Yang Jian: Overseas Investment (Protection of New Zealand Homebuyers) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeYang Jian: Overseas Investment (Protection of New Zealand Homebuyers) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 25 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11318. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr JIAN YANG (National): As a Chinese person I have to say I was simply astonished by the author of the bill. Obviously he still believes his Chinese-sounding names approach is more scientific than the data collected by Land Information New Zealand. From that initial data published by Land Information New Zealand only 3 percent of New Zealand’s property transactions were made by people from overseas—by non-resident buyers. But Mr Twyford believes that this is not scientific enough—that his Chinese-sounding names approach is more scientific and that according to that approach about 40 percent of Auckland properties were bought by people from China. That is astonishing. So we have this data. Although it is initial data still we believe it is more scientific and more reliable than what he believes.So this is Labour’s problem: either it is unable to see the real causes of various issues or it is basically too lazy to find the real causes of various issues. In the housing area it believes that the Chinese-sounding name approach would be the solution and largely this is because of its intention to play some political game. Of course it failed. This bill is just a continuation of this Chinese-sounding name approach. There is no need for it based on what we have received from Land Information New Zealand. It is the wrong approach basically.We believe that the real issue here is housing supply so increasing supply and reducing the cost of construction is the way to go forward. How do we do that? Actually this housing issue has been an issue for many years. Under Labour it was an issue but because the issue was too great and too hard to resolve Labour basically left it alone. The National Government has been trying to address the issue head-on. We have initiated a wide range of programmes to try to increase the supply and to reduce the cost. One programme is to try to free up more land faster. For that reason we have established 202 special housing areas. In these areas central government and local government work together to fast track housing development. Talking to developers in these areas you will find that they are full of praise for this kind of programme although more work needs to be done.Also interestingly that member recently proposed that we should abolish the super-city boundary. That is an interesting change of mind and we believe that this is more rational than the Chinese-sounding name approach. We believe that this is the right direction so we would like to work with Labour in trying to move forward the reforms of the Resource Management Act (RMA). So this second-phase RMA reform will be hopefully moving forward. In this second phase we would like to prioritise housing affordability so we look forward to Labour’s support for the second phase of the RMA reforms. Also much of the building costs has to do with paperwork and efficient council work so it is important for us to make sure that RMA reforms will increase efficiency of council work.Finally I would say that the National Government has been working very hard to make sure that our New Zealand families are able to afford houses because homeownership is important to our families to our communities and also to each New Zealander. So we have been working very hard and I have to say that this Government has been achieving a lot in providing housing supply and also in reducing the cost. Thank you.The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call Julie Anne Genter I will remind people of the topic of the bill. I think the member who has just spoken made a passing reference to it at the beginning of his speech—maybe for about 30 seconds—and then went into a general housing debate. This is not a general housing debate; it is on this bill.