Sage Eugenie; Rurawhe AdrianHon EUGENIE SAGE (Green): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Thank you. I'm pleased to take a call on behalf of the Green Party on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). Can I start by taking issue with some of the comments by Nicola Grigg—David Seymour: Willis.Hon EUGENIE SAGE: —Willis sorry; thank you Mr Seymour: Nicola Willis—in terms of the fact that the National Party supposedly is very supportive and has the back of the rural community. One of the first things that the Government did in the last term was amend the ministerial directive to the Overseas Investment Office in relation to rural land. Under the former National Government the provisions in the overseas investment legislation around a requirement for screening and consent for rural land above 5 hectares had so many loopholes that you could drive a truck through them. One of the key loopholes was that the ministerial directive by the former National Government was that the substantial and identifiable benefit test only applied to large farms which could be several times larger than a standard dairy farm. The previous Government sent a directive to the office for the overseas investment changing that. What this bill does is embeds those provisions around rural land in the legislation so it's not just relying on a ministerial letter and it means that any future Government will need to come back to this House rather than the Minister of Finance simply changing a letter. As other speakers have noted one of the other key changes in the legislation is around the counterfactual test. That counterfactual test arose from the courts in the Crafar cases. It was built really on the analytical framework that the Commerce Commission use when assessing anti-competitive behaviour. A counterfactual test is quite hypothetical because the decision makers under the Overseas Investment Act had to consider what would be the benefits to New Zealand of the status quo and what would occur with the investment and without the investment. It got to be quite hypothetical and somewhat divorced from reality. This bill in simplifying the test to what it will be before the potential overseas investment and what it would be after the proposed overseas investment is actually a clearer framework and a clearer criteria for Ministers and the Overseas Investment Office to make decisions on applications.So that is a significant improvement as is rather than having over 20 factors to determine whether there is a benefit to New Zealand shrinking those down and making them much clearer. We can have overseas investment in Aotearoa New Zealand if it provides a substantial benefit to New Zealand; if it creates new productive assets; if there aren't significant impacts; if there is significant participation by New Zealanders; and if there is a significant increase in added-value processing. So it's those sorts of issues that then are front of mind and that's one of the reasons that the Green Party is supporting the bill. It's also supporting the bill because there have been changes around where an overseas investor is applying to take water for water bottling or extract significant quantities of water where in that instance because of the public concern about this issue there has to be an assessment of sustainability. Other speakers might say that those issues are normally dealt with under the Resource Management Act but in terms of water it is a common asset; there is significant public concern about overseas water-bottlers taking our water and exporting it; and there is no resource rental so there's no commercial return to New Zealanders. There's also additional consideration of Māori cultural values and what impact the investment would have on those.One of the areas that we're disappointed in is that Government did not see fit to support the Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that I put forward on behalf of the Green Party around forestry to make sure that forestry was on a level playing field with other applications to purchase land by overseas companies. We've seen significant investment by overseas companies—over some decades now—in the New Zealand forestry sector. In fact about 70 percent of the forestry industry is overseas owned. We are not objecting to forestry per se—the National Party says the same but it does seem to be objecting to forestry as a land use. What we wanted was that those forestry companies when they are buying farmland have to establish that there was a significant benefit and that might be that there was significant added-value processing requirements around supplying timber to processing companies in Aotearoa New Zealand rather than so many of our logs sitting on our wharves and being exported in raw form. I hope that the Minister does ask officials in Treasury to look more closely at that so that we are not seeing the overall alienation of farmland for significant forestry investments.One of the other changes that is of benefit is the fact that the good character test has a lot more clarity around it. It goes to factors around things like criminal offences. There's also an ability to take into account an applicant's tax payment record and if there has been unpaid tax to take that into account. So there's quite a lot of enhancement around tax disclosures.The other changes that Dr Duncan Webb noted were around the issue of where there are changes in the level of ownership—shareholder creep I think it's been called—so that where the shareholding just increases slightly that is no longer a factor which triggers an application under the Act. Instead it is where that ownership by overseas persons passes defined thresholds which match those in the Companies Act in terms of the ability of the shareholder to block resolutions and the like—25 percent 50 percent and 70 percent. That provides greater clarity and will mean that the office is not burdened with considering applications that it doesn't really need to. One of the other key measures is around the urgent measures test which Barbara Edmonds talked to. It was really helpful that this legislation was going through as a backstop to the measures which Government had to put in place around urgent measures in relation to COVID because of that concern that we would get vulnerable New Zealand companies—because of the impacts of COVID: loss of business—being bought up by overseas interests putting in place a strong regime around national interest and greater ministerial assessment. This bill in following along behind has allowed that regime to be adjusted still giving the Government the power to screen some of those transactions where they breach our national interest thresholds. So while we are disappointed by the lack of the forestry SOP there are a number of other changes which have significantly improved the legislation and the Green Party will be supporting it.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Members it's come time for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break. The House will resume at 7 p.m.Sitting suspended from 6.02 p.m. to 7 p.m.