SpeechRt Hon DAVID CARTER (National): I just want to make a brief call with three succinct points in support of the amendment moved by the Hon Gerry Brownlee with regards to extending the select committee process out to 15 June. My first point is that in all reality the current deadline that's been proposed by Minister David Parker is nothing but a sham select committee process. To introduce a bill tonight under urgency expect people to take note of the ramifications of the legislation to acknowledge that we're in a lockdown currently at level 2 to submit sensible submissions to the select committee and for us then to have a select committee process to hear them when again we're all in lockdown and in recess week I truly believe that unless it's extended it's effectively a sham select committee process. My second point is based on the history of the Overseas Investment Act (OIA) which was one of the first pieces of legislation passed by the Labour - New Zealand First - Greens Government after the last election. I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee with that particular legislation and we had literally hundreds of submissions. There was a lot of interest in that legislation and the important point about those submissions is they were constructive and caused us to substantially change the legislation. I'll give you two examples. One was a very good submission from a company called Conrad Properties. They argued before the select committee that the legislation as proposed would change their business model to the extent that they would not be able to build the apartments they currently had under way in Auckland because their business model was based on pre-sales many of them to overseas investors and lo and behold the Government listened to that select committee submission and they changed the legislation to allow that company to continue to operate. We know subsequently that that company was a substantial donor to political parties and to one party in particular—New Zealand First and the foundation—and I'm sure that had no influence on the quality of the submission and the decision of the Government to change the legislation. I'll give you another submission that came to our notice. A number of the forestry concerns were concerned that the proposed legislation would effectively gazump the Government's own target of a billion pine trees to be planted—a billion trees. Again and I recall from memory it was Supplementary Order Paper 209 which suddenly came in and changed the regime around forestry and liberalised it to allow overseas owners to come in. Andrew Bayly: 1000 hectares was it? Rt Hon DAVID CARTER: I think it was 1000 hectares they could buy without even having to go through an OIA process. The point I'm making is good submissions come before the select committee. If they're constructive they're adhered to and we change the legislation and then this Parliament thinks it's got better-quality legislation coming through. The third point I want to make is the effectiveness of extending it out to 15 June. We had in the debate on the introduction of the legislation the Hon David Parker talking about the rationale for this legislation is to protect strategic assets. Does the Minister truly believe that there's a deal being negotiated now under the COVID scenario that this world faces where any of those strategic business potentially can be sold and not affected by the current overseas investment regime? The answer to that has to be no—there is no possibility of a deal being done and concluded by 15 June. So on those three points alone Gerry Brownlee's amendment deserves serious consideration by this Government. If it's prepared to acknowledge that the legislation introduced under urgency requires a select committee process let's give it a minimal select committee process that at least is constructive and realistic.