Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Hunua): Thank you Madam Speaker. That's very nice of you. First of all I'd just like to compliment that previous speaker from New Zealand First Jenny Marcroft because I think that's actually the first contribution from New Zealand First all day which given the perspective that New Zealand First brings to foreign investment and certainly that of the view of their leader the Rt Hon Winston Peters I'm very surprised to hear that last comment which was New Zealand First will be supporting this bill. My comment that I wanted to start off with is I believe that this bill was introduced last Friday and with undue haste has been rammed through the Finance and Expenditure Committee. Submitters were provided with a copy of the bill on the Friday afternoon. They had to respond by 4 o'clock on the Monday and then they had to present on the Tuesday. We have ended up with this bill that will be passed tonight by majority against the wishes of the largest party in this House. We've heard some interesting phrases. The Hon Andrew Little talked about We need a robust capital base." We heard the Minister who introduced the bill the Hon David Parker talk about "triage" because everything coming in from overseas foreign investment needs to be triaged because there is a view that maybe it's going to be an issue—everything's going to be an issue—although he later this morning retracted that phrase. I did quote this morning—here we are: we've been ramming though this bill but at the very same time in my electorate right now we have got a really big trade issue that will affect many small businesses that this is trying to deal with and that is the issue of a 2.6 million tonne stockpile of potatoes in Europe that is looking to come to New Zealand and devastate the New Zealand market for potatoes. We are trying to get the Minister to look at that to try to stop that from occurring because we don't want to see our good growers and particularly those in Pukekohe and Matamata and down south in the Canterbury region affected. Yet we cannot—and the Minister is slow-tracking that; whereas we've got a bill like this and we're ramming it through at breakneck speed.I think it shows a paternalistic approach of the Government with how they view businesses and the right for businesses to raise capital and the view that the Government should have an overview of all transactions involving foreigners even though the Governments have nothing to do with the businesses in question. It's the business owners who have taken the risk. They are the ones who've mortgaged up their houses borrowed from their mums and dads—whatever the case may be. They've held all that business risk over all the time and yet at this very moment when they may be wanting to get capital—which all New Zealand businesses have relied on for the last 140 years to continue to survive—this is a bill that puts a huge handbrake on it.So there's actually seven issues that we've traversed in the discussions of today that the National Party has some issue with in this bill. The first one is the issue of lack of threshold. We believe that there should be a minimum threshold. There was actually some advice provided that there should be a minimum threshold but at the moment there is absolutely no threshold. So that means every transaction is required to go through an application process and then to go through Overseas Investment Office (OIO) official review no doubt and then ultimately go through to a Minister—and there's only one Minister of course—for approval or decline. That is a godlike power. That is a divine power. The second thing is the application process. It's clear from the questioning we just had before in the committee of the whole House that the form which the Minister referred to as being a two- to three-page form has not yet been prepared. He said it would be completed by the time this bill's operational in two weeks' time but it would have been good to be able to share that with the select committee. I think also as part of the hearing process from submitters it would have been very very helpful if they could have seen the nature of the information that is required and how it was to be delivered. That sets the information threshold but also it would have enabled the committee that if the Minister is to have a proper intent in achieving the objectives of this bill whether in fact enough information was actually going to be provided. So that lack of clarity around the application process is a second concern.The third one relates to confidentiality because what we're talking about are commercial transactions between willing buyers and willing sellers. Those transactions where either you're selling the whole business or you may be raising new capital as the Auckland Airport did recently—that is a transaction where fresh equity is coming into that business—those are very commercial and very sensitive. We've had the Minister today in question time talking about refusing to answer questions around the City Rail Link on the grounds of commerciality. Under these arrangements every foreign transaction or applicant will have to put down commercially sensitive information. And the first thing that's commercially sensitive is the mere fact that they have entered into an arrangement with a particular company. That in itself is incredibly sensitive information because a competitor looking at buying that business or acquiring or doing something with that business if that information is made public can use that to their advantage. The elements around it—the committee made some changes around it and certainly the disclosure arrangements between agencies and the requirement to involve the Privacy Commissioner. But it is an issue of great concern to us. The other thing we haven't heard about and we couldn't get during the select committee process are the resourcing requirements for the OIO to be able to actually handle this avalanche of transactions or applications that are normally occurring at any point in time. That resourcing requires highly skilled officials who the Minister no doubt will be relying on. We haven't seen anything of that and actually there is no real ability to ascertain whether in fact the OIO is well prepared to actually meet its obligation of processing all these applications within a 10-day period.The next issue is the issue that there's only one Minister. There is only one Minister and under the current arrangement that would be the Hon David Parker who must on his own review and assess all these transactions and make a determination. We don't think that that's an appropriate process. There certainly could have been a screening process and then another process certainly with much more substantial transactions where those normally go to two Ministers to make sure that there is a balance to the thinking. But under these arrangements if Mr David Parker is having a bad day and chooses to make a decision then that is the decision. I'm not suggesting he will have a bad day but that is the issue with that: there are no checks and balances.The other one is the extensive use of regulations. This means for those listening that the Minister once this bill has passed will ask his officials to fill in all the missing detail which wasn't available to the committee and which was not subject to parliamentary oversight. That is all the most important detail as to how this bill will really operate in practice and particularly even the form that people will have to use when they're making an application. We choose that regulation and the strong desire is that you use regulation-making powers at the absolute minimum. I have quoted five examples of that in this bill in my early discussions in the committee of the whole House. The use of regulation-making power is because this bill has been rushed through Parliament and they haven't had the time to actually sit back and reflect on it.The last thing is the potential risk of reputation of New Zealand as a place to invest. We've traditionally been an excellent location. People want to come here and they want to come here for the right reasons but this bill is potentially going to damage that reputation."