Joyce StevenHon STEVEN JOYCE (National): I'd like to acknowledge the previous member Shane Jones' contribution. I've always been a fan of Shane Jones personally but can I say I was pretty disturbed by his approach to both the select committee and to this House in terms of respect for it in terms of the attitude of passing this bill and declaring that it will go through regardless. We are going to have a subsequent debate about the time this bill spends at select committee but the suggestion by just the second Government speaker on this bill that it is perfect as it is—that it has come to this House and that nobody should be persuaded of any different—does actually fly in the face of the way this whole idea was developed which is strange in the very least. I can remember back on 31 October when it was first announced. There was absolutely no paperwork at that time from the Government at all. It was announced at a post-Cabinet press conference. It didn't have any details whatsoever. There were no Cabinet minutes. There were no Cabinet papers. There was literally nothing. At that stage it became clear that it was a bright idea of Mr Parker's where he could see he was going to struggle with our trade agreements and so he decided to do a little run-around end game and instead of actually banning residential house sales he would instead just declare them as sensitive land under the Overseas Investment Act. Like a lot of these bright ideas that people come up with when it actually comes to show time they are a lot less than they seem. And so it is with this particular piece of legislation. But don't just listen to me; listen to Treasury who are not prone to hyperbole. But it's got to be said this particular regulatory impact assessment is quite damning in Treasury-speak. Firstly it notes on the very front page that This version was prepared for consideration by Cabinet on 11 December … further policy changes were made subsequent to this meeting. The Treasury has not had an opportunity to assess the impacts of those changes." So here we are with a bill that's come to this House where the agency that's responsible for preparing the regulatory impact statement says "We've got no idea."They go further than that actually. They say "some of the design choices may be sub-optimal or have unintended consequences; the Overseas Investment Office will only have limited time to operationalize the policy; and [there will also be] limited time to educate real estate agents conveyancers and the general public." That's the quality of this bill according to Treasury. It's a fascinating little read this regulatory impact statement because it's asked about the problem definition: "What problem or opportunity does this proposal seek to address?" The problem is that the Government's announced it and Treasury says "Well we have to implement it because it's the Government's 100-day commitment to 'ban overseas speculators from buying existing houses' ". That's the instruction Treasury was given. That was the extent of it. They weren't even allowed to offer alternative policies; they were simply told: "Do this. Write up the report. We don't really care that you don't agree with it; we'll just flush it through the system." Now according to Minister Jones it doesn't matter what people say at the select committee it doesn't matter what people say in this House; this bill is going through unchanged because the other side of the House has more votes than this side of the House. Well that is very—if I could even use the term—arrogant lawmaking before we've hardly started this Parliament. It's very strange indeed.In actual fact there's a whole range of things here that don't make any sense at all. For a start the whole definition of the problem is wrong—the whole definition of the problem is incorrect. The Labour Party and New Zealand First in particular over the last few years have maintained that foreign house-buyers are the problem. Yet every Government department that's come up and looked at that—including Land Information New Zealand (LINZ) which has now done some comprehensive data over a significant period of time—says the most overseas-based buyers including Australians make up of transactions is about 3 percent and the most sellers make up of transactions is also about 3 percent. The net effect of these particular participants in the housing market is about nil. So the whole problem definition falls apart at that point.Now I appreciate there are many New Zealanders that think it's a problem which is why we go and get the data to ascertain whether it is a problem. I also can observe or reflect that actually there are some New Zealanders who might think it was a problem in the past. Actually the previous Government did make significant changes in this area. If you go and talk to the real estate agents they will tell you that the two most significant changes in this area have already been made: the introduction of a withholding tax on all sales by foreign owners to ensure they pay the correct amount of tax on their gains if they actually speculate and also introducing the regular monitoring of foreign-based buyers through LINZ and requiring foreign buyers to be registered with the IRD.If members opposite would go and talk to any real estate agent they will tell them that those particular changes stopped foreign speculators—true foreign speculators not just foreign buyers—from participating in the New Zealand economy. Sadly what is often the way in politics the rhetoric is still ahead of the reality. The rhetoric is—on the left and New Zealand First wherever they position themselves—they're still a problem but the reality has long since solved the problem and yet here we are.Now we'll get as I say the opportunity to debate how long this bill should be spending at select committee but there are a lot of things we need to look at. For example apparently because all residential property has now been classified as sensitive land an apartment on the fourth floor of a building is now sensitive land which is intriguing. I didn't realise it was land at all but apparently if you build an apartment you have created land. Now that is exciting. I think I might go out and generate some land—persuade some investors that I could build a multi-storey apartment and we would then have some land.But there's a more serious aspect to that. We want to see apartments built particularly in our biggest city. That means encouraging investors to come in and buy off the plans and in a suburb not far from where I live that's exactly what they do. Yet now they will not have as big a market to sell those apartments later on. That's a significant issue.Then we have things such as luxury lodges. A lot of people investors from overseas—and I note that the Minister for Regional Economic Development glossed over this one—invest in luxury lodges. How are they caught? Are they caught in this process? These are the sorts of questions we need to ask. Then we have probably the most telling aspect of this thing overall: the Minister of Forestry who is also the Minister for Regional Economic Development proudly stating that he's been able to get a carve-out for forestry because forestry's important. We want to attract investment in forestry; we just don't want to attract investment in housing. Why would we? We don't want more houses! Oh hang on we do. Hang on Phil Twyford wants more houses but unlike Shane Jones he didn't get to organise a carve-out for more houses. He got a carve-out for forestry. So we can go and live in the trees. The point is this: if actually there is investment required we do somehow find an exemption. This could be described as the "David Parker (I Get To Give Permission About Who Owns Land In This Country) Bill". That's actually what this bill is all about. There are good investors and bad investors and the good investors will be determined by David Parker and the bad investors can take a running jump because he doesn't like them. And I actually don't think that's good for New Zealand. There is a good case for people having the opportunity to invest but again not in speculation. Let me remind the House speculation has already been dealt to. This is now dealing with people who might live here for six months a year. Those people might want to invest in regional New Zealand Minister Jones but they're not getting the chance to.There is going to be lots to investigate about this rather shoddily put together bill and I look forward to the debate where we discuss exactly how long it goes to select committee. Thank you."