SpeechIBRAHIM OMER (Labour): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to speak on the Overseas Investment (Exempt Investment from OECD Countries) Amendment Bill. In doing so I rise to oppose this bill. I also want to add my voice to others and congratulate Damien Smith for his hard work in bringing this bill to the House. I think sometimes we have to acknowledge when people work hard to bring their bills to this House. We don't have to call them names but we don't necessarily have to support the bill. So congratulations Damien again. This bill seeks to exempt investors from OECD countries from Overseas Investment Office approval to invest in New Zealand with an exception of course of investing in residential areas. While this investment would still be subject to the call-in regime where national security interests are at stake the bill still has a lot of flaws. OECD countries are not our only trading markets. We do have other important and significant markets such as China and India and those countries are not going to be included in this and that itself is problematic. I'd like to list some of the things that the bill intends to do. The member in charge said the bill has an ability to reduce barriers to investment from other like-minded countries improving the quality of enjoyment by all New Zealanders. And the second point he made is that he goes on to say that New Zealand has highly restrictive laws which put up needless barriers for foreign direct investment with the overall impact of reducing investment and making us poorer. I think that these are really pessimistic points to make because we actually have a very successful trading regime in New Zealand thanks to our hard-working trade Minister who has been overseas quite a few times. Individually he has signed a lot of free-trade agreements (FTAs)—the European Union the UK and a quite few others are under way as well. The reason why we don't support this bill is simply it violates several FTAs that we have with several countries and in doing so it neglects New Zealand's obligation to those countries. ACT is actually a signatory to this regime and the member is of course a member of the ACT Party. The bill would not achieve its purpose because non-OECD countries such as China would gain the same overseas investment access through the most favoured nation clauses in trade agreements and World Trade Organization obligations. So these are all the things that are going to restrict this bill. New Zealand has actually a very satisfactory system for overseas investment which has undergone recent amendments. I think my colleague Ingrid Leary successfully has listed some of those things. So I think this bill is really a waste of taxpayers' money. I would like to mention some of the successful productive investment regimes that New Zealand has. The Labour Party Government is committed to maintaining New Zealand as open and outward-facing as a trading nation. We are supporting exporters in pursuing an ambitious trade policy to help New Zealand businesses succeed overseas. We are upgrading our free-trade agreement with China and secured an historic FTA with the United Kingdom which adds $1 billion to New Zealand's GDP and unprecedented access to its markets. Now as we reconnect with the world we are delivering a programme for trade and tourism delegations into a number of priority international markets. We are also focused on concluding some free-trade agreements that are under way now. Labour will continue to negotiate modern high-quality free-trade agreements which promote adherence to environmental and labour markets. Like I said in my introductory remarks the OECD countries are not the only important trading partners. We have significant markets and there is a lot of work under way to consolidate our trading relationship with those markets. On that note unfortunately I oppose this bill.