Lorck AnnaANNA LORCK (Labour—Tukituki): Thank you Madam Speaker. I rise to speak as the last person to speak on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3) and in doing so I'm thrilled to say this is the fourth time in a row that I have spoken on a bill where the National Opposition have been supporting the work that we do. In doing this I think this just shows me that the hard work that we do in select committee is working.There are so many parts of this bill that demonstrate that New Zealand is open for business. This bill works to reform New Zealand's overseas investment regime to ensure that we can continue to attract the productive sustainable and inclusive investment we need to boost economic growth and yes grow jobs. But in doing so it's also protecting our assets and particularly our farmland. By improving New Zealand's business access to the investment we need to thrive this bill supports our recovery and sets us up for continued economic success.Now I just want to talk a little bit about the farmland and where National sits on this because over nine years while the National Government was in they made the overseas investment regime more and more complicated while taking a lax approach to protecting valuable New Zealand assets like farmland from foreign ownership. So the ministerial directive letter was sent by the Government to the Overseas Investment Office in 2017 and put a high bar on the foreign purchase of land of greater than five hectares. Now in this bill we're incorporating that letter so that if a future ACT and National Government was ever to come into power and wanted to sell off New Zealand's farmland then we would make sure that we have got the protections to stop them from doing what they did in those 10 years.Now I want to put on the record now that we've heard from the other side of the House how they backed farmers tonight. And I can say that there were hundreds of hectares of rolling productive farmland sold to foreign investment over those 10 years.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! This is a third reading speech. It is to be a summary if you like of the bill at hand. Occasionally it can stray into other related matters but commentary on what another party may have done is not within the scope of this debate.ANNA LORCK: Thank you Madam Speaker. So this bill will embed a higher threshold for foreign investment in farmland. Farmland has significant economic and cultural value and New Zealanders are world leaders in the primary sector. Reflecting on these factors this bill embeds a higher threshold for the acquisition of farmland. In general terms this means that farmland cannot be acquired by overseas persons unless they offer substantial benefits to New Zealand such as the creation of jobs or the introduction of technology. Farmland must also be publicly advertised before entering into an agreement to sell to maximise the chance of a New Zealander being able to acquire it. Now I want to talk about this particular part coming back to Hawke's Bay where it's been very important in making sure that in this bill we make sure that we have the advertising prior to the land being sold. Some of the submitters when they raised questions about applying this to having zoning around farmland we also talked about the reasons for making sure that this wasn't so stringent in the bill. For example there is very high productive farmland around urban fringes in my area of Hawke's Bay. Submitters talked about wanting there to be the opportunity not to have to advertise on areas of 40 hectares or less but in places like Hawke's Bay where there is land around those fringes that's been important. So in this bill we decided it was more important to keep the advertising over and above that for all productive farmland. I want to talk a bit about forestry. Now there's been a lot of talk tonight about forestry and it asks—in here we need to highlight this as part of the bill. In 2018 we brought forestry rights into the Act for the first time. Prior to this overseas investors could invest in forestry rights without scrutiny although they did need a consent to acquire the freehold and leasehold land. Now I want to say that there's been a lot of talk tonight in this third reading of the bill about forestry. I want to say Farmers foresters and conservationists all share the objective to plant more trees in the right places whether to diversify farm incomes stabilise erosion-prone hills increase wood supply for processing or create more permanent indigenous forests for biosecurity or recreational use." I use that quote from the Minister of Forestry Stuart Nash. Now "Forestry is the third largest primary exporter by value so it's important we keep innovating to support regional development drive economic growth and meet our climate and environmental [standards]. … Forestry [is] a key part of our climate change response." Now that's why it's important.There's another question I would like to leave in the House tonight. If the National Party—who have raised this time and time again tonight—continues to say what they do I'm asking the question: is the National Party going to tell farmers who they can sell their land to? Is that what this National Party is asking? Do they want to legislate?Hon Gerry Brownlee: That's what the bill does! That's what the bill does!ANNA LORCK: No no. Do they want to legislate and is that what the National Party is doing? If that's what the National Party is doing then I would like to know that. I commend this bill to the House."