Smith Nick: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeSmith Nick: General Debate[Sitting date: 11 May 2016. Volume:713;Page:10979. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for the Environment): If Mr Little and Mr Twyford were decent human beings they would have come down to Parliament today and apologised to the Chinese community. The gall of that speech from Mr Little to talk about truth and integrity when he has spent the last year telling New Zealanders that 40 percent of the people who are buying properties are Chinese when he knew and Mr Twyford knew that that information was false. It was deliberate it was calculated and it was an attack on one group—one ethnic group—of New Zealanders for cynical political gain.The whole debate has been a shameful chapter in the once-proud history of the Labour Party. I have come to expect that sort of politics from Winston Peters. I have come to expect that sort of politics from the Donald Trumps from the Le Pens from those in Australia like Pauline Hanson and from the United Kingdom Independence Party but I did not ever in my career in this Parliament expect that sort of tawdry politics from the once-proud Labour Party. I have got no doubt that people like Peter Fraser and Norm Kirk will be spinning in their graves knowing that people like Mr Twyford and Mr Andrew Little are prepared to trash the heritage of the Labour Party as a party that is prepared to stand up for minorities and stand up for inclusiveness while over the last 12 months they have used such an awful argument to target that Chinese community.Let us look at the data. We now know the tax residency of every single—every single—home purchased and settled in the 6-month period to 1 April. We know exactly the number—1692 buyers were overseas tax residents and 1695 sales were from overseas residents. Is this some tsunami of foreign ownership that is coming over New Zealand? In 6 months there was a net change of three and that is a reduction of three in terms of the number of overseas residents.Hon Bill English: Were they Chinese?Hon Dr NICK SMITH: The member asks whether they were Chinese. Actually we know exactly—444 or 0.7 percent were tax residents in China and I have already heard from a New Zealand citizen who is an overseas tax resident in China who bought a property in that 6 months and who is a New Zealander who is included in that number of 444. There is a power of difference between 0.7 percent and the claims of 40 percent by members opposite and I ask again: who in the Labour Party has the courage of their convictions to get up and do the right thing and apologise to the Chinese community in New Zealand?Hon Annette King: And when you—Hon Dr NICK SMITH: I know Annette King—Annette King knows in her heart of hearts that this is wrong. I know that some of the backbenchers are on record saying that this was wrong. I simply say to members opposite: let us move forward and have an intelligent honest debate on housing. Let us focus on land supply let us focus on the issues of the Resource Management Act let us focus on the issue of building materials and let us have a debate on the issues of infrastructure but can we at least unite as a Parliament in saying that targeting and scapegoating one element of New Zealand—one group; the Chinese—is a disgrace and this Parliament will not have a bar of it.