Coddington Deborah: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21563] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 That is one of the nuttiest proposals I have ever heard. How could the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi be applied to an overseas investor who is seeking to purchase a business in New Zealand? I thought I had heard everything! We have heard a lot of things today. We have heard about assets and about how foreigners are gobbling up New Zealanders’ land. We have heard that the Labour Government has brought in this bill to suck up to the Americans so that we can have a free-trade agreement. I have heard so much racist and xenophobic claptrap that I am getting to stage where I wonder why any foreign investor would want to come here in the first place. We are very unwelcoming. People in the Green Party think that the Berlin Wall was built to keep the Westerners out. 
I come back to Part 2 and specifically to clause 18 and the tests that need to be passed before foreign investors can purchase and invest in a business—in particular in land with assets or important assets. May I just remind the member from New Zealand First that no assets were sold. No State assets have ever been sold in this country. They were all liabilities. If that party is to be consistent in its constant raving about the selling of the New Zealand post offices and Telecom etc. why does it not put its money where its mouth is? Why does it not buy them all back take away everybody’s cellphones put everybody back on a waiting list where they had to wait for 6 months to get a new phone connection have the New Zealand post office own all sorts of workshops etc. have $90 million of taxpayers’ money going into it every year and stop bleating on about the downside of selling to foreign owners things that were liabilities to the taxpayer? One could put up a good argument for the railway by the way that it was the New Zealand owners who stripped it and the foreign owners who at least tried to do something with it. 
Rod Donald 
: Ha ha! 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: I just remind the member of the wine-box inquiry. How many foreign investors were involved in that? Not one. 
I come back to clause 18. 
Rod Donald 
: How many of them gave money to ACT? 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: None. How can we force people to share? That is what the Green Party says we should do. It says that everybody should share and it wants to force them to share. We will regret going down this path. What right do we have to force somebody who is purchasing a piece of land to put in walkways? What right do we have to force people to support the registration of historic places wahi tapu or historic areas under the Historic Places Act? 
Rod Donald 
: Demolish the lot then. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: That member has very little faith in human nature—no faith at all. Why does he think that just because he would demolish the lot everybody else every other private landowner in New Zealand would cut down every piece of bush and destroy every archaeological site? Just because he has the view that he would do so that is no reason to believe that every landowner in New Zealand will do so. If we have public walkways set aside and if we allow access for people to go trout fishing and salmon fishing how long will it be before the Department of Conservation with its current philosophy of “humans bad no humans good” bars all public access to those areas? I predict that it will not be very long at all. 
It is bad enough that anybody in New Zealand has to go through the tortured Resource Management Act process to get anything done without foreign investors having to be subject to all the conditions and tests set out in the bill. And what happens then? We have seen what happens when they do pass the tests. We have seen what happened with regard to Motutapu Station where the Minister of Finance Dr Cullen talked about the agreement the Government was able to get there with walkways etc. What have those purchasers got out of that? We can look at the tortured process Elaine Lange otherwise known as Shania Twain is going through in order to get her house built even though she has agreed to put in walkways and register significant sites. We should subject everyone to the same process.