Bayly AndrewANDREW BAYLY (National—Port Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's a pleasure to be talking on the Overseas Investment (Forestry) Amendment Bill third reading. I just want to say at the outset that National does support this bill. We have two overriding principles: the first one is that we do support the forestry industry and the second one is that we do welcome foreign investment. However this bill is about overturning a change that was brought in under this Government back in 2018 when the Rt Hon Winston Peters proposed quite a significant change to the rules which allowed foreign investors to come into New Zealand and buy up to 1000 hectares of forestry land and to be able to do that with very little oversight from the Overseas Investment Office.At the time there was widespread concern. I sat on the committee at the time and there was a number of Opposition members and parties who were opposed to the change of making it much easier for foreigners to come and buy New Zealand forests. It should be acknowledged that at the time we were informed that the ownership of New Zealand forests back in 2018 was approximately 72 percent owned by foreigners. I must admit at the time when I heard that stat I was very very surprised at the level of foreign ownership of New Zealand forests. Obviously the preference would of course be that we have New Zealand owners of forests but we also acknowledge the contribution that foreigners make. Yet contrary to all of the views that were expressed the Labour Government and New Zealand First drove through these changes and did not take into account sufficiently the issues that were at hand at that point and people knew what this was going to mean. It was pretty clear what was going to happen. Since then I think about 260000 hectares has been converted into forestry in New Zealand. So we've sort of seen a revival from the Minister and Minister Parker was just talking before. This is the Labour Government changing its mind now that it hasn't got New Zealand First sitting alongside it.We welcome these changes because we thought this was more appropriate—this arrangement that's been put forward today. I think if we were back in 2018 we would no doubt have supported these changes. The principal reason put forward by the Minister last night during the committee of the whole House was that it was an open country for forests without making some change back in 2018. So we went from what the Minister described as a situation where there was very little approval process around forestry registration to an extreme case where we allowed foreigners to come and buy up to 1000 hectares of farmland and convert it to forests. We are concerned about making sure that we do have the right trees in the right place as the Minister said in his concluding comments. It was interesting that the Hon Stuart Nash contributed to the debate last night and spoke about a farm in I think the Tukituki electorate when he was a younger person prior to entering politics and he spoke about a beautiful farm where the farmer had planted unproductive parts of the land and planted those in forests which was very good and kept the productive parts and claimed that there was no decrease in the stock units on that property.As I said last night no one in this House would have any issue with that. Under the previous arrangement I suspect that farm may no longer be a farm as it was then; it could quite possibly now be planted in trees—and of course the attendant issues that come with the loss of community not just of people but also the wider impacts on schooling arrangements transport arrangements; all that goes with it. So that is why we were very keen at that stage in 2018 and why we are supporting this bill because we think it's about balance making sure that we do end up with a viable thriving forestry industry. But we want to make sure our agriculture and our productive lands are supported and have the opportunity to continue because agriculture is by far the biggest component of our exports and without it we would have been in trouble particularly during the last 2½ years of the COVID crisis. So this bill introduces a more beefed-up test if a foreigner is wishing to convert land to forestry. It's a benefit to New Zealand" test. We asked the Minister about it last night—about what that test involves; whether in fact it involved a counterfactual—but essentially what it means is that the foreign investor has to demonstrate that there are superior benefits from converting that to forest land. It's closer to what a foreigner would have to go through if they were buying land for land purposes. It is certainly not the same level of scrutiny but it's certainly a much tougher level of scrutiny that foreigners have to go through.I think the other thing is the issue around this target of one billion trees—a silly mantra that Shane Jones used to say in this House about achieving one billion trees to be planted in New Zealand per annum of which of course back then we were planting about 500000 a year. So all this was his mantra about pushing this piece of legislation through and I think hindsight has shown that it was poorly thought-through and resulted in some cases in inappropriate investment. None the less I think where we are this afternoon is a good place. One of the big issues we have is that we want to make sure that foreign firms who do seek to convert farmland who go through this process get a proper showing by the Overseas Investment Office. We want to make sure that that processing is done in a timely manner that they get a fair chance at it because we don't want to unnecessarily restrict people investing but we want to make sure that there is a proper process and they're not unduly held up. So on that note I know many of my colleagues are going to talk to the bill but we will be supporting the bill as we think ultimately it will lead to a better outcome better balance between a thriving forestry industry and supporting our agricultural pastoral farms in New Zealand which have played such a crucial part to New Zealand over our history and currently in terms of the extent of their exports. Thank you very much."