Rurawhe Adrian; Brownlee GerryOVERSEAS INVESTMENT AMENDMENT BILLIn CommitteeDebate resumed from 1 August.Part 2 Amendments relating to consent and conditions regime for overseas investments in sensitive New Zealand assets (continued)CHAIRPERSON (Adrian Rurawhe): Members when we were last considering the bill we were debating the question that Part 2 stand part. The Hon Gerry Brownlee was speaking and has four minutes and 42 seconds remaining should he wish to continue.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (National—Ilam): I do wish to take this time. This as I was saying as we came to a conclusion last night is the part in the bill that fills out the substance of what is intended in the bill in a legislative sense. But it kind of misses the effects that the bill might have on the New Zealand economy.So the first thing is that I would assert that there is enough leeway in this bill for anyone who really wants to buy land in New Zealand but does not qualify by way of being a resident to drive a bus right through the middle of it. There are ways in which there can be a manipulation of the Government's other policies and most particularly their forestry policy that could see people buy the properties they want. So let's be clear: forestry blocks are allowed up to 1000 hectares. So where are the best properties with the highest value in New Zealand? They're generally at the lake's edge generally at the seaside or generally in some well-respected well-loved inner-city suburb. Most of those will have various restrictions because of the fact you can't aggregate policy there. But if it is a rural policy somewhere in the Queenstown district or if it is anywhere up and down the coastline—perhaps Northland—and there is sufficient land nearby to put in a forestry operation the law specifically says it's OK to have a dwelling there to superintend the forestry operation and it won't be hard for people to put planting programmes in place that ensure that the property can be onsold to the highest bidder from offshore in the future. So it doesn't do what it sets out to do. But what it can do is see some of the more productive land in New Zealand taken away from cash production on an annual basis and put into production that might be some 30 years out in forestry—unless of course they do something clever like plant some pine nuts for example. These are a small pine tree; it's called the stone pine. They grow to about 5 or 6 metres in five years and they're productive within that time. Now of course I don't think Mr Jones thought that this would work but I'm not sure that that would be excluded as a horticultural product. It is after all a pine and it would be a forest. But the goal of somehow creating a massive carbon sink from trees that after five years only grow about 300 millimetres a year is completely lost and also the chance that trees that height might block those pristine views of the ocean or the lake or wherever it is that their plantation goes is not high. But it further serves to recognise the nonsense of not encouraging horticultural investment in this country as well.Then there's the opportunity to build inside cities apartment buildings. People are quite welcome to come in and build these apartment buildings and even hold the ownership of those apartment buildings becoming a foreign landlord in New Zealand—all permissible in this bill; all permissible in a bill that's apparently going to stop foreign ownership of land in New Zealand and make New Zealanders the tenants in those apartment buildings. So we think Madam Speaker that this is—Hon Jacqui Dean: Mr Speaker.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: —once again—my apologies my apologies. We think Mr Chair that this is a bill that just like the last one that the House was discussing before we got to this is one of those pay-the-piper" exercises—the cost of having New Zealand First in the right place at the right time. The problem is it will put huge pressure on the economy. We've seen building companies collapse in the last 48 hours and there'll be more. And that's because of the tightness of being able to get capital. So I haven't even begun to speak—and my colleagues who follow me will—about the restrictions on business activity in New Zealand."