SpeechHon NATHAN GUY (National—Ōtaki): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a great opportunity to discuss the Overseas Investment (Urgent Measures) Amendment Bill that we are debating this afternoon in urgency. This bill has some grave concerns for this side of the House. Certainly in terms of process it's been shonky. This bill was introduced last Friday and submitters were given until Monday to get their submissions in and be heard. It has certainly been a very rushed and shonky process and we don't support that. We realise that COVID-19 is upon us and it is impacting the New Zealand economy right now. As a result the Government is sort of creating this fear that foreigners are going to rush to New Zealand and gobble up all of our land and all of our businesses. The reality is that we have one of the toughest regimes in the whole of the world in terms of foreigners purchasing land in this country.So the Government wants to really throw sand in the cogs and the gears of foreign investors coming to New Zealand at a time when our economy is dropping through the floor and unemployment rising—going to be well above I think 10 percent or 9.8 percent that Treasury's forecasting it to be. A thousand people a day are queuing up for the dole and this Government is saying we want to padlock away any foreign investment in this country that is going to mean more jobs will be created.We have taken this opportunity through the House and through the select committee process to try and panel beat this bill into some sense of practicality. But our debate our points that we have raised has fallen on deaf ears.This bill requires foreign investors to notify the Government if they are going to invest in any businesses or land in New Zealand. Let's look at a business. If a business is floundering and going broke and it has the opportunity to encourage a foreign investor to come in and prop this business up well what is wrong with that when this business could be employing hundreds of people? Otherwise it's going to fold and those people are going to end up in the dole queue more than likely and the Government is going to have to prop them up.This bill means that these foreign investors will have to pass through a New Zealand interest test. In the select committee we said Well let's try and define this. What exactly is a New Zealand interest test?" It might be specific to one Minister and another Minister might have another view. Officials amongst themselves—it's very hard to determine what is a clear and concise definition of the New Zealand interest test.We get the fact that this piece of legislation will be reviewed every 90 days to wait and see what happens with COVID because it's only meant to run for the period of the COVID pandemic. But there's another part to this that is not well understood. This 90-day period may indeed run until we've weathered the storm of New Zealand's economic impact as a result of COVID. Now what we know from the Budget 2020 when Treasury has forecast we're not going to come through this period of uncertainty. The New Zealand economy is not going to suddenly respond in 90 days or 180 days. It's going to take months if not years and it's going to take at least a generation to pay down this sizeable amount of debt that the Government is proposing to spend.So this is an anti-growth bill. This is padlocking away foreign investors being able to come and invest strategically in New Zealand at a time when New Zealand surely needs it. So that is why we don't support this bill."