Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Madam Speaker. A pleasure to be talking on the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill (No 3). It feels like we're coming to the end of the road—we've been talking about overseas investment for a long period of time since the start of COVID back in March last year and a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then.I think it's worthwhile just to remind ourselves why we're so interested in this and I think the main thing we've got to recognise is where do jobs come from in New Zealand and where do people actually derive a living. That is from businesses getting out there and particularly their owners getting out there and investing money in creating new businesses and taking the risk and taking on new people to create those jobs. I think we need to look at this in that context of how we assist businesses to take on that risk and to take up that challenge. I think if you look at New Zealand in terms of its investment flows we've always relied on overseas investment. Some people say that was unfortunate but it's been a fact of life since really since Pākehā days when New Zealand has always relied on overseas investment—particularly originally from Britain but now from many sources around the world. That is not going to change.So the whole purpose of what we're trying to do with the overseas investment bills and this is the second of the two that we've been debating over the last months is about putting in place an appropriate framework to ensure that the investment that we get and need from overseas is the right type of investment and goes into the right sort of areas but is also subject to appropriate controls. Of course we have said we're going to support this bill. I think the first thing I'd just like to say on this issue is really one around the key parts of this. And I think as the Minister spoke initially about when he did his introduction there are differing layers around this there's obviously things around water—and bottled water is one example of that—but I think the most crucial aspect relates to the land. When the bill was first introduced we thought it was going to place unnecessary restrictions on unproductive farmland. And it's good that through the process of the select committee we've ended up with a situation where there are and will be exemptions for farmland where it is deemed to be unproductive. Because we think there's many examples—and I've been involved in transactions where deals have not occurred simply because of the worry about issues of sensitive land which may actually be neighbouring to a business where it's got its operations located such as a watercourse or whatever or just some ordinary issues that actually make the investment much more problematical and brings about a degree of risk. People do not like risk particularly when you're investing money. So I think the issue round farmland is very important. There's still one or two issues in the bill that we still have a little bit of concern about in terms of what they mean particularly around better recognition of Māori cultural values taking into account wāhi tūpuna and all that needs to be defined in time but hopefully through pragmatic regulations and also with better clarity around that those types of issues will be in a way that people understand and particularly overseas investors understand.The one area that we did have a major point of difference and we think is an absolute loss of opportunity is one that relates to forestry land. As many of you will know overseas investors are able to purchase up to 999 hectares—that's 2200 acres—of land for forestry rights and the issue is whether in fact that is land that is intended to be planted in forestry or whether in fact it actually has a forest. But these are pieces of legislation that were actually forced through under the previous term of Government particularly by New Zealand First who were very keen to see a permissive regime for overseas investors to invest in forestry land in New Zealand and to be honest at the time we were very very concerned about it. I do note that Federated Farmers have made some very specific calls about this. They note—and I quote here—We have also become increasingly concerned about [the conversion] of productive land to forestry and … overseas investment regime's contribution to this. … The significantly more relaxed overseas investment regime for forestry is just one of the policy drivers for forestry conversions."I think when you look in the context of carbon credits particularly as they've increased in value quite rapidly over the past few months the incentive for not only New Zealand investors but more importantly for international investors to buy very good quality farmland and to convert that into forest is a significant issue. Our view was that this was the opportunity to deal with that. We are concerned about the level of conversion. We would prefer that conversion occurs in areas where basically there's unproductive land but where we see conversion of wonderful farmland into forest we have a great deal of concern. I think it's worthwhile reminding ourselves that forestry assets in New Zealand—I think some people will be staggered to learn—the latest assessment I remember seeing was that 72 percent i.e. roughly three-quarters of all forests in New Zealand are owned by foreigners. I think that rule that brought it in the 999 hectare rule is something that should've been addressed in this bill and that is one of our principal concerns with this bill.But in the main the other aspects about streamlining how investments are approved we're in the main pretty comfortable with those and on that basis we will support the bill. But I can say to you that when we get the time we will be looking at that forestry issue with some scrutiny because we don't believe that the settings we've got in place right now are appropriate to support our agricultural farmers and actually are going to lead to perverse outcomes over time and will increasingly be as carbon prices increase. Thank you very much."