Seymour David: Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSeymour David: Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5248. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DAVID SEYMOUR (Leader—ACT): I will just grab my notes. [Interruption] Ha—ha! I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to the Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill. I have to say that it is interesting to look across at the Labour benches and see a veritable line of popguns sitting in the front row when they have a howitzer sitting in the back row. And then I look across to the New Zealand First Party and I was going to say to those members that it may be too late for any kind of cerebral advancement but let us at least have some integrity. And did Clayton Mitchell not let us down in that regard tonight?But here is Phil Goff who has the brains—who has the brains—but I cannot believe for a moment that he really believes what he has just said. It comes down to the pronouns in the title of his bill: “Owning our Own Rural Land”. And the question is: whose land exactly is it? Because to listen to Mr Goff it would seem that we have actually a system of collective ownership. No matter that the vendor of the land who legally has the property title has considered their options has accepted a price and has decided to enter into a voluntary contract to make a sale. The problem is that this mystical “we” has decided they do not agree. Who exactly is that “we”?Well let us get down to the dirty little secret of the Labour Party in the last 2 weeks and this bill in particular. It is attempting to do something that is legally impossible and that is to identify the culture and the genetics of the person who has the beneficial interest in the ownership of a piece of land. That is what it is really about. And he did not mean it to come out but it came out. Sometimes if you have to say you are a lady—as Mr Tabuteau knows—you are not. When he said “I would like to list the Australians the Americans the Canadians the British and all of the white people who invest in land.” what he was really doing in a rather Freudian sort of way was explaining to the House that he was not really interested in the culture and the genetics of those who hold the beneficial interest in the piece of land—oh no no because he is not like that; he is a howitzer a cut above the popguns in the front row of his party these days. But unfortunately in a rather Freudian way he did not want the truth to come out but he let it out.That is what this bill is fundamentally about in contrast to the history of our country—a country whose history is a history of foreign investment. It is a country that has relied upon injections of foreign capital as you would expect it to being at the far edge of the world. It is a country that has paid a 2 percent premium on foreign capital throughout its history which explains much of the New Zealand productivity paradox. It is a country that as mentioned by the very fine member Brett Hudson—who is generally a socialist but who joins the ranks of the free marketeers tonight—is 49th out of 54 when it comes to permissiveness for foreign investment much of which is due to restrictions that are already around land. The countries that ranked worse than us in permissiveness for foreign investment are countries such as Indonesia Saudi Arabia and the always nationalistic Japan. Those are the countries that are more restrictive than us. To go worse than that would be inimical to the interests of New Zealanders and particularly the vendors of New Zealand land who have every right to sell it to whomever they please no matter what their cultural and ethnic origins may be. What a shame that—