Upston LouiseHon LOUISE UPSTON (Minister for Land Information): E Te Tiamana e te whānau o Te Pāremata o Aotearoa tēnei aku mihi mahana ki a tātou katoa i roto i Te Wiki o Te Reo Māori kia ora huihui tātou katoa.[Mr Chairman and the family of the Parliament of New Zealand my warm accolades to us all in Māori Language Week and so welcome to us all gathered here.]I am delighted to stand and speak in this Estimates debate and outline some of the work of Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) for the 2016-17 year. Land information is one those portfolios that is fascinating in its breadth and in the scope of the work that it undertakes whether it is charting the ocean floor whether it is the maps that we use to get around the country or whether it is some of the more interesting technical work it is doing currently with elevation data and things like light detection and ranging (LiDAR). I thought I would take just a few moments to talk about some of the quite innovative and not just life-changing work that Land Information does. Its work is important not just to us as a country economically. It is becoming increasingly important in terms of our protection from threatening earthquakes and flood incidents for example with the data that Land Information has. I thought I would just use the time to outline some of the work and focus for the year ahead. One of them is the vertical datum. LINZ has completed a 5-year project to improve our datum which is a reference for measuring the height of land and its features. So as a result of this work planners and surveyors and engineers now have a consistent reference for measuring heights accurate to 3 centimetres. So in terms of flood risk which I am sure the Committee will accept is a challenge that we are facing in the years ahead it makes it easier for local authorities to share information about risk and ensure that vital infrastructure can be managed. The LiDAR programme and the LiDAR data is three-dimensional information. So this is work again that central government is doing in partnership with local government that makes it more effective and more efficient for all of our citizens. It will help us to respond more quickly to natural disasters such as flooding but also can look at greater productivity in forestry and agriculture which is of course incredibly important to those across the primary industries. We know how important the primary industries are to New Zealand. We know how important it will be if we look at the 50000 new jobs expected in the sector between now and the year 2025 and using data using evidence to inform decisions and to enable businesses to grow up and down this country is fundamental. I wanted to talk about some of the other areas that Land Information is involved with. One of them is clearly around pest management. In this Budget one of the areas of focus for the Government is on wilding conifer control and Land Information is a contributing partner in that work. And for those of you who for work or play access our lakes weed control is another aspect that Land Information will continue to work in. Those are the kinds of nuts and bolts things of Land Information. The area that I think has the greatest opportunity to transform our country's economy is in the vital work that Land Information does in open data. Hopefully some of you will have come along to the open data showcase that we held here in Parliament. This is greater use and access of public data to enable three domains really. The first domain is greater decision-making both in local councils and in central government. It also enables the greater level of data that is shared across the country and a greater participation and engagement with civil society which I think is a fundamental part of making our country work better. The third aspect of open data is the opportunity it creates for new businesses and for businesses to crop up and grow. Just recently I had the opportunity to visit one of those companies that displayed here in Parliament a company called ThunderMaps. It also has an office in Europe—in Sweden—and does work across the European Union. So I am really proud of the focus and the funding that we invest in Land Information in open data. It is a critical part of how we grow our country how we enable citizens to participate through civil society and how to ensure that our decision making is based on good data. An example of that is the aggregate data that Land Information collects and provides to the Inland Revenue Department every time any property in New Zealand is sold. So for every single transaction—whether it is a house a bare section a commercial property or a farm—we collect the Inland Revenue number and the data associated with the tax residency when that property transaction occurs. In the first 6 months 3 percent of every single transaction for property was associated with a person who had an overseas tax residency. So this data is really important in terms of informing future housing policy. Although we have got only the first 6 months so far—the next quarter will be due out later this month—my firm belief is that at the end of the 12 months of the first collection this is hard evidence and hard data that our Government will be using to drive greater decision making and greater policy around housing. So this is a Government that is not just plucking names or figures out of the air. We will make our decisions based on hard data. I did also want to touch on one of the other areas that is of course important to New Zealand and that is of course Smart Cities - Smart Nation technology. This is another area that is perhaps quite invisible to the general public in terms of the important work that Land Information does. This is the ability to have sensing technologies that are used in partnership with local government to monitor things like water quality traffic and pedestrian movements and to actually look at hazards in cities—whether it is people who are living on the streets or people who are causing trouble in particular areas—that cause a safety issue for members of the community. It is a project that LINZ is leading in association with Auckland Wellington and Christchurch city councils and it really is transformative in terms of the ability to use real-time data to react to provide assistance and support and to make decisions. The final aspect that I do want to touch on is the Overseas Investment Office. Our Government is very clear that foreign investment is critical in terms of growing our economy. There would not be a member in this House who could not look at an example in their own area of where a business has changed hands or been supported where new technology has come into their neighbourhood and there has been the creation of jobs. I will also want to put on record that in some cases these transactions are not about just the creation of new jobs. In some cases they save jobs. Some of the transactions that come before the Overseas Investment Office are situations where if the application was not approved it could mean the loss of 100 200 or 300 jobs in a local community. But I am clear that the way the applications work—the office considers 23 criteria in terms of whether or not the application or the proposal would benefit New Zealanders; that is the key part of it—there has to be a substantial and identifiable benefit to New Zealand. Whether it is a business changing hands of over $100 million—in some cases they are part of a multinational global transaction of which New Zealand is a small bit-part player. In other instances it is the opportunity to introduce technology to New Zealand that otherwise would not be here. The fees review for the Overseas Investment Office that came into effect just on 4 July means that there will be a significant increase in the resources for the office. If you have got a potential overseas investor who wants to buy a business then 6 months is really too long and in some cases what is happening is those investors are going to Australia or elsewhere. That does not help New Zealanders and it does not help the opportunity for more New Zealanders to gain employment new technology and benefits for New Zealand. So that is important work that the office is leading.