SpeechDAMIEN SMITH (ACT): Congratulations Mr Speaker on your new role. I stand on behalf of the ACT Party and as a member of the Finance and Expenditure Committee (FEC) to support this bill. Just to get back to the main purpose of the bill it was to prohibit overseas investors who planned to convert farmland to forest in New Zealand a forestry conversion from using the special forestry test in the Overseas Investment Act 2005 and instead require them to apply under the more stringent benefit to New Zealand" test. We feel comfortable with that. In 2018 the Government did introduce the special forestry test in order to make it easier for overseas investment to acquire an interest in productive forestry in New Zealand. The test was designed to stimulate forestry investment and could be used in respect of any land that was or was likely to be used exclusively or nearly exclusively for forestry activities including forestry conversions. Since 2018 the Government has recognised fairly that the consequential increases in forestry investment in New Zealand including the increasing number of forestry conversions by both domestic and overseas investors has led to this scenario where growing investment in forestry has been further accelerated by the increased price of carbon credits emissions trading scheme reforms and Government afforestation schemes. So what will the bill actually change? The bill would remove this ability for overseas investors to rely on the special forestry test in seeking to convert farmland or other land to forestry and these will be assessed under the test which is less permissive. Now we do accept that in the real world—the Federated Farmers position: Gisborne is a province that has been hit hard by farmland being snapped up for forestry including carbon only not-for-harvest blanket pine afforestation. The Feds did believe that the pace of conversion in large parts was becoming distortionary and Government policies and incentives were causing this. According to an independent study commissioned by Beef + Lamb New Zealand in 2017 3965 hectares of entire sheep and beef farms were sold into forestry. This jumped to 20000 hectares in 2018 and 36000 in 2019. Only the dampening impacts and uncertainty of COVID saw a decrease to 25000 of farmland sold for forestry in 2020. It's now 14000 hectares in the first six months of last year. So the Federated Farmers argument that the playing field will not continue to be level was discussed and Cabinet had made its decision to go through to the general benefit test for New Zealanders. If farmland to forestry sales will continue to have to go through the more stringent test the benefits have to be substantial they have to be considered by the Overseas Investment Office and they have to address the proportionality of that decision. While the bill is a step according to Federated Farmers in the right direction—and I can understand the Green Party's Supplementary Order Paper yesterday—it is recognised and I have spoken to the Federated Farmers that there is some land that is totally needed to be converted to forests. While it's correct that international forests can't directly transfer New Zealand units overseas they can however sell them in New Zealand. So from an investment perspective it's not easy but we do believe in the free market. One of the things that David Parker said yesterday was that he believed in a market that had a long-term view and was disciplined and he felt that the forestry market met this criteria. ACT believes and agrees that clarity was important and we were disappointed that even though the FEC took the word of the advisers and the organisations we would have liked to have seen a review of the guidance scheduled to this primary piece of legislation so people would have supreme clarity and the politicians would be able to sign off on it. We didn't get that but we look forward to seeing that at a later date. We do accept that the Overseas Investment Office has plenty of experience in dealing with this sector because the number of people who actually invest in forestry whether it's syndicates or corporations is quite small as a universe and we do believe that that's highly manageable. The one concern that we did have is that it shouldn't take more than 70 days to process this from the pre-application interview. We do believe that there is a difference versus the Federated Farmers view in terms of the economics of forestry which has a different returns profile and a different business model to farmland as generally depicted. Forestry applications which are of long-term benefit focus on economic benefits to New Zealand—that makes us stable and measurable to the public. We heard that subjecting forestry investments to stricter farmland benefit tests could exacerbate this further which was the other side of the argument. But we also heard that the "benefit to New Zealand" land test would still impose the same advertising requirements across all pathways. ACT does believe like the Minister that the 30-year investment with market discipline matched with foreign direct investment is the way forward for New Zealand. I myself have a member's bill coming up to the House which fast-tracks investment from friendly OECD nations embracing principles like that. It's come to the stage in New Zealand now where we do need to find extra legs to the economy in terms of income and we should be encouraging sensible investment that is sustainable and which is exposed to public scrutiny that all the political parties can actually see and monitor. That brings me on to the Overseas Investment Office and Land Information New Zealand. I'm not satisfied yet that they have the capability to monitor exactly where the forestry patch network is and that surprised me immensely. I thought that that would be nailed down in the books and somebody would actually be able to spit that out on a computer for us. So ACT believes that this bill balances these competing objectives and we support the Overseas Investment (Forestry) Amendment Bill to its third reading and into law. Thank you."