Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): We don't think that that's a reasonable thing at all. This is a very important bill. Every speaker that's spoken so far this afternoon including Government speakers has been at pains to point out how important it is and I think one week or effectively about three sitting days—or would-be sitting days'—time for officials firstly to get people to submit and secondly for those people to be heard even though we can now do it by Zoom and other such ways and then for the report to be put to the House is pretty unreasonable. If we look at some of the contradictions in the views on this bill today it does show that there does need to be a select committee process. I can appreciate some of what the Hon Eugenie Sage had to say. I don't agree with most of it because I have a different view about what the effect would be of any particular action and I think it was very interesting and instructive that the Minister who just took his seat—the Hon David Parker—mentioned that we have pretty large thresholds with some countries that have been negotiated through the free-trade agreement arrangements. Now one of the things that he immediately followed with is that we think we therefore need some more restrictions. Well what does that do to those trade agreements and in a time when we are desperate to maintain trade and desperate to maintain investment in business in New Zealand? Let's be clear: trade and investment is about jobs; nothing else. You cannot say jobs jobs jobs" if there isn't a big focus on trade and investment and I think the need for the public to understand that the Government is somewhat confused in the way it's going about things is essential. So it is completely unreasonable that we are being restricted to just a one-week arrangement. I'd like to amend the motion by the Hon David Parker in a reasonable way so that the report-back date for the committee is amended to Monday 15 June. Now that gives a full recess week next week a couple of sitting weeks and a recess week to get it back and I think that would enable sufficient time or enough people to be able to come along to well firstly get the bill—firstly get hold of the bill—and read it and work out what it means for them. Just think about what it must be like if you are one of those people in Queenstown—the motelier that the Rt Hon David Carter talked about—with 30-odd rooms in probably a $7.5 million $8 million or $10 million complex. It has no occupancy at the moment but it is a good asset but it has a huge debt sitting over the top of it probably to a bank here in New Zealand and there is the need to either bring in an investor or to sell it to someone who can afford to sit on it for a long time. I spoke earlier about the value of New Zealand accepting the Prime Minister's proposition put to the House today that we will become a desirable location perhaps not only for people to come to do all the business they like to do like tourism and education—and both might take a while—but also to be a haven for capital protection. The people on the other side of the House immediately recoil at the words "protecting capital". That would be awful—a horrible thought to them. But if people find that New Zealand is a place where they can invest that relatively small amount to buy an asset and to mothball it effectively until the good times come then that's to our advantage. Otherwise if that place falls down it will be a fire sale locally and if it's not a fire sale locally it will just sit there and it will deteriorate and I tell you what you don't have to look too far into the Pacific to see a whole lot of failed assets that have massively deteriorated because of some of their particular views about selling assets to foreigners. So we do need to be quite reasonable about this and I think we do need to have the time in front of us to allow people to have a good look at it to understand what it's all about and to offer an opinion. There's a second bill that's coming that's going to a select committee for three months—the normal time is six months—and that's about right. That's a good bill. We don't necessarily agree with everything in it but there are lots of things in it that are necessary for consideration when you are looking at ensuring that you get the right sort of investment in a country. But this thing being rushed through so very quickly overlaying the current arrangements seems to me incredibly short-sighted somewhat knee-jerk and it was almost certainly cooked up by a group of cardigan-wearing officials in the back room somewhere who decided that they knew how the economy can best be protected. Well the reality is it's best protected by protecting the capital that New Zealanders have invested in the productive assets of the country and if part of that means that someone who has capital from offshore is for a time able to invest and sit on it then that is again I say to our advantage. These are the sorts of things that we need to hear in the select committee. I know of one hotel chain that is a massive employer—600 people—and they're going to have to put 80 percent of them off. Now wouldn't some investor that they might like to attract be a good thing if it meant that the carnage for that workforce was not so great? These are the sorts of things that we need people to come to the select committee and make the case for this bill being not quite as good as it should be. I'll go back to what I said before. I've amended the motion so that the select committee reports on 15 June giving an extra couple of weeks—only a couple of extra weeks—to consider it and let's be clear: we're in level 2 now. Level 2 is not reviewed for two weeks so the level of activity that's likely to take place during that time in tracking down someone to invest and all that sort of thing is unlikely to happen. So the pace that's being put on here is completely artificial and I think it's probably designed to make the Budget look more robust than it really is. All the Budget was was a massive expenditure and this sort of idea that "Don't worry the Government's here to help." Well the Government can't do that for ever. It just has to rely on the private sector coming up with the capital that's required to keep the economy going. The Government can't employ everybody and it certainly can't tax the death out of people who of course are getting their income from the Government. This is just so circular; it doesn't really need any further explanation. This bill I think is disappointing. On the one hand we get the comment from the Prime Minister that "Yes New Zealand can be a great destination for the rest of the world to look at and capital protection will be part of that." and then we get this commitment from the Government that "We're going to increase the wage subsidy. We're going to keep New Zealanders in work. We're going to really put all sorts of investment in all sorts of places and not only are we going to put KiwiBuild behind us but we're going to build 8000 houses in the next very short while."—in the next two years. Everyone's going to really sit up and notice that one and take it on board. So it's all these things and the other thing is we were supposed to have a bill right now that was going to make it easier to do some of these infrastructure projects that are going to employ thousands of New Zealanders but that's gone. Instead the centrepiece of the Budget appears to be a bill that restricts foreign ownership—restricts foreign investment—and it's the investment part that's the worst of it because you can just go through the history of New Zealand as I said earlier and then David Seymour stole some of my better lines in his speech and offered them to the House. It has been since the 1800s; in fact he took it back further. He's a much deeper historian than I am. He took it back to Kupe. He left off the kūmaras though—they were important—and ever since that time investment in New Zealand is what has grown the country. So why are we today hastening the time that a select committee can scrutinise a bill that would be very helpful if it didn't exist—very helpful—for a whole lot of medium to large sized enterprises in the areas that the economy has been so devastated in: primarily hospitality and tourism? So I hope that the House will be good enough to recognise that just a little bit of extra time—just those extra two weeks—might be a good thing. It might be a reasonable thing for the public and also for all of the particular operators and investors in these sectors so that they can understand what the Government's doing. I mean we're going to help them anyway—there's no question about that. They need to know that this is not a positive thing; it actually sets out to achieve exactly the opposite to its purpose. Then I think it would be a conscious decision for the Government—a much more conscious decision for the Government—to say "We're going ahead with it and we don't care. We have no interest in New Zealand's small business accessing the capital it needs from offshore.""