Smith NickHon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson): I'm actually saddened to be speaking in the second reading of this bill. I'm saddened firstly because the origin of this bill was the cynical Chinese-sounding name debacle led by Phil Twyford in 2015. And I hate seeing racism rewarded. I'm also saddened because I came to this Parliament to be involved in evidence-based policy-making. And all the advice shows that this bill quite the opposite from improving housing supply and affordability will actually do the opposite.And I'm also saddened by the politics of this bill. You see when this Government was elected international media aligned the Ardern-Peters Government to those of the politics that occurred with Trump and Brexit. And members opposite screamed foul and said they're different. No this bill is New Zealand's Trump or Brexit moment because it plays off the fear—it plays off the fear—of foreigners for a bill that is all poorly thought-out.Now I was astonished to hear Dr Duncan Webb begin his speech by saying he was concerned about scaremongering. Well let me talk about scaremongering by winding back to 2015 when Mr Phil Twyford launched his campaign against foreigners. Mr Twyford claimed in this House that 39 percent of homes were being bought by people with Chinese-sounding names—39 percent from Chinese-sounding names. He actually only used data from one real estate company. It was only for one area. Whether your name was Lee or Ki or anything that sounded slightly Asian then he said that they must be foreigners. His message was simple and that is the core of our housing problem is a whole lot of money-hungry Asian people and it was one of most disgraceful moments that I have heard in this House.Mr Twyford's not the first person that's gone down that road. I think members opposite would know the history of Enoch Powell in the United Kingdom in the 1960s blaming jobs on foreigners. I recall the time in the 1990s when Winston Peters blamed Asians for crime in New Zealand when actually most of us would know from the statistics that the levels of crime amongst people of Asian ethnicity in New Zealand is actually substantially less than other groups. But here's the difference: Mr Powell was demoted by the Leader of the Opposition at the time. Instead what we have from the Labour Party is those racist connotations now being transferred into this bill. Let's test Mr Twyford's bill against the facts. Remember he said 39 percent of homes were being built by foreigners. Well every single property transaction for more than three years now has been collected as to the residential status of those buyers and it has consistently shown that of the 200000 properties that are bought and sold each year 3 percent of those are bought—Hamish Walker: How much?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: —3 percent—by people that are from overseas. But here's the interesting part: the report also shows that 3 percent of the sellers are overseas residents. Actually over the entire last three years—over the entire last three years—the net change in the number of homes that are owned by people overseas is 1300 out of 1.7 million homes in New Zealand.We're building 30000 homes a year—double the number that we were just five years ago. Does any member in this House seriously believe that a change of 1300 homes over that number is at the core of the housing issue? In this Parliament for three years we heard Labour members saying that those statistics produced by Land Information New Zealand were rubbish and indefensible. Well it's interesting that since they have become the Government those figures have magically—they're exactly the same but now they're reliable. Doesn't that just show the dishonesty and the fraud behind this bill.Then I want to talk about the carve-outs because here's the really interesting part: if we look at those same statistics guess who's the biggest group of buyers and sellers of overseas people owning New Zealand property? It's those damned Australians! Those bloody Aussies! So I want to ask Dr Webb this: why is it OK for an Australian or a Singaporean to evilly speculate in New Zealand property? That's OK he says. That's what this bill says is OK. But if he's from China he's to be feared. If he's American well we've got to ban him. Can some member opposite explain the logic of that differentiation?Then let's come to the next part of the bill. What this bill now says is that if it's an apartment it's OK to have foreign speculators but if it's other sorts of houses it's not. Well I've just listened to years of debate on housing and I thought: whether people want to live in apartments in town houses or in your stand-alone home why would Parliament want to have different rules for different types of houses? It is a nonsense.And then I have to come to the glorious biggest hypocrisy that I have ever seen in this House and that is the specific exclusion for a Millbrook-type development in Northland. How often we heard from members opposite We're not having foreigners building McMansions in New Zealand." They forgot to add a few words on to the end and those were "We're opposed to expensive McMansions except if they're our mates."—except if they're our mates. That is the Government proposed a specific amendment and a carve-out from all of these issues for the development that is in Northland. And guess what: in that development what's the average section price? Oh $4.5 million. So my question to Dr Webb and co. opposite: why are you so opposed with this bill but want to exempt $4.5 million sections of David Parker's mates in Northland. Now I say that's wrong that's immoral that exposes the nonsense of this bill.Hon Ruth Dyson: Ha! This member lecturing us on morality! That's a joke.Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I say this to Ruth Dyson who's interjecting: one of the proudest things I have of the nine years of the Key-English Government is that Transparency International concluded in 2017 that of 196 countries in the world the least corrupt country in the world was yours truly New Zealand. And that is something for every member of this House to take pride in and I honestly say the provisions of this bill will take us backwards because in the standard exemptions that are proposed here we're opposed to foreign investment except Ministers are able to pick out their mates and say "Oh but they're exempt from those controls." Now the truth is that in many parts of the world it is those sorts of provisions that are wide open to corruption. We should have laws in this Parliament that say "You can do A or you can do B." But a law that says "You can do B providing you've got a ministerial exemption." is bad law. And members opposite have form in that regard and that's why I say that this bill is a bad bill for housing. But most importantly it's a sad day for this Parliament."