Copeland Gordon: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Copeland Gordon: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21540] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 I rise to speak on the second reading of the Overseas Investment Bill which I think is a good bill. Probably it strikes a fair balance between New Zealand’s need for overseas capital on the one hand and the protection of sensitive land sales to people who have no intention of becoming New Zealand residents on the other hand. However as is well known in the House a degree of controversy arose around the amendments proposed to the original bill by David Parker the member for Otago and a member of the Labour Party. Those amendments aimed to introduce marginal strips alongside rivers and lakes when land is sold to people who are not New Zealanders and who have no plans to become New Zealand residents—in other words to people who are merely part-time or visiting landowners. 
I want to make it clear that United Future supports the creation of marginal strips in those circumstances and I thank David Parker for raising the issue. Unfortunately however there was a fly in the ointment—quite a small fly but a very very important and significant one—and that was the specific provision in the bill that no compensation is payable to any person in exchange for the marginal strips. That is a very very serious departure and from our point of view an unacceptable departure from the common law tradition going right back to Magna Carta that has always held there should be no confiscation without compensation. United Future was not prepared to live with a precedent of that sort in any New Zealand legislation. 
The timing of this bill was extremely interesting because while the Finance and Expenditure Committee was debating the question of no compensation my member’s bill—a bill amending the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 to provide for property rights in the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and specifically stating that no one was to be deprived of the use and enjoyment of his or her own property without just compensation—was drawn from the ballot. That was one factor. But there is another factor as well of course and that is that the Government has announced its intention to proceed down the road not only of requiring marginal strips when sensitive land is sold to overseas persons but indeed of requiring marginal strips from other New Zealand owners as well regardless of whether they intend to sell their property to a New Zealander or to an overseas person and regardless of whether they intend to sell their property at all. 
I think the whole nation is aware that this is an enormously controversial matter—so controversial that we have farmers in this country pledging to go to jail if land is to be removed from them without compensation. I have had delegations from Federated Farmers in Marlborough on that issue and they were good enough to read out a statement I sent to their recent regional conference. A huge group of landowners in Waitakere City have approached me and literally hundreds of farmers in the King Country and in the Waikato have all raised this issue with me. So the timing of legislation that has come to the House with a bland statement that no compensation is payable really could not have been worse. 
But in one sense perhaps it is good that it did coincide with those other events that I mentioned because it did—certainly for United Future—give us pause to really consider whether we wanted to support this legislation. I will probably talk a bit more about that in the Committee stage. 
Quite apart from the issue I mentioned on reflection I believe that it was actually unwise and unnecessary for the Government to try to force the issue of no compensation. I think that the situation that has now arisen whereby the Government has signified that it will introduce a Supplementary Order Paper in the Committee to take out the provisions about marginal strips from the bill and rather deal with that matter during the consents process is probably the right answer. I say that because I think that during negotiations on a case by case basis it is likely that many New Zealand landowners selling sensitive land to overseas residents will actually be quite willing to allow the marginal strip to be created because they will be getting a price from the overseas purchaser higher than they can get from a New Zealand purchaser. 
In that situation therefore they have every financial incentive to agree to a marginal strip and so we neatly avoid entirely the question of taking that strip without compensation. It can be done by mutual agreement. United Future believes that that is the preferred way forward so we are very very pleased that the bill has been amended to take into account our considerations in that regard. We will therefore be supporting this bill.