Donald Rod: Overseas Investment Bill — First Reading 
Donald Rod: Overseas Investment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:622;Page:18028] 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I thank my colleague from ACT Richard Prebble for letting me have a call before him. I am looking forward to his endorsing what I have to say in the same way that I am pleased to endorse much of what Craig McNair just had to say. 
It was fantastic to hear an angry young man state the obvious which is that his predecessors in this Parliament sold off the family silver. It was not just one Government but two Governments that sold it; it was not just the Labour Government in all its new-right zeal that did that but also the National Government that followed it. I guess the only silver lining in that extraordinary sell-off of New Zealand’s State assets is that we now have MMP as a result. Due to those two old parties going against everything that the New Zealand electorate had expected of them the public knew that it would not be good enough just to throw one lot out because when the other lot came in it would be just as bad if not worse. That is why the public changed the electoral system instead of the Government and that is why we have some independent voices in this Parliament. We do not always agree with each other but on this occasion I am pleased to say that the Green Party does empathise quite extensively with what the New Zealand First speaker just said. 
And that to respond to David Carter’s earlier speech is not a position of xenophobia. It is not that the Greens have anything against foreign individuals moving to New Zealand and making our country their home. We are not even against foreign corporations making greenfield investments in New Zealand. It is about placing some appropriate restrictions on foreign investors and even the Minister of Finance admits in his general policy statement that “… it is a privilege for overseas persons to own sensitive New Zealand assets”. The problem with this bill is that Dr Cullen has narrowed what he considers to be sensitive assets and that is our fundamental criticism with this bill. 
In effect what Dr Cullen has done is pull a massive swifty on the people of New Zealand. This bill is a complete and utter sham and he is not going to get away with it. The public is wise to what is going on and I can give members evidence of their wisdom in the fact that in the last few weeks I have received over 1500 signatures to the petition I launched only this time last month opposing the expansion of foreign investment in and foreign control of the New Zealand economy. The reason why signatures to that petition are flooding in is that people recognise what this Labour Government is trying to do. In its very stealthy way it is claiming to be saving the facade—in other words so-called sensitive iconic sites—at the same time as it is making it easier to sell off the building and the businesses behind the facade. That is what this bill does. It offers some protection to so-called iconic sites of historical cultural or environmental interest and we applaud that because we want greater protection from overseas ownership of those sites but it also so-called liberalises the foreign investment regime to make it even easier for foreign investors to gobble up the rest of the private assets that are on the block. 
The New Zealand First speaker suggested there would be more State assets available for sale. I have to give Labour credit that it has no intention of selling any more and the profitable ones I tell Mr McNair have already gone to overseas owners. This bill is all about making it easier to asset-strip the private sector in this country and that is why we oppose this bill and why we will be putting up significant amendments to it. We see foreign investors as guests and we believe that guests need to follow the rules of their hosts. In our case those rules should mean no more land sales to foreign corporations and non-resident foreigners—absolutely no ifs no buts no maybes. Land has got to be off the table. Already too much of New Zealand’s land has fallen into foreign control. 
It is difficult to know how much because the Government simply does not collect statistics on it. We can hazard a guess that approximately 7 percent of our commercially productive land or more than 1 million hectares is now in foreign ownership. We know from the Government figures that are available that in just the last few years 2720 hectares of offshore islands 57 kilometres of coastline and 150000 hectares of high-country leasehold land have been sold to overseas buyers. But that is just the tip of the foreign ownership iceberg because most residential and commercial land sales under $10 million are not scrutinised or recorded now. With that threshold increasing to $100 million not only will the sell-off intensify but it will be more difficult to identify which parcels of land have fallen into foreign control. 
This bill is a complete contradiction of the recommendations made by the Finance and Expenditure Committee only a couple of years ago. That committee in a review of the Reserve Bank for the 1999-2000 year made a number of significant recommendations. Those recommendations were joint recommendations as in being Labour Government and Greens recommendations. They included appointing an additional commissioner to represent the wider community on the Overseas Investment Commission extending the application of the national interest criteria to all proposals not just to land sales and re-examining the investment thresholds. Our preference was to reduce them from the $50 million that Mr Bolger had brought in back down to the pre-election level of $10 million and therefore we are certainly opposed to increasing them to $100 million. We also wanted the commission to consider the impact on social well-being environmental sustainability and economic sovereignty when assessing whether an investment will benefit New Zealand and we wanted a code of corporate responsibility for investors because they need to measure up to that—otherwise there is no point in having a compliance regime. 
Quite frankly there is no point in having the compliance regime in this bill because it is a self-regulating one and who will say no when asked whether he or she has complied? There needs to be some independent compliance monitoring and yes it should not be at the cost of the taxpayer but no it should not be undertaken by the applicant. It should be paid for by the applicant but it needs to be done independently. That is one of the many flaws in this legislation. 
Another flaw is getting rid of the Overseas Investment Commission. Stephen Dawe who heads that commission will tell members that the Greens have many criticisms of how it operates and one particular example recently was the Shania Twain sale but that is not a reason for getting rid of it. The problem is that that was a pre-determined outcome. There was no first-principles review of the Overseas Investment Commission. The Government knew all along what its intention was and that was to make it even easier for foreign investors to gobble up more of our assets. It was not interested in addressing issues around the lack of compliance. It was not interested in addressing issues around the fact that there have been a lot of retrospective approvals. It is not interested in facing up to the big issues which are that at the end of June foreign investment in New Zealand totalled $190 billion—up more than $8 billion on the previous year—and that that investment is costing us enormously. For the year ended June there was $9.488 billion in interest payments and profits on those loans and shareholdings. That is what foreign investment is costing New Zealand. It is costing us an increasing balance of payments deficit. It is causing the price of land to increase so that it is becoming nearly impossible for young Kiwi families to buy a farm or ever have the opportunity of buying a bach at the beach. It is making it more difficult for first-home buyers to buy their first home because residential property is being bought up by overseas investors who can get it at a very cheap price and make a very good return on their capital. 
So we ask the public to please make a submission on this bill and tell this Government that it has got it wrong. The fact that National supports the bill is a very good reason why everyone in this country should be concerned.