Coddington Deborah: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
Coddington Deborah: Overseas Investment Bill — Second Reading Instruction to Committee In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:626;Page:21536] 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON (ACT) 
: 
 That was an example of why people should take another take on this election. Could the two old parties please consider going into coalition together instead of with New Zealand First because if either of them do heaven help us! 
I am going to be very unpopular. It is easy to take the populist stand on legislation like this and say that we support it. There is a lot of emotion around foreign investment in this country and a lot of that emotional talk is absolutely not founded on reason at all. We have just had an example of it. This country was founded on foreign investment—our insurance companies and our banks. Our banks are still mostly owned by foreigners. If New Zealanders do not like that they do not have to use them. They do not have to use the bank they do not have to use their mobile phones and they do not have to patronise foreign companies. Foreign investment overwhelmingly has been very good for this country. We would not survive without it. 
Interestingly enough those who follow Australian politics might remember Prime Minister Paul Keating saying a while back that the foreign ownership of the Gold Coast must be stopped. He wanted to stop Japanese people from buying up property on the Gold Coast. The reason he came out with that—because in Australia they are a lot more robust than us—was that they did not want those slanty-eyed people buying the Gold Coast. Someone else answered him in the debate by saying that no they were buying it all off New Zealanders. 
That is the problem. There are already restrictions on foreigners buying land in New Zealand and I contend that those restrictions are stringent enough. But if we start to restrict them even further we have to be consistent and consider what that does to New Zealanders who want to buy overseas. 
But I come to the basic principle of this bill which is the issue of private property rights. I strongly believe that people who own property have the right to sell it to somebody who will pay them the highest price. It comes back to emotion again. A lot of people think that they do not want foreigners owning all our prime pieces of land. But if those people owned that prime piece of land they would want to get the best price for it when they sell it. They might want to sell their high-country station and use the money to fund their grandchildren’s tertiary education or put it into a retirement fund. We already have restrictions. 
Mr Parker on the opposite side of the House seemed to imply that parties who opposed this bill want unrestricted access. We are not saying that. We are saying that the restrictions that are already there are stringent. The National member John Key cited D’urville Island. He said that it was sold completely to foreign ownership. He disagreed with that because he said ordinary Kiwis could not pull up their dinghies on the beach. A lot of ordinary Kiwis would like to have a swim in his Parnell swimming pool but they are not allowed to. Why? Because it is his private property and that is respected. People respect that he owns it that he worked hard for the money that went into building and purchasing it and that he has the right to restrict access to any common Kiwi who wants to have a swim in his pool. One cannot equivocate with property rights. 
Mr Key talked about New Zealanders not wanting to be tenants in their own land or not wanting to serve lattes to foreign owners who come to places like Central Otago or Northland. I was one of those waitresses serving lattes to foreigners several years ago and it is a great way for ordinary Kiwis to recapitalise and get some money in their bank balances. Those people bring money to this country—[ 
Interruption 
] He is up there hiding behind the yellow boxes. 
It is a good way to increase ordinary people’s wealth. Is there not something of the drawbridge mentality in this attitude? “I’m here pull up the drawbridge and don’t let anybody else come in.” If we were consistent about this we would say that no white people could buy land in this country. We are all foreigners if we take the tangata whenua attitude and philosophy that Maori were the first people to occupy this land so they are the true tangata whenua. Then all of us could go the whole Fiji way could we not? I am not advocating that; I am just pointing out the inconsistencies in some of those arguments and the fact that it is very dangerous to start going down that road and saying what is good or not good. 
The issue of Young Nicks Head came up. Sure that was something that people felt very strongly about there were protests and it was on television every night but we cannot pass legislation every time some minority group decides it does not want a piece of land sold. There was nothing to stop those people who were protesting about the sale of that land forming a company or a cooperative getting a loan and purchasing the land themselves. They were not barred from owning it. 
We have to look at the issue of the marginal strip which we will obviously deal with further in the Committee stage. If one is a foreigner and buying a piece of land for squillions of dollars it will be a condition of consent that the Minister might say: “Well you give us that marginal strip and you can buy it.”—as I understand it that is how it will be if the Supplementary Order Paper goes through—and if the purchaser is paying a lot of money for it then he or she will probably agree. Why is a foreigner paying a lot of money for that land and protecting that marginal strip any different from a New Zealander paying a lot of money for it? As I understand it a New Zealander will not have to go through that same process. A New Zealander could actually buy it lock stock and barrel. 
Hon Dr Michael Cullen 
: There’s no consent process for New Zealanders at all. 
DEBORAH CODDINGTON 
: There is no consent process at all. 
If the marginal strip is so valuable and is such an asset surely it is an asset regardless of who the purchaser is or what he or she is paying. That is something I do not understand and I hope that someone else can throw some light on that because if we are to have that for a foreign person buying it then surely we have to have it for a New Zealander buying it as well. 
I will get back to the issue of foreign ownership. Someone—I cannot remember who the speaker was—raised the issue of New Zealanders being very opposed to a number of overseas people who are not citizens of this country coming over here and buying our prime real estate. Before I came to the House I read through a number of the submissions. Some of them were extreme like those from the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa which I suppose one has to admire. It has been around for a long time. But we have to look at the ethnicity of some of the people who started it; it goes back to the drawbridge mentality. 
In general the people who want to come here and buy land and who put a lot of money into it are people who are attracted to this country because of those Kiwi assets if you like—the wild open spaces the rivers the lakes and the seabed. They are escaping what they came from. There is no evidence that foreign owners are in any way general or otherwise any worse owners of the land. They cannot put it on a ship and take it away with them. They can only keep investing in it. So ACT members are opposed to this bill. I think we are the only party in the House that is opposed to it but none the less we will stand on our strong principle of property rights and we will vote against it.