Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Trade and Export Growth): I want to talk to a number of amendments that have been tabled by National Party members which are all identical except as to the district and amount that they apply to. The National Party members are bringing forward amendments to clause 4(1) which adds a new paragraph (c) to that clause of the bill which reads excludes land from the definition of"—Hon Amy Adams: It's all Part 2.Hon DAVID PARKER: No this is section 4 Part 1.Hon Amy Adams: Of schedule 3?Hon DAVID PARKER: No it's not. It's clause 4 of the bill. These various amendments exclude land with a quotable value above various amounts within various district boundaries. They're all identical except that they have a different council and a different amount.I want to talk about the Queenstown one because I've got to say there is nothing more illustrative of the bankrupt values held by the National Party than what they're doing in respect of Queenstown. Queenstown has the least affordable housing in New Zealand—in New Zealand. People who work in Queenstown can't afford to live there. They commute from Cromwell. They commute from Kingston. As a consequence of the inability to employ New Zealand staff more than any other part of New Zealand it is reliant on an immigrant workforce. They're willing to put up with 12 to a house 20 to a house to live for a couple of months in Queenstown as party town. They're willing to put up with that. Of course New Zealanders aren't willing to do that. So what's the problem there?Housing is so expensive; so what's the answer from the National Party? They say that we should give an exemption not just for wealthy people but for the wealthiest of the wealthy—the people who can afford to buy a house worth more than $2.5 million. That's what Hamish Walker's proposed amendment does. It shows his true colours: not here for New Zealanders; not here for the people who work here who pay tax in New Zealand who lend their shoulder to the wheel of the New Zealand economy who raise families here who volunteer at the fire brigade who belong to the sports club and who do the volunteer work through the Lions club—no. Those people can be written off by Hamish Walker. Hamish Walker I think you should take a look at yourself. The people in Queenstown—Hamish Walker: Well why did they all submit against it?Hon DAVID PARKER: Yeah I know some of your friends they say "Oh well this is terrible. What will happen to the construction industry?" Well what will happen to the construction industry is that instead of building houses that are worth more than $2.5 million they'll build affordable houses and they'll make money building affordable houses. Is that such a bad thing for Queenstown? It would be a great thing for Queenstown—really you know.So who is the National Party proposing to exempt? People who don't have work here people who don't pay tax here and people who don't visit here very often. They'll build a $2.5 million house it'll be occupied for a few weeks a year and that effort could have been put into building affordable homes that New Zealanders could live in.Now not only does that offend me; the other side of the transaction offends me too. In respect of those prime sites in Queenstown or the Bay of Islands I want the most successful New Zealanders to build them and to live in them and to own them. I don't want them to be outbid by someone who avoids tax overseas. We've got this concentration of wealth happening around the world. Piketty proved it. We all know it. The Panama Papers proved it. Some of these people don't pay tax anywhere. They're the owners of the multinationals who don't pay tax in New Zealand or anywhere else and what does the National Party want to do? They're the people they want to govern for. They don't want to govern for ordinary New Zealanders who work who pay tax and who raise their families. They are there for the foreign buyers who don't pay tax in New Zealand.If they want to come here and live here permanently and pay tax here they can buy here. Those people would normally be able to get a visa to come and live in New Zealand and if they do that from the day they arrive they can buy a house. Indeed they could actually get approval on the basis that they're coming to live here permanently. But no the National Party wants to give a special exemption for the wealthiest people in the world—who don't pay tax anywhere often—to come and outbid New Zealanders for what is ours.It is the birthright of New Zealanders to live in a home that they own and to buy our property. It's not the birthright of a foreigner."