McClay Todd; Parker DavidHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Mr Chair thank you and I thank the Minister as an explanation of what happened through the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) that the National Government signed up to and then an agreement that largely was the same without the US and a couple of very minor provisions in it that went through the House. He's conflating two issues however. He is correct that actually unless the Government had given itself the ability to control various things through the Overseas Investment Act when the revised TPP came into effect it would not be able to do that in the future and so the Government went and did that. We had long debates about that previously but the issue around the settings of forestry compared to other classes of land are contrary to that view. In fact it has nothing to do with that at all. I hear that the Minister has said that it happened because of their negotiation with New Zealand First. But the Minister is aware as is everyone else in the country that New Zealand First is no longer here. So the question that the Government needs to answer in deciding not to support the amendment put up by the National Party or indeed the Green Party who by the way in deciding to take this provision away—one must remember they voted for it or it wouldn't have been there previously in the previous Parliament. But the question that the Minister must answer is: what is the difference between 999 hectares of dairy land and 999 hectares of sheep and beef and 999 hectares of forestry land? Because my understanding of the way that the law has changed by the last Government with the Greens who now want to reverse it—they can yell over there but it only happened because they voted for it in the previous Parliament. So to the Minister the only difference is that if somebody from overseas wants to come and buy a dairy farm of 999 hectares they don't need approval as long as they put it into forestry and they're going to. So all this amendment put forward by the National Party does is say that all land should be treated the same in this situation whether it's dairy or whether it is sheep and beef or whether it is for forestry or the intended use thereof. The Minister may want to take another call. We'd be interested in: is my interpretation of the Act as it is in place correct; and if so what is the difference and why are the Government now not changing it if this was done merely because New Zealand First was there?Hon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance): Well I think I already said that it wasn't solely because of New Zealand First. It was partly because of a discussion that we had with the industry. But other than that the member's description is broadly correct and there is a proper policy debate to be had in the future as to whether forestry should be in there on the same basis as other rural land or on some intermediate position between where they are currently in the law and where the amendments that have been proposed by the National Party and the Green Party would have us. But we're not proposing to do that on the fly in the committee stage of the House. That's quite an important policy question and therefore we'll be voting against that. I would though note that this is not about carbon forests. It was actually intended to be! It's just one of the ironies in life sometimes that we got it right perhaps in respect of carbon forests accidentally. I was always concerned that if we gave the same—as the Minister the Hon Shane Jones used to say—primrose path to consent to carbon forestry we would be giving an inappropriate leg-up to overseas investment in carbon forestry at a time when New Zealand carbon markets were not mature. And partly because of some problems that there have been in carbon markets in the prior decade I was worried that New Zealanders undervalued what we had in our carbon potential in our forests and we might see that rapidly transferred to overseas owners as we had seen investment in forestry per se in the prior decades. So I personally didn't want carbon forests to have the primrose path. Now for reasons of coalition at the time we actually thought we were but then we discovered that the legislation referred to a crop of trees" and Crown Law advised the Government that because the way in which the forestry rules under the Overseas Investment Act referred to a "crop of trees" a crop of trees is cropped just like a field of wheat is cropped. If you have a permanent forest that is a carbon forest it isn't cropped and therefore despite what we thought we were doing we actually didn't include carbon forests—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Oh don't you love lawyers! Hon DAVID PARKER: Ha ha! Well I do love lawyers actually. Yeah I do love lawyers. Chris Penk: The first sensible thing he's said.Dr Duncan Webb: Most lawyers—most lawyers. Hon DAVID PARKER: Most lawyers yeah. So the issue has already narrowed to production forests rather than carbon forests.The final point I'll say before I sit down on this particular issue is that there is also a concern expressed that some forests be they carbon forests that haven't gone through the easy consent pathway or production forests and be they carbon forests or production forests that are New Zealand owned or overseas owned—there's a proper concern as to whether it's too easy to plant them on higher classes of land.This is partly a socioeconomic question. There are some districts in New Zealand where councils want more controls on where forests are planted. The answer to that issue actually doesn't lie under the Overseas Investment Act. It lies under the Resource Management Act and under the National Environment Standards for Plantation Forestry. And we in the Labour Party at the last election said that we are going to address that community concern by making it clear or clearer that councils can have controls in their plans on where forests are planted so that they can make a planning decision that they don't want trees on the more highly productive lands.In truth the statistics show that some of that concern was misplaced because you know not many people plant trees on more valuable horticultural land for example or good dairy land because it's not an economic decision to make but the solution to that issue lies in planning laws not the Overseas Investment Act."