Parker David: Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Parker David: Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4424. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 Of course the National Party’s economic plan for this country is to flog everything off. There is no more depth to it than that. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: That’s right. At any cost—at any cost. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: At any cost. What is the biggest part of National’s agenda this term? Sell State-owned enterprises. Changing who owns what already exists does nothing to grow the output of your economy. It is true of asset sales and it is also true of our rural land. 
We heard a diatribe from the previous speaker Jonathan Coleman accusing the prior Labour Government of allowing the sale of rural land. Most of it was forest. The Minister was quite correct to say that. Most of it was in fact the resale of land owned by Carter Holt Harvey that had previously been sold into overseas ownership moved back into New Zealand ownership for a day and then onsold to new foreign investors. That is what those big hectares relate to. In any event the lessons that New Zealand has learnt as a consequence of what happened through the sale of our forestry sector ought to be a salutary lesson as to why it is that we do not want to make the same mistake in respect of all of our other rural land. 
There is no doubt that the sale of our forestry estate has meant that we have ended up processing fewer of our logs as a proportion of our total. There is no doubt about that at all. If you want to see third-party commentators who have analysed that have a look at what Brian Gaynor has written about how if you lose control of the ownership of some of these interests in land you end up depriving New Zealand of the full value stream that flows from the use of those lands. There is no economic advantage to New Zealand from flogging off our dairy land. We know this from the analysis of the High Court when it overturned Minister Williamson’s initial decision to sell the Crafar farms. The court said that it was not convinced that the improvements to productivity to production that would happen under the purchaser Shanghai Pengxin would not have happened anyway under alternative purchasers. That is just common sense. 
We know that we are very efficient farmers in New Zealand and that we increase farm output where it is economic to do so. That is why we are successful in these industries around the world. These are our primary industries. They are our premier industries. They are the way in which we keep control of Fonterra. Ownership of land is what leads to ownership of Fonterra. That has been diluted a little bit through the share trading bill that this House passed without the appropriate protections in respect of Fonterra recently but generally landownership is what controls ownership of our cooperatives. Those cooperatives have been very successful at maintaining vertically integrated ownership of a decent share of the profits that can flow from the land. 
We heard some assertion that this bill the Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill is all some crazy economic vision being brought forward by the Greens and supported by the Labour Party. Well do you know what happens in Japan? It has a very successful economy. Does it let foreigners buy its land? 
Hon John Banks 
: Really? Really? A successful economy. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Yes it has a successful economy Mr Banks. It would have a per capita income that is far higher than New Zealand’s. It runs a current account surplus year after year after year unlike the New Zealand current account deficit which has been four decades in length. It controls its sales of land. So does China. What about the land of the free? What about the United States of America? Why did you not mention it? Why was the land of the free the United States of America not mentioned? There are a number of states in the United States of America that stop foreigners purchasing their rural land. [ 
Bell rung 
] One minute? Is this a 5-minute speech Mr Speaker? 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: Yes it is. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Oh right. OK I thought it was 10. Thank you Mr Speaker. 
There are problems with this bill. This bill is not perfect. It does go too far. It says that no sensitive land ought to be sold—that is no rural land at all. We say that there are exceptions that need to be made. For example if someone was bringing in intellectual property or was going to bring jobs that would not otherwise occur then we are willing to look at that as a matter of ministerial discretion. That can be fixed at the select committee. We think that there are some revisions that are needed in respect of that but it is better than the status quo. Those things can be fixed at the select committee and those changes ought to be allowed to be made by this bill getting the vote at first reading. 
If parties cannot evolve their positions as circumstances change then democracy becomes moribund and we might as well not have democracy. We might as well have dictatorship. It is appropriate that— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. His time has expired.