Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): Mr Chair thank you for the call. I just want to come back to the real basic premise of this. This is my first example of ideology to the fore backed with very few facts and a perception that there is a problem stirred up in an election campaign and lo and behold we find out there isn't actually that big a problem. Worse than that we were told it was under urgency because of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership. Actually now nearly a year later we are still going through the stages of this when at the time it was heard under urgency—very short time frame for submissions all the rest of it.I do dislike what the Minister said in relation to my colleague Hamish Walker because I sat in those select committee meetings and I listened to the Mayor of Queenstown and 25 other people from down there who said actually they wanted an exemption for a certain value of property to make sure that international owners could come in and invest in New Zealand and Queenstown. It flows on from around the 90 percent of submitters who were opposed to this bill and in many cases we actually rewrote a whole series of things to pacify them. It was like some profound invention that we found out; that the Auckland property market and the apartment market needed offshore funding foreign investment to actually even build the houses in the first place. When we first found out about that it was like Really?" It was like this Government didn't understand the capital flows that were required in a risky business like apartment building.As my colleagues the Hon Judith Collins the Hon Amy Adams and the Hon Nick Smith have said we were building on average around 31000 houses a year—a massive increase on what that was previously. In my view this is all around perception. While the Government may have created a perception that there was a problem I actually think we have completely underestimated the signal we have sent to the rest of the world and the investment community internationally.I go back to my own province and I think of—and some of you will have been to this place—Elephant Hill. It's a winery on the coast—Hon Member: It's a very nice place!LAWRENCE YULE: It's beautiful. That started because a German man found out that a small business in Hastings looked after and transformed Jaguar cars. He got one done; he got another done. He then came to New Zealand; he invested in Elephant Hill bought a beautiful residence. His family came to live there as did all his employees. It's been a wonderful development as has Julian Robertson's investment in Hawke's Bay as has the Craggy Range family in Hawke's Bay.Now it's like—and all of you would have faced this; I ask you to reflect on your own personal life—when you get an invitation to a function or something down the road and it says "To just you and no partner." or "No wife." or "No spouse." Sometimes you reflect on that. If you get asked to a party down the road and they say "Please just you come and don't bring your wife." you don't feel too good about it. The perception we're sending to the rest of the world is "We want your cash we want your money but actually you can't buy a house here. We don't want you to live here. You can't buy a house." And actually just like the oil and gas decision that has a chilling effect on the international investment community.I actually am proud to be part of the National Party and this side of the House that supports foreign investment that supports all the very good things that go with that and I am somewhat distracted and dismayed at the ideology that came out of the Minister's comments about the people in Queenstown and how they were all being impacted on. What my colleague Hamish Walker has done and said—and I support it—is that for a certain value of household a valuable house commodity there should be an exemption so that foreign buyers can purchase them and they're not competing with Kiwi purchasers. I actually support that in my own case because in all the examples I've given family members and staff have come from those foreign investment entities and they are living in our community. We are now saying "Invest but by the way you can't buy a house." and I think that is extremely damaging to New Zealand's reputation."