Patterson MarkMARK PATTERSON (NZ First): It is a pleasure—an absolute pleasure actually—to get up and speak to this third reading of the Overseas Investment Amendment Bill. This is core New Zealand First policy and we are proud to accept that challenge from the member that has just got down the Rt Hon David Carter. We absolutely make no apology for that. Our first founding principle is to put the interests of New Zealanders first and this bill does exactly that. This at its core is about the ability of New Zealanders to own their own home. I will commend Minister Parker on bringing this bill forward shepherding it through the House. Actually before it got to the House he did something the Opposition said we couldn't do. When they were in Government when Todd McClay was roaming around he said we couldn't do this it was against all our trade deals and we could not enact this policy. Well guess what? We are he did—he absolutely did and it took him about two days to work out how to do it—and here we are on the third reading of this bill about to enact this legislation.Owning your own home is the foundation of this society. Sir Keith Holyoake the great National Party Prime Minister used to talk about New Zealand being a property-owning democracy. It is the core founding fundamental to have a family—your home is your castle. Even if you haven't got a family it's your sanctuary it's your place where you can be you and where you can express yourself and just be a participating member of society without having to worry about being at the whim of a landlord. It's an absolutely core fundamental to bring out the family and the foundation of our society.I dwell on the teachers that I saw out there today in front of Parliament protesting in support of their wage claim as they have been neglected over the previous Government's term. I heard on Radio New Zealand this morning a representative from the teachers saying that a starting wage for a teacher after—what is it?—three or maybe even four years' training is $47000. A senior teacher—like my sister a primary school teacher—earns $75000. So how does that equate to house prices in Auckland our biggest city where a third of our people live and where the majority of this issue occurs—a million dollars. They are even for a senior teacher 12 or 13 times their wage. That is extraordinary. That is the issue that we are trying to address with this piece of legislation.It's not the only lever. I know it's been expressed that it's not the silver bullet and it's not. But when you're in a Government in this situation with those people like the teachers out there unable to get on a housing ladder you pull every lever in your arsenal—every last one. We are doing other things. The KiwiBuild programme: 100000 affordable houses. We've got reforms to the Resource Management Act coming up. The Tax Working Group is looking at various options—the extension of the brightline test for example. We are doing other things. This is one part of a measure but it is an important part none the less.It is symbolic as Mr Carter mentioned before. Why should you be able to get off a plane in Māngere and go out and buy a house or two or ten like people were doing? Why should you be able to do that when the citizens of this country in the extreme circumstances of this issue were living in garages and in cars? Look we had to do what we had to do on this issue. It is the right thing to do and we are doing it. We are addressing supply and we are addressing demand.The Queenstown example that was given in some of the previous readings—yeah OK it might affect some people at the top of the curve but what about those people trying to live there and take advantage of the opportunities and to live in that magnificent part of the country? Minister Twyford has just announced a measure to bring in 1850 affordable houses with the Queenstown Lakes District Council. That's another aspect of this programme that the Government is bringing in. So this legislation has made some changes. It's a provision for a commitment to New Zealand. Overseas participants in the market have to be able to demonstrate that they're increasing supply and that they are providing an overall benefit to New Zealand.The select committee process—I hear that's being talked down a little bit over there but we did take changes in that select committee process seriously and there have been several adjustments as there should be through that process. Prime amongst them are the amendments to allow foreign investment in apartment blocks over 20 dwellings and the threshold for that has been set at 60 percent. And that's in regulations so Governments coming in will be able to change those regulations as they see fit. If Mr Parker hadn't got those concessions so that we could write them into our trade agreements this would have been locked in in perpetuity. So he's to be commended for looking at the flexibility of this.Clause 5 of new schedule 3 looks at the hotel units and a similar type of provision to allow a freeing up of the amendment so that hotel units can be built with the help of some foreign capital. Clause 1 of schedule 5 recognises essential services—the likes of power companies etc.—that may need access to some land that might have been deemed sensitive to get some utility services provided and there are some amendments for that. All of that came through the select committee process so I absolutely refute that that wasn't a robust process that was taken properly.Of course we come to Supplementary Order Paper 52: the forestry carve-out. It has been referenced that 72 percent of forestry is already owned by overseas interests—Andrew Bayly: That's right and you want to make it 100 percent.MARK PATTERSON: —which is an absolute shame. That is a shame. That's not something you should be waving around with pride over there; that is a shame that it got to this place. This is why we've got to start taking some of these measures on housing to stop it escalating out of hand.We've had to probably suck this one up a little bit because we do need to get more trees in the ground. Why have we had to do that? It's because Paula Bennett disappeared overseas she turned up at the Paris accord and she swanned around on the international stage making promises that she had no intention of being able to keep. She did not put a single measure in place to back up to put some walk behind her talk. No she did—actually she did. The plan was actually to send $1.4 billion a year—$14 billion over 10 years—overseas to buy carbon credits. Many of those were subsequently found to be faulty—an absolute squandering of taxpayers' hard-earned money. So that is why we've had to pull this carve-out out. This is why we have had to do it. The one billion trees strategy this nation-building strategy that we will do—we will rally behind this strategy. We have resourced it and we will make this happen. We will make our international commitments and we will do so ourselves and we will do so proudly.This bill at its core is about affordability of housing for New Zealanders for our citizens for the teachers that were out there for the policemen for the nurses that also got a pay rise the other day for the meatworkers—for everyday garden-variety hard-working Kiwis that want to get on a property ladder. We are for them and this measure is for them. This is an egalitarian bill that doesn't look to look after the big end of town. This will hopefully be a step in the pathway to returning us to that property-owning democracy that Sir Keith Holyoake used to talk about. This bill is about a fair go for New Zealanders. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. I absolutely commend this bill to the House.