Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to rise to talk on the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill. I think the Minister for Trade and Export Growth has given a reasonable context for the introduction of this bill. When it was first introduced National agreed with the Government that it is important that we allow appropriate foreign investment into New Zealand but the other aspect to it and it's a countervailing perspective is that it is absolutely crucial at this particular point in time where we're facing an economic crisis that we do not starve New Zealand businesses of much-needed capital so that they can actually fund their way out of their current predicaments from an economic perspective and regrow and continue to underpin the New Zealand economy.We have seen a number of companies raising capital in the current context. The most significant perhaps is the Auckland Airport where it was lucky because it was a listed entity that it could go out and raise a significant amount of capital relatively quickly through the public offer process of being a listed company. So this bill is about how foreigners can continue to invest in New Zealand and that is a very very crucial aspect. Really this is an issue around to what degree we should be allowing that to occur. The issue with this—and the Minister said it in his first speech when the bill was introduced. I think it was Friday last week and here we are on a Thursday. When the Minister introduced the bill he said he was dealing with the issue of making sure that New Zealand businesses were not sold at fire-sale prices because they were financially stressed. The whole concept was that we were going to have these foreigners flying into New Zealand swooping in on vulnerable New Zealand businesses paying a cheap amount and obviously seeing them transferred into international ownership.To the extent that that occurs we agree with that premise entirely. However this bill—and we noted it at the time—was a very comprehensive regime brought in under urgency and the first point is the issue of urgency. But it allows the Minister and it provides for one Minister to have the right to look at every financial transaction involving a foreign party to come through his or her office—in this case it would be a him"—to review every transaction that occurs in New Zealand. We do not accept that premise and that is why we will be opposing this bill because we do not believe it strikes the right balance.We could talk about some of the changes. I want to acknowledge all the submitters—and just to give the context again this bill was introduced via urgency on Friday afternoon. We had submitters who had to present and submit their submissions by Monday at 4 p.m.; we then heard from them on the Tuesday; we've been through a couple of cycles through the Finance and Expenditure Committee; and here we are trying to pass this bill through. This is the type of bill that you cannot afford to have unintended consequences with and it does have the potential to have a material impact on our trading nations and our people or companies that operate amongst those that have free-trade agreements. That is the important consideration around this bill and that is why we are particularly perturbed that it's been rushed through and without necessary scrutiny. We were very grateful for the people who turned up but this should have been subject to a lot more scrutiny and consideration.I know that our view was broadly supported by most of the select committee submitters. Virtually all of them highlighted the absolute pressing time frame that had been imposed on them by the Government to respond to this and some submitters also shared our concern around the inconsistency between the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill—this one—and the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3) that the Minister referred to before. Again this is where we can't get it wrong and the whole premise of this is: let's rush this through. Let's ram it through in a matter of basically five working days—ram it through. If we muck it up guess what? We'll fix it up a bit later on in the next six months or so—probably after the election by all accounts I would think given that we're looking at a 19 September election. So don't worry we can go through six months! In the meantime the Minister has all the right to review every single transaction and the potential reputation to New Zealand as an attractive place for foreign investment—because after all we do need good foreign investment in New Zealand; we've lived on it. That is the issue about this bill and that is why we are opposing it.The other thing was the issue around the national interest test—the definition around that and the call in to powers. I'm going to leave my colleagues to talk further about those things but we just need to get this balance right between allowing New Zealand businesses who may not be financially constrained but actually want to get a foreign investor to be able to go and get that investment to enable them to grow their business employ more New Zealanders without now being fettered with additional regulatory oversight and ministerial approval when they want to just legitimately get on with their business. This bill now imposes a significant barrier—legislative barrier—to enabling those people to go and do that sort of stuff. The big issue is around the thresholds—and I know my colleague the Hon Paul Goldsmith will be talking about it—but this issue around there being no limits on the transactions to be reviewed means that every single transaction must be reviewed and that is wrong. That is wrong because that is a barrier to allowing people to get on with their legitimate business.So we will oppose this bill. We believe it's been done in haste. We don't like the idea of waiting six months and creating uncertainty and we don't like the idea of potentially damaging New Zealand's reputation as a good place to do business because that's something that's been created over many many years of good government. I leave it to the rest of my colleagues to finish off the argument but this bill needs to be reflected upon much more carefully than it has been."