Goldsmith Paul: Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Goldsmith Paul: Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 15 August 2012. Volume:682;Page:4431. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) 
: 
 This bill the Overseas Investment (Restriction on Foreign Ownership of Land) Amendment Bill is enlightening. We have seen Mr Norman make a great effort to appear more reasonable and focused on the economy and he has been sensitive to the charge that the Greens are merely watermelons—green on the outside and red in the middle. He is focused on the economy in all of his questions he looks serious and he evinces great concern about the economy. That is very good and I applaud it in many ways. 
But this bill shows us the Greens’ true colours—its raging unreconstructed closed-economy piece of policy. It is anti-growth it is based on fear—like most of what the Green Party is doing—feeding on fear that the world is about to implode and that all sorts of foreigners are going to come in and take our land. It is based on fear. It is about wrapping New Zealand up in a cocoon of protection and regulation and I am against it. 
The basic effect of this bill would be to stop virtually all foreign investment in land. Anything could be described as sensitive. This is a party that stood under the campaign slogan in 2011 that it was For a Richer New Zealand. Well what a joke. You actually have to earn a living in this world and by closing our borders and sealing the borders as this bill would do we are not going to get very far. 
It is a good job that Mr Norman and the Greens were not around in the 19th century because nobody would have come to this country the country would not have developed it would not have happened if you did not have the ability for people to come from overseas and buy property and invest in it. This country—this economy—has been built on men and women from distant lands coming and investing their money in businesses and in land in this country. Some remained overseas and their capital built enterprises and developed the land providing jobs for locals and improving the productivity of this country. That is how we grew as a country. More often than not once they had made that investment they decided eventually to settle here with their families and that is how New Zealand made its progress. 
So I am not surprised that the Greens have come up with a bill like this but I am shocked however to see that the once-proud Labour Party is supporting this bill as well. Mike Moore would be turning in—well not his grave; he has not got there yet—his bed in Washington DC right at the moment at the thought that his party the Labour Party which once stood for free markets and for being open and for free trade has now given in to pusillanimous me-too-ism following the Greens in this to the bottom. 
Let us run through some of the arguments of why foreign investment is good for the economy. Small high-productivity economies rely on international connections of people of capital of trade and of ideas. All those things are linked. With the money come the people the ideas and the opportunity for trade. That is what foreign investment is all about. We do not have to be terrified of foreigners. Look at the wonderful things that people like Julian Robertson have done for New Zealand. They have come in bought farms invested in vineyards and golf courses fallen in love with the country and started donating great paintings to the art gallery and there are many such stories. These are not people to be afeard of. Foreign investment greatly helps to add to the overall dynamism and diversity in a society and it is not something we need to be afraid of. 
Of course the system proposed by this bill would—where it is talking vaguely about sensitive land—be so capricious and so hazardous that no one in their right mind would consider coming to New Zealand and investing in this land in that environment. A second area of course is that a growing economy needs investment and New Zealand has always needed capital since the start of European settlement. We have imported capital. We are a young growing economy still. That is nothing to be ascared of. What we see here is a bill from a party that does not want growth is anti-growth and there is nothing to be commended in that. 
It is worth remembering too—sorry I slipped off the step; I was getting carried away there—that foreign direct investment tends to lead to higher wages. Let me explain. I would just like to say that this bill has all the intellectual coherence of the speech that we heard from the leader of the Labour Party yesterday. I just want to quote the leader— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch) 
: I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member but his time has expired. You should not have fallen off the perch.