Peck Mark: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Peck Mark: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21544] 
MARK PECK (Labour—Invercargill) 
: 
 The National whips have played three extraordinarily cruel hoaxes on Pansy Wong. The first is that they forgot to tell her she is voting for the bill. The second is that they forgot to tell her that the tax cuts National is promising will not really be tax cuts. The third escapes me for now. I think it had something to do with whether there is lunch in the box. They were cruel hoaxes indeed and I felt sorry for the member being so badly treated in that respect. 
The Overseas Investment Bill is quite an important bill because it seeks to do a couple of very important things. First of all it seeks to protect the interests of New Zealanders in terms of their access to waterways and their enjoyment of what we see as our birthright the Queen’s Chain. But at the same time it seeks to encourage overseas investment. One of the reasons it does that is that we rely on overseas investment for our economic prosperity. Pansy Wong and others who have expressed such moral outrage in this debate have forgotten that until we get ourselves as a nation into a situation of being good savers we will rely on overseas investment for much of our prosperity. It is as simple as that. For Pansy Wong and others to stand in this House and say that giving people a tax cut will encourage savings is just so much cant. It simply is not true. 
Darren Hughes 
: It’s baloney! 
MARK PECK 
: As the honourable member for Otaki says it is baloney. It just will not happen. Indeed as everybody in this House knows any signalling of major tax cuts will be met by the response of the Governor of the Reserve Bank putting interest rates up in order to dampen down demand so that inflation remains under control. Anybody with a skerrick of economic understanding knows that. Even John Key knows it. He was the one who said to Don Brash that he cannot introduce tax cuts in a mini-Budget after Christmas; it will take 9 years. National has ramped up the expectations of the public that there will be huge tax cuts when we know irrespective of the issues— 
Deborah Coddington 
: I raise a point of order Madam Speaker. I thought we were debating the Overseas Investment Bill. 
Madam SPEAKER 
: Yes that is a good point. Would the member please stick to the bill. 
MARK PECK 
: I think I have made my point about the economic contribution of overseas investment but I do wish to raise another point about the need to do something through this bill to protect the interests of New Zealanders. At the same time as we are doing that we see the orange ribbon campaign going on. I find that quite fascinating. I am getting the wind-up from the whip; I think he wants me to do a better job of this. Those who have raised that issue cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that we cannot provide access over land to the marginal strips and at the same time say that we need overseas investment as well. There are some fascinating issues in this debate but I will take the whip’s advice and let others who wish to contribute to it do so.