Overseas Investment Bill

I am pleased to endorse much of what Craig McNair has just said. It was fantastic to hear an angry young man state the obvious, which is that his predecessors in this Parliament sold off the family silver. It was not just one Government that sold it, but two Governments, and it was not just the Labour Party in all its new-right zeal, but the National Party that followed it.

The only silver lining in that extraordinary sell-off of New Zealand's State assets is that we now have MMP as a result. It was due to those two old parties going against everything the New Zealand electorate expected of them, and the public knowing it was not going to be good enough to throw one lot out, because when the other lot came in it was going to be just as bad, if not worse. That is why the public instead of the Government changed the electoral system, and that is why we have some independent voices in this Parliament. On this occasion I am pleased to say that the Green Party does empathise quite extensively with what the New Zealand First speaker just said.

In response to David Carter's earlier speech, ours is not a position of xenophobia. We have nothing against foreign individuals moving to New Zealand and making our country their home. We are not against even foreign corporations making greenfield investments in New Zealand. What we want is appropriate restrictions on foreign investors. Even the Minister admits in his general policy statement that "it is a privilege for overseas persons to own sensitive assets in New Zealand". The problem with this bill is that Dr Cullen has narrowed what he considers to be sensitive assets, and that is our fundamental criticism with this bill. Dr Cullen has pulled a massive swifty on the people of New Zealand. This bill is a complete and utter sham, and he is not going to get away with it. The public is wise to what is going on. I can give members evidence of their wisdom by the fact that in the last few weeks I have received over 1,500 signatures to the petition I launched only this time last month, opposing the expansion of foreign investment and foreign control of the New Zealand economy. The reason why signatures are flooding in to that petition is that people recognise what this Labour Government is trying to do. In its very stealthy way, it is claiming to be saving the facade — in other words, so-called sensitive iconic sites — at the same time as it is making it easier to sell off the building and the businesses behind the facade.

That is what this bill does. It will offer some protection to so-called iconic sites of historical, cultural, or environmental interest. We applaud that, because we want greater protection from overseas ownership of those sites. But it also so-called "liberalises" the foreign investment regime to make it even easier for foreign investors to gobble up the rest of the private assets that are on the block. That is why we oppose this bill and will be putting up significant amendments to it.

We see foreign investors as guests, and we believe that guests need to follow the rules of their hosts. In our case, those rules should mean no more land sales to foreign corporations and non-resident foreigners — absolutely no ifs, no buts, no maybes: land has got to be off the table. Already too much of New Zealand's land has fallen into foreign control. It is difficult to know how much, because the Government simply does not collect statistics on that. We can hazard a guess that approximately 7 percent of our commercially productive land, or more than 1 million hectares, is now in foreign ownership. We know from the Government figures that are available that in just the last few years, 2,720 hectares of offshore islands, 57 kilometres of coastline, and 150,000 hectares of high country leasehold have been sold to overseas buyers.

That is just the tip of the foreign ownership iceberg, because most residential and commercial land sales under $10 million are not scrutinised or recorded now. With that threshold increasing to $100 million, not only will the sell-off intensify but it will be more difficult to identify which parcels of land have fallen into foreign control.

This bill is a complete contradiction of the recommendations made by the Finance and Expenditure Committee only a couple of years ago. That committee, in a review of the Reserve Bank for the 1999-2000 year, made a number of significant recommendations.

Those recommendations were joint recommendations, from the Labour Government and the Greens. They included appointing an additional commissioner to represent the wider community on the Overseas Investment Commission, extending the application of the national interest criteria to all proposals, not just to land sales, and re-examining the investment thresholds. Our preference is to reduce them from the $50 million that Mr Bolger brought in back down to the pre-election level of $10 million, and therefore we are certainly opposed to increasing them to $100 million. We also wanted the commission to consider the impact on social well-being, environmental sustainability, and economic sovereignty when assessing whether an investment will benefit New Zealand, and we wanted a code of corporate responsibility for investors, because they need to measure up to that. Otherwise, there is no point in having a compliance regime.

Quite frankly, there is no point in the compliance regime in this bill, because it is a self-regulating one. There needs to be some independent compliance monitoring, and, yes, it should not be at the cost of the taxpayer, but, it should not be undertaken by the applicant. It should be paid for by the applicant, but it needs to be done independently. That is one of the many flaws in this legislation. Another flaw is getting rid of the Overseas Investment Commission. Stephen Dawe, who heads that commission, will tell members that we have many criticisms about how they operate, and one particular example recently is the Shania Twain sale, but that is not a reason for getting rid of it.

The problem here is that this review had a pre-determined outcome. There was no first principles review of the Overseas Investment Commission. The Government knew all along what its intention was. It was to make it even easier for foreign investors to gobble up more of our assets. It was not interested in addressing issues around the lack of compliance. Neither was it interested in addressing issues around the fact that there have been a lot of retrospective approvals. It is not interested in facing up to the big issue, which is that at the end of June foreign investment in New Zealand totalled $190 billion — up more than $8 billion on the previous year — and that that investment is costing us enormously. For the year to June, there was $9.488 billion in interest payments and profits on those loans and shareholdings.

That is what foreign investment is costing New Zealand. It is costing us an increasing balance of payments deficit. It is causing the price of land to increase so that it is becoming nearly impossible for young Kiwi families to buy a farm or even have the opportunity of buying a bach at the beach. It is making it more difficult for first-home buyers to buy their first home, because residential property is being bought up by overseas investors who can get it at a very cheap price and make a very good return on their capital. So we say to the public to please make a submission on this bill and tell this Government that it has it wrong. The fact that National supports the bill is a very good reason why everyone in this country should be concerned.