast—with this bill—in the Overseas Investment Act called a "standing consent". Let me tell members of this committee what a standing consent is. That is when a developer goes along to their Minister of choice and says "Look I'm a good bloke and I'm doing good things and it should be all right for me to buy land because I'm not one of those nasty ones; I'm a good one." And the Minister says "I agree mate that's a good idea. Have a licence to go and buy the land you like over X number of years. Fill your boots my son." Now how is that good process where Ministers will be able to sign off and just wipe away all of this?This rhetoric—we've been hearing so much about how it is outrageous and undermining the fabric of our society and is crucial. Well guess what? Ministers can pick and choose anyone they like and say "Oh but not you my friend. You can have a consent." Isn't it interesting? We've already seen the first example of that haven't we? I want to say to the Minister in the chair David Parker when he talked about how outrageous it was that exemptions could be created as my colleague Hamish Walker has suggested for high-value properties which might go to foreigners—that was outrageous according to the Minister. Well I've got two words for that Minister: Te Ārai. What was Te Ārai? Te Ārai was an exemption that Michael Wood insisted had to be in the bill despite advice that it was absolutely appalling process to the extent that the Speaker had to rule it out. That was an exemption to allow two very wealthy developers to sell multimillion-dollar sections to foreigners. They were quite clear about that. They were quite clear about that in the submission. It wasn't hidden. And the advice to the Minister was that it wasn't a Treaty issue; there wasn't a necessity to do that. In fact they recommended against it. What do we find when we get to the House? The Minister hadn't even bothered to check whether there was iwi ownership? "Oh" he tells us "we have to protect iwis' Treaty assets." when Treasury had told him that wasn't right Treasury had told him there was no legal obligation. Treasury advised him not to do it—and by the way iwi didn't even own most of that land. What it was was two wealthy developers selling high-end properties on a golf course in Northland to foreigners. That according to this Minister was fine. But if Hamish Walker wants to stand up for the people in his constituency that exemption's not OK. That is outrageous. It is arrogance and it leaves me scared for how these processes will be given effect to.I want to talk about listening because the Minister in the chair has got up and said we're not listening—if we would just agree with him then we'd be listening. I want to tell you who's not listening: it is this Government and this Minister. They're not listening to the advice they're not listening to the submitters and they're certainly not listening to any sort of economic analysis. We've just had a debate around "benefit to New Zealand"—that clause is in the legislation clause 16E. Well I would say to this Government that you can't treat New Zealand like a homogeneous whole. We understand on this side of the Chamber that regions are different provinces are different economies in different parts of the country differ and there are different factors.The fact that this Government thinks you can treat all of New Zealand as a homogeneous whole and not recognise that shows a couple of things. It shows how little-connected they are to the country and it shows how few of them have electorate seats and talk to their communities. This is not about a homogenous treatment of New Zealand; this is the Government looking after the people they want to see prosper and too bad for everyone else. This debate is going to come up again as we go through this part of the bill because as members will know there are a large number of amendments on the Table for the committee to debate and members on this side of the Chamber will speak to each one of those."