Shaw James: Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeShaw James: Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 22 July 2015. Volume:707;Page:5245. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JAMES SHAW (Co-Leader—Green): I rise to take a short call on the Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill. The timing of this bill and the debate on this bill is really unfortunate given the controversy over the last 2 weeks about the purchasing of New Zealand’s housing stock by people from overseas. We have always said since the controversy broke that the issue is not one of ethnicity; it is one of property speculation. So it is unfortunate given that the controversy over the last couple of weeks has been primarily directed around ethnicity that that is leaking into this debate as well because otherwise this seems like a fairly sensible bill in our view.I would just like to say that in a previous speech Brett Hudson mentioned the OECD. It is good to hear him quoting the OECD which is an organisation that National dismisses every time we hear a report from the OECD on climate change. So now that he has imbued it with a sense of some usefulness actually it would be great to hear him get in and endorse the OECD’s reports on climate change which rate New Zealand’s performance extremely badly.In terms of why we are supporting this bill it is largely for the reasons that previous speakers on the Labour Party sidehave said. We are in a particularly unusual set of economic circumstances globally at the moment. Other countries around the world have engaged in successive bouts of quantitative easing which we did not so there is a great deal of essentially extra money floating around in the investment markets. There are historically low interest rates in most of our major trading partners—interest rates that are even lower than our own—making capital even more available and meaning that the global investment markets are awash with capital and looking for a safe haven. We are providing those markets with a safe haven for that capital. Because we have no capital gains tax to speak of New Zealand is a very easy place for that money to go in and inflate those prices which is why it is so hard for New Zealanders to buy into farms in New Zealand. We are like a goldfish swimming alongside a whale in terms of the availability of capital in this country to maintain ownership of our own land.I notice that the National speakers have protested greatly at this but I would like to point out—as previous speakers have done—that this Government came to power on a promise that New Zealanders would not be tenants in their own land and yet that is precisely what has happened in the face of zero action by this Government to either collect useful information or place any sensible restrictions on the ownership of foreign land such as is present in virtually all of our major trading partners. So if it is good enough for them we believe it is good enough for us.For the Green Party our policy is actually to not have sales of New Zealand land to non-resident non-citizens because as Mark Twain once said: “Buy land. They’re not making any more of it.” It is the one thing that we have that is special—David Seymour: It’s not true. There’s volcanoes near Hawaii.JAMES SHAW: —ha ha—to our own country and we should attempt to retain ownership of it in this country. Thank you.