Willis Nicola; Parker DavidNICOLA WILLIS (National): I find it richly ironic that here we are in the Chamber debating a bill that is supposed to be about improving the Overseas Investment Act framework and it does some good steps in that regard but the Minister in the chair refuses to acknowledge the significant issue we have emerging in rural communities throughout New Zealand in relation to forestry. The premise of the Overseas Investment Act is that investment in New Zealand should occur where it can be demonstrated that it is of benefit to New Zealand and there are a series of rather complex steps that overseas investors must go through in order to demonstrate that benefit. The counterfactual test is to compare what will this investment mean versus the status quo and yet with that set of rules—that set of ground rules—there is also an exemption for one class of investment. The playing field is tipped very heavily toward forestry investment by exempting overseas investors who wish to invest in exotic forests—in pine trees—from those same tests. The impact of this in rural communities throughout our country has been clear because when you say to investors around the world Actually you can't just come in and buy up our farmland. We're going to make that pretty tricky for you. We're going to put in a lot of restrictions but by the way if you want to buy farmland and convert it to pine trees then we'll make it pretty easy." well it's pretty obvious what's going to happen. It's pretty obvious what has happened which is that overseas investors who want a slice of our country have purchased land for the purpose of converting it to forestry and the impact of this matters. It matters to rural communities who impress upon me and my colleagues that they are seeing a very changed environment in which they are living. They are seeing that lands that have been used for productive farming for generations farming and producing food is now no longer being used for that purpose but it is being planted in pine trees. All of that might be OK—it might be OK—if we could honestly say that the same rules apply to everyone but the problem is the same rules don't apply to everyone. The playing field is tipped towards this kind of forestry investment and what rural community leaders say to me is "We are very worried that the current Government doesn't see the impact this is having." They don't see that we now don't have enough people to allow for rural schools in some instances because the labour force needs of this land converted to pine trees is so much less than the farms that were there previously. They're not allowing for the significant environmental effects these sorts of pine tree plantations may have in the future. What I think people hoped was that when Labour campaigned at the last election saying that they would put in some allowance for communities to restrict where this sort of conversion might happen they thought Labour might follow through on that and they thought that Labour might actually see this problem. But of course Labour haven't followed through on that and so the vehicle that remains is this Overseas Investment Act and the exemptions therein. Now the Minister has alluded to the coalition arrangements in the last Government that led to this clause and what I would put to this committee is that there is an opportunity on the Table right now in the form of Michael Woodhouse's amendment which would allow us to relevel the playing field and no one need go to Winston Peters nor Shane Jones for permission. In fact we now have Eugenie Sage for the Greens acknowledging the perverse impact that this unbalanced playing field is having. So in fact the only defenders of the exemption in this Act to encourage mass conversion of productive farmland into pine trees are the Labour Party and I stand in this Chamber on behalf of the rural communities throughout New Zealand who have contacted me and said that it's not fair. Well we agree with them. It's not fair and the Minister should do something about it. He has that opportunity. Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance): I think the irony for most people from rural communities who speak to that member would be for them to reflect on the fact that her party first of all denied there was any need to change the Overseas Investment Act in advance of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership being signed and weren't planning to change it before it came into effect and they would further find it ironic to know that the National Party voted against the changes to the Overseas Investment Act which brought forestry registration rights within the ambit of the Act. Had we not done that there would be no limit at 999 hectares or 1000 hectares there would be no ability to reduce it in the future or increase it to any other number and the effective ability of the Government to deal with these issues would have been constrained. So although I hear the loud calls from Nicola Willis saying "Oh woe is New Zealand!" in respect of this issue we've actually preserved the ability of any future Government to do exactly that and I don't need to say anything more about the other issues. I've already covered the other issues in full."