Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. I nominate the Government Administration Committee to consider this bill. The bill will amend the Land Transfer Act 1952, and the purpose of the bill is very straightforward. It is to ensure there is an accurate, reliable, and practical way to measure the amount of land under the control of foreign nationals. This New Zealand First bill is designed to shed long-overdue light on the true extent of foreign ownership of land and housing in New Zealand.

Currently, there is no comprehensive official database of foreign ownership of land in New Zealand. Although the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) collects data about applications and decisions and whether they result in approval or rejection, these details do not comprehensively capture the true extent of foreign ownership of land in this country. The OIO is a facade—nothing more than a sheep in sheep’s clothing. The OIO is not properly resourced to monitor any of the conditions it sets, but relies upon the community to undertake that vital function, and, of course, that is proving to be an incredibly hard thing to do if you cannot find out who owns the land in the first place. In denying the right of New Zealanders to know what land is foreign-owned and what land is not, Messrs Key, Joyce, and English, and their acolytes are all spouting piffle and platitudes.

The bill will mean that a full and comprehensive register of all foreign-owned New Zealand land is compiled and is made readily available to the general public. It will record names and nationalities, the amount and value of the land involved, and the region in which the land is situated. Purchasers will be required upon registering land dealings to provide the information for the register. The register will apply to all dealings in land as that term is defined in section 2 of the Land Transfer Act 1952. The definition of the term “land” in section 2 includes “messages, tenements, and hereditaments, corporeal and incorporeal, of every kind and description,”. That means the register will extend to dealings involving a dwelling house, the physical things on land such as building materials, minerals and trees, which are corporeal and hereditaments, and interests in land such as easements, land, and rent charges, which are incorporeal hereditaments. The register will provide an important resource for policy makers and the general public, who will be able to gauge the foreign stake in landholdings across New Zealand and in their local communities.

The bill also has teeth. New section 47A(1)(4), inserted by clause 4, states: “A person who knowingly fails to comply with subsection (3) commits an offence and will be liable to a fine not exceeding 25% of the value of the land involved.” For the first time, the register will provide transparency for concerned New Zealanders as to the real extent of the foreign ownership of New Zealand because—I want to say to the Government members—ignorance is not bliss, unless you are a National Government intent on hiding and obfuscating the extent of foreign ownership of land and housing in this country. But New Zealanders have a right to know what is happening in their country, and fundamental to that is who owns what and where. That is why this bill is so vital.

The issue of foreign ownership of land and property in New Zealand is one of great importance. It always has been. Foreign ownership of land goes to the heart of our sovereignty as a country. If we no longer own our own country who indeed are we? As well as the sovereignty aspect, the transfer of land and housing to non-resident foreign citizens has enormous and enduring economic impact. But this Government, with its short-term “everything is for sale” attitude, has no concern about the damage that the remorseless loss of land into foreign ownership is doing to New Zealand.

It is essential that a comprehensive register of foreign ownership of land is developed as soon as possible and this bill is it. It is urgently required because of the alarming loss of land into foreign ownership. The losses are staggering. From January to July this year—a period of just 6 months—the amount of land sold to foreign buyers has almost tripled with 108,724 hectares being sold compared with just 40,000 during the same period in 2015, which was bad enough. It is more than double. The three largest sales comprised Hong Kong buyers who paid $16.5 million for Braemar Road, Lake Tekapō; an Australian investment company that bought 1,341 hectares of Wairarapa land, and a couple from China who paid $8.5 million for 1,191 hectares of land in Stockerau Station, Whakatāne.

This wholesale sell-off of New Zealand land and business to foreign interests is completely counter to New Zealand’s long-term interests. As in New Zealand, the Australian public is deeply alarmed at the loss of the land to foreign ownership—the difference is that the Aussie Government has taken action in this area. It was in response to growing concerns with foreign ownership that last year the Australian Government implemented a register of foreign ownership of agricultural land that requires companies to disclose any foreign ownership of farmland. Clearly, the Australian Government has accepted the need for greater scrutiny of foreign ownership. Information from the Australian register of foreign ownership of agricultural land confirms that the Australian public were right to be concerned. It has revealed that foreign ownership grew by 2.5 million hectares over the past 3 years and now foreign ownership accounts for 13.6 percent or 52 million hectares of Australia’s total agricultural land.

The real question that New Zealanders ask in connection with Australia is this: why do we not already have this in place? What has the Government been doing for the last 8 years? After all, what Government interested in defending the rights of New Zealanders would want to continue in its blissful ignorance about who owns land and houses in this country? Indeed, most New Zealanders are incredulous, dumbfounded, and concerned that a comprehensive register of foreign ownership of land does not already exist. Most New Zealanders would say a well-ordered society and democracy rests, ultimately, on a well-informed public, but, of course, the National Government members have no interest in a well-informed public. On the contrary, as far as they are concerned, an informed public would ask awkward questions. That is why, in relation to foreign ownership of land, they want to keep New Zealanders in the dark—the sort of political mushroom policy. And as we have seen in many other areas, this Government is averse to data, averse to numbers, and averse to keeping the score, measurement, or facts.

But facts are real. Facts mean that Government Ministers cannot just dismiss legitimate public fears and concerns over foreign ownership with the breezy wave of the hand and a comment like “Nothing to see here; just move along.” After 8 years the public have learnt to distrust this Government, which is probably why someone is moving on. They are no longer buying the blithe and empty assurances that all is well and that all you have to do is trust the Government. So let us stop the spin and deception. The public do not want smoke and mirrors; they want to know. The Government has thrown all sorts of sand in the public’s face to confuse and mislead them; the reasons for inactions are bogus.

For instance, we had the ludicrous finding, by the Attorney-General of all people, that somehow a register of land owned by foreigners will breach the New Zealand Bill of Rights. That, against the UK, Canada, and the United States, and, indeed, our settings in this country, is absolute balderdash. It is a disgrace that someone would use his formerly self-confessed excellence in the law to come along and see himself so misused, seduced, and puppetised like that. It is hard to believe any self-respecting person who even got a law degree would behave in his way. But he will get up again, he will throw all this dust, smoke and mirrors, and try to sound erudite, but let me tell you that there will come a time soon when he will be gone, and by that time we will be left to fix things up—and fix them up we will. But, in the interests of the nation, they could be fixed up now—they could be fixed up now. Go and ask the public “Would you like to know what is going on, yes or no?” and I can guarantee you that 90 percent who are not in the special elitist group of the National Party—all 90 percent—would say: “Yes, we want to know.” For heaven’s sake, do they think New Zealanders are stupid?

Around 930 years ago, William the Conqueror undertook a massive stocktake of medieval England that became the famous Domesday Book. If Norman England could go into a comprehensive land survey with nothing but quill pens, parchment, and horsepower—no phones, no computers, no tweeters—then New Zealand in 2016 can figure out what land is owned by foreigners. I hope this bill is passed in this first reading and sent off to a select committee, but let me just say to my National Party colleagues over there that if it is not, we will campaign on it, and it will be “Good night, nurse.” for you.

The Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill as introduced by the right honourable member Winston Peters, unfortunately, will not be supported by members on the National side going forward. There are several reasons for that, but before I expound upon those let me just comment on the irony of the member who just resumed his seat referring to parchment and quills and horse-drawn carriages. There is an irony there.

This is a country that has a modern land registry system already in place. This is a country where we have a very efficient and, actually, a legally reliable means of registering land. This is an important fact to note, because as a country that has derived our heritage from our Commonwealth forebears, we have a Torrens registration system in place in New Zealand.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: What about the Māori? You forget about them, do you?

We have customary ownership too, Mr Peters. We do have customary ownership, but we know the view that New Zealand First takes on customary ownership of land. Anyway, we have a system based on a Commonwealth heritage. It was actually in our own part of the world, in Australasia, that the Torrens registry system was devised—in South Australia, actually, by Sir Richard Torrens, a former Premier of South Australia. So we have—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: In what year? Come on now, what year?

—been innovators as well as inheritors of that proud tradition. It was back in the 1860s, Mr Peters, when you were just a young lad, before you came to this place. I am sure you were still in high school. The system we have guarantees that the registry of land in the land registry system is actually evidence of ownership. It is not a system where we register ownership; registration is, in fact, evidence of ownership.

This proposed legislation is not necessary, and the reason I believe it is not necessary is that overseas tax resident buyers already form a very, very small percentage of those who purchase land in New Zealand. Around 3 percent of New Zealand property transfers that are conducted in this country involve an overseas tax resident. So this bill diverts attention from the real issue. We know that we do have a shortage of housing in this country. We do have a shortage of housing in Auckland in particular, but also in other fast-growing areas such as Tauranga and Hamilton—even in Wellington. We hope soon to have something of a housing shortage in Wellington as people flood here to take maximum advantage of the opportunities that our capital city offers. There are wonderful employment opportunities, and there has been a 1.6 percent reduction in unemployment here over the last year.

This bill, in diverting attention from that housing supply issue—and the National-led Government is taking leadership, with its comprehensive planning on this issue—is also adding significant costs and delays. We have recently reviewed the Land Transfer Act in New Zealand. Only several months ago, through the Government Administration Committee and in this House, we looked at exactly this issue of land transfer. In doing so, we did modernise several elements that had become outdated. For instance, the Land Transfer Act 1952 was clearly devised in a time where paper registers and typewriters and manual concatenation of land registry information was the only option available. But having computerised registration as we now do makes this an efficient system.

In the select committee hearing process on those reforms, we were advised that to add in, as was suggested, I believe, by Mr Cunliffe at the time—or, certainly, the prospect was raised by the Hon David Cunliffe—some sort of test for foreign ownership, as this bill seeks to do, would add significant costs. We were advised by not only the representatives of the banking industry but also the learned and distinguished representatives of the legal profession. The Law Society was very, very clear in its advice that this would add significant costs to those who are seeking to purchase homes. It talked about figures for a standard mum and dad house purchase, or an individual or young couple buying a simple New Zealand house—an ordinary house, without complex ownership arrangements. We are not talking about trusts or companies or partnerships or any other kind of arrangement; we are talking about the average New Zealander looking to buy their family home. This sort of measure could add in the order of $1,500 or perhaps $2,000.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: How? How?

This was the advice that the select committee received in terms of the additional legal work that would be required to provide the verification. The Inland Revenue Department gathers significant amounts of information, but what we are talking about here is having lawyers check the work of other lawyers, and that is where we can see something in the order of $1,500 or maybe $2,000 worth of costs added to the simple family home transaction. You can only imagine how much that would add to transactions that are more complicated. Obviously, in our farming communities you often have property in family trusts or, actually, in partnerships or other company or limited liability structures. We do not want to see those extra compliance costs levelled upon the sellers or the buyers of homes and land in New Zealand, as Mr Peters’ bill risks doing.

This bill provides for the insertion of a new section into the Land Transfer Act 1952. Clause 4 inserts new section 47A, “Registrar to keep foreign ownership of land register”. So it requires the Registrar-General of Land to keep an electronic register—electronic, at least; that is one thing, I suppose, given the talk before of quills and feather pens and ink. It requires the registrar to keep the person’s name and nationality, the amount and value of the land involved, and the district or districts in which the land is situated. What we know is that the Overseas Investment Office already collects data about these large-scale applications and their subsequent grant or rejection, but I would rather not see this extended to every single farm, every single house, every single cottage in every single village, hamlet, borough, and small community in our country. There is no need to do this, with such a small number of foreign owners purchasing land in New Zealand—only 3 percent.

💬 Richard Prosser: How do you know it’s a small number if you don’t check it?

It is only 3 percent, Mr Prosser, so I think that that is unnecessary. It is also possible, Mr Prosser—you may not be aware of this—for a person’s nationality and their country of tax residence to be different, or for a person to be registered as a tax resident or national of more than one country. In fact, we may even have members of this House who are tax residents or nationals of more than one country. This means that the current information collected from property transfers is different from that required for the proposed foreign ownership of land registration, so this actually counters the point that you have made, Mr Prosser—that we are already collecting the information so why not just extend it further. The reality is that this is very different information that we are asking for.

I am also somewhat uncomfortable with this concept of foreign ownership. “Foreign ownership” is a term undefined in this legislation. I think it will give rise to enormous compliance cost issues for sellers and purchasers of land but will also, I think, fuel a xenophobic argument that foreigners should not be able to own land in New Zealand. I think we should be thankful for the significant capital investment that foreign investors make when they come to New Zealand, set up businesses here, and employ people, including many, many New Zealanders. We would not want to put them off.

A final point that I would make regards our trade agreements. We have a number of trade agreements where we have the ability to modify the Land Transfer Act 1952, but only in a non-discriminatory fashion. For instance, for our closer economic relations investment protocol agreement with Australia, concluded in 2013, we could not put up potential barriers to Australian investment whilst discriminating in that way against others. So this actually makes it a very complicated situation.

We must adhere to the international covenants and agreements that we have concluded in good faith, which also allow New Zealanders the opportunity to invest elsewhere and allow New Zealanders the ability to go and invest in Australia—as they are doing in increasing numbers, given the strength of the New Zealand economy and the weakness of the Australian economy. I think the specific legal advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, when it comes, should be taken into account, because there needs to be a detailed assessment of whether this bill would breach our international obligations and our trade obligations, which we have signed up to in good faith.

This bill is unnecessary. It could potentially be very expensive. For that reason, I would argue that it progress no further.

The member Paul Foster-Bell is capable of arguments that are so much better than the ones he has manufactured. Let us just touch on a couple of them. That this bill would divert attention from other measures to solve the housing crisis—that has got to be the dumbest argument this House has ever heard. It is precisely to focus attention on one of the drivers of the housing crisis, which is unrestrained gushes of foreign cash driving up people’s house and farm prices, to the benefit of no one other than the banks and some of that member’s rich mates. He argued that the bill would add cost and delays. Surely that is an exaggeration and a trifle when we are faced with the situation of thousands and thousands of hectares of New Zealand land leaving New Zealand ownership and control.

The truth is that National does not know and does not want to know, and that has nothing to do with the closer economic partnership with Australia, precisely because Australia already has this kind of register, or a similar register. The Australians already have a policy that says that foreigners can build houses in Australia and can move to Australia to live in the house that they have bought, but they cannot buy something and remain a non-occupying foreign resident. If Australia can do it—and we have a closer economic partnership with it—surely, we can do it.

Then there is the argument that this legislation is just xenophobia. No, it is anything but xenophobia. It is to have a fact-based discussion and fact-based policy, based on real and actual data about how much of our land, in which places, is actually under foreign-owner control. Only then can we have a rational discussion, as New Zealanders, about the future of our country.

This is the first opportunity I have had to speak since Mr Key announced his resignation. Can I just acknowledge the Prime Minister, as one who has had the huge privilege of leading a party against him in a general election. He was, obviously, no mean opponent. He is a tremendously skilful leader who has a massive machine in support. Labour should not and will not take National for granted, but, by God, we are back in the game. I do want to take the moment to acknowledge the contribution that Mr Key has made to New Zealand and to this Parliament over the decade of his leadership.

But his legacy will not, I think, be so much about what he did do—he certainly remained popular; he certainly built political capital—it will be a legacy of what he did not do. He did not address the looming crisis in superannuation. He did not address the problems of climate change. He did not—I am coming back to the bill, Mr Assistant Speaker—address the issue of our most important problem, the one that is dividing our nation, which is the housing crisis. It is not an issue just for those who are renting rather than owning and who are slipping further and further behind in the Kiwi Dream. It is also an issue for those who do own and who are making decisions in their lives based on what they think their wealth is, even though it is created by a bubble that is partly fuelled by unrestrained migration and otherwise-driven foreign investment.

That is not to say that we do not want foreign investment—we want good foreign investment. We want migration that suits New Zealand’s interests. We want to have a diverse, humane, tolerant, and creative society. But what we do not want is to make bad decisions because we lack real information about the extent of foreign ownership of our land and our resources.

Iwi have known for many years that it is the whenua that generates life, and that when you lose the whenua you lose your very being. We are a small country, and we must have knowledge of and we must have regard for who owns what. Today, faced with a Government that steadfastly refuses to address—

Order! The member’s time has expired.

Well, unfortunately for Mr Winston Peters, this bill is redundant. This bill carries no purpose, it is not useful, and it contributes nothing to any of the property registration—the idea of a register is completely redundant and unnecessary, and I will tell you why.

First of all, we have, for the protection of his fear of overseas people owning property, the Overseas Investment Office, which scrutinises investment in our land. So that is the first thing. We can talk about whether that is a useful office or not and whether it is doing an appropriate job or not, but in any case that is its role—to scrutinise overseas investment. Secondly, since, I imagine, this bill was put into the ballot, there has been a lot of legislation passed that deals with some of the things that Mr Peters talks about. We have passed, I think it is, three tranches of legislation that dealt with property speculation, essentially. Part of it was the brightline test, so that brought in the 2-year time period, which clarified what was taxable.

We also brought in some information that was required from buyers and sellers of New Zealand land, so that is already there. That is there to provide some tax information for the Inland Revenue Department, and those people have to provide a bank account number with that information. So they have got to get their IRD number, they have got to get a bank account number, and this is to go through and protect against the possibility or the opportunity of money-laundering. Those three pieces of legislation have been passed, and parts of the legislation were kicked off on 1 October last year.

So, in my view, a lot of the concerns that Mr Peters has have been covered, have been taken care of, and have been looked after by the passing of those three pieces of tax legislation and, as I say, by the Overseas Investment Office. If we were to do what has been suggested, it would create a whole level of bureaucracy and a whole lot of confusion around who has to register. So does my son, who lives overseas, have to register his name when he purchases a property in New Zealand?

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Yeah, he does.

Oh, he does? Even though he is a New Zealand passport holder?

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: That’s the law now.

So that is the point. I think there is a whole lot of information that is being made redundant, or is unnecessary, with the passing of time. So I cannot commend this bill to the House, and I do not support this bill.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. The Green Party is pleased to be supporting the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill because, at the moment, we do not have an accurate picture of how much land in New Zealand is owned by overseas persons, and without that understanding we cannot develop good policy and we cannot fully understand the assets that we are actually alienating. Until 1998 Government agencies did not even think it was necessary to record any of the purchases by overseas investors.

Alastair Scott, the previous speaker, claimed that the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) scrutinises investment in land. That is only if it is sensitive land, which is quite a narrow category of land. It does include some rural farmland, but we do not have a good picture across the whole of New Zealand. So this bill is a useful, small step to actually ensuring that there is a good information base, by requiring overseas persons to provide information about their name, their nationality, and the amount and value of the land that is being purchased and the land district it is in.

But it does not go far enough. The Green Party believes that landownership in New Zealand should be limited to New Zealand citizens and permanent residents. We would introduce legislation to restrict the purchase of our whenua, of our land, by non-citizens and non-residents, because we have seen with the Overseas Investment Office that almost universally—except in the case of Lochinver Station—the OIO has just rubber-stamped purchases of quite significant areas of productive land.

You cannot have an economic strategy of adding value to our primary products when New Zealanders are steadily losing ownership of our land, our forests, and other productive assets in that value chain. They are the building blocks of our economy, and when we have got more than 40 percent of overseas investment concentrated in agribusiness, energy, and large-scale real estate, we are seeing ourselves alienated from ownership of those basic building blocks. We do not want our primary industries and our natural resources to be owned and dominated by overseas companies, because we cannot control the value chain when we do not own our own forests and our farmland.

National could smarten up, but it will not—it could stop our most productive farmlands slipping into overseas ownership, but it will not. That is one of the reasons why the Green Party is supporting this bill: so that we get a better understanding of just how much is being alienated, because at the moment it is media speculation. There are estimates that between 5 and 10 percent of our most productive farmland is being sold to overseas persons. If it is 5 percent, that is an area the size of the Auckland super-city. By a very simple change in the law—by restricting the sale of land that is more than half a hectare to New Zealand residents and New Zealand citizens—we could prevent that alienation. That would ensure that our productive farmland stays in Kiwi hands.

As David Cunliffe noted, the whenua is critical. If we want to be proud residents of Aotearoa, we should actually ensure that our economic base and all of the industries that depend on it are generating revenue for New Zealanders, and that we do not simply become tenants in our own country. That is one of the reasons the Green Party is supporting this bill.

I rise in opposition to this Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill in this, its first reading. The fundamental basis of opposition to this is that this is a piece of legislation that is simply unnecessary.

I mean, we should always permit the facts to get in the way of a story, whether that story is a good one or a bad one—in this case, a bad one. The reality is that since this Government announced a tightening of the rules around foreign or non - tax residents purchasing property, particularly investment property, in New Zealand well over a year or so ago now, we have been collecting data on the extent to which that actually happens. So that is the extent to which people who are foreigners and who are not paying tax in New Zealand—not tax residents—are actually purchasing and buying up New Zealand properties. The sum total, if you will—the percentage of the extent of that issue—is 3 percent. That now spans multiple quarters of data, and there is a great deal of consistency across the information that has been collected. It is not that one quarter was 3 percent; it is that now we are seeing a trend and a very clear, consistent line there. So why would we put in place this register for something that simply is not a great problem? It would add compliance time cost for no significant benefit.

We have the measures already through the tightening that we did, where, if non-tax residents are purchasing our investment properties, they will be taxed accordingly, and that in itself will mean one of two things. Either it could put a brake on the scale and rapidity or the size of those transactions, or, where it does not, it makes sure that we are collecting appropriate tax revenue from that.

But this bill simply does not fix a problem. It does something; I am not denying that. It certainly does something—it certainly creates a register. But the register does not address a problem and the bill provides no solution, indeed, for that problem that does not actually exist. It misses the very clear distinction that I alluded to earlier there, which is that individuals can have a nationality and country of tax residence that are different. In fact, an individual can have more than one country of tax residence.

If we look at what we might want to achieve—if we looked at a policy of ensuring that there was not just wholesale buying up of our land and property—what we are really trying to achieve, I would suggest, is a situation where people who have no personal investment, if you will, in our country, might try to take it off us. But a tax resident is, effectively, invested in our country. By paying tax they are helping to provide the infrastructure that the country needs. They are helping to pay for our schools and our hospitals. They are actually contributing to the economic well-being of the nation. Why on earth would we, as a policy—certainly here—look to penalise or prevent those people transacting in a country that they are actually helping to fund? It seems that there is a misplaced targeting here.

Certainly, on this side of the House, we have got no issue with people who might be considered foreign. In fact, the diversity of New Zealand is one of its greatest strengths. So, rather than simply looking at the way that someone appears or the sound of their surname, we actually believe that where one is contributing to New Zealand—and the best measure of that, for someone who was not born here or does not have permanent residence, is perhaps their tax status. So when someone is contributing to this country, why on earth would we want to take some backward position from 40 or more years ago, when a certain member first entered this place, and say: “Look, you’re not allowed to participate in our country and in our economy. You’re somehow to be treated differently. You’re somehow to be treated as a second-rate person in this country.”?

It is simply not necessary. For that reason, and that, I believe, is a very, very good reason, I do not commend this bill to the House.

This issue—the issue of the impact of non-resident foreign buyers in the housing market and in the buying up of rural land in New Zealand—is one of the starkest issues that draws a line down the middle of this House between National and its acolytes and the major Opposition parties on this side of the House. Between 70 to 80 percent of the New Zealand public support this bill that Winston Peters has brought to this House. On this issue, New Zealand First, Labour, and the Greens are overwhelmingly supported by the public of New Zealand. Between 70 to 80 percent of New Zealanders want to see Labour’s policy of a ban on non-resident foreign buyers buying existing residential property in New Zealand, and I would wager that a similar proportion of the people of this country would support Winston Peters’ bill.

The member who spoke before, Brett Hudson, raised the question of the data that Land Information New Zealand, a Government agency, had been gathering about the impact of foreign buyers in the housing market. He repeated the spurious claim that we have heard from numerous Ministers that only 3 percent of the buyers are people who are not resident in this country or not citizens. It is a nonsense. The data that has been released for the last three times over the last year basically excludes people who are non-residents and non-citizens who are in this country on a student visa, a temporary student visa, or a temporary work visa but buying houses. They are not citizens, they are not residents, and they are buying houses, but the National Government thinks it is a good idea to exclude them.

The figure is not 3 percent. If you add those temporary workers and temporary students who are buying houses, it is 13 percent—one, three. It is 13 percent of the property transactions. Thirteen percent of the homes are being purchased by people who are not residents and non-citizens. That is very significant—13 percent. There is no question that that will be having a very significant impact, driving up house prices in a market that is already overheated and undersupplied.

Countries all over the Pacific Rim—Canada, particularly in British Colombia and Vancouver, but Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia—all have policies that are designed to protect the opportunity for their citizens to have decent, affordable housing, and to protect them from the impact of demand pressures from overseas money. But not under this National Government; that will not happen in New Zealand while the National Government is in office. It is in denial. It has been confusing, diverting, and denying that this is even a problem now for the last few years. It does not trust New Zealanders with the facts, and that is why the National Party members in the House today are not voting for Winston Peters’ bill.

This is a sensible bill. We support it. It is the policy in Australia. It is the policy in the UK. Why not collect this information and make it publicly available? I think that there are issues that, I would say, we would like to see explored fully at select committee. We are not convinced that you would need to necessarily publish the names and addresses of the individuals who own these properties, but we would like to explore and get expert advice on that at select committee.

This Government has a mantra that fixing the housing crisis is all about supply. Well, it has not even delivered on that because it built hardly any houses and hardly any affordable houses. But it has this blind spot about the demand forces that are driving up house prices, not just in Auckland but around the country.

The next Government will tackle these demand forces. We will review the immigration policy that currently is throwing fuel on the fire and driving up demand, particularly in Auckland. We will ban foreign buyers from buying existing residential properties in this country. We will implement the recommendations and the commitments that New Zealand has already made under the anti - money-laundering convention to stop dirty foreign money, corrupt foreign money, flooding into the real estate market in this country. We will do that and we will tackle the tax incentives that currently channel vast amounts of savings and capital, which we need in the productive economy, into real estate speculation. Those are the changes that we will make.

I, like my fellow National Party MPs, rise to oppose this bill, but I will have some slightly different reasons for doing so. I want to, firstly, congratulate the member Winston Peters on getting a bill drawn out of the ballot. I have not been here—in fact, I have been here for over 30 years’ shorter time than him, and I have not had one drawn out of the ballot yet. But anyway, that is beside the point.

I have some suspicion as to why he would want to design a bill like this, because I am old enough to remember the days of the land court, when you had to register every purchase made in New Zealand. You then had to get it through the land court, and I would have to say that it caused the creation of a myriad of trusts, companies, and various other devious methods of obscuring the names of the people who own land from being on the title of that land. Of course, Winston Peters, the member who drew up this bill—I think he is trained as a lawyer. My memory of the land court days, of death duties and those sorts of things, is that they were just loved by the lawyers. It was a field day for them. So I guess that one of the reasons I do not support this bill is that I think it is—some of the objectives of it are fine—hugely complicated. It will be very expensive to operate, on the face of it—and I have got no proof, and I am sure the member has no proof of that either—and I am sure it will be administratively very difficult to manage. That is the first reason that I am opposed to the bill.

The second reason is that—and I think the reasons of the previous speaker, Phil Twyford, for his thinking this was a great idea is very different, in fact, from those of the member who designed the bill. I do not think this bill is intended to ban overseas buyers from New Zealand at all; it is designed to give information around the number of overseas investors, or overseas people, who are buying land in New Zealand.

The previous speaker also alluded to the legislation, or policy, in place in Australia and the UK and various other countries around the world. It has not had any positive effect on house values, or any other values, in those countries either, so that was a spurious argument. So, from the point of view of lowering costs for our people trying to get into housing markets, or into farming or whatever else, in fact, it does not achieve that. His argument around that point was, in my view, quite inaccurate.

We already have in New Zealand a tax regime that discourages people from short-term trading in any type of property. It is, in effect, I suppose, a short-term capital gain. That has been in place for some time. It has been reinforced in the last 12 months, and so we have a tax regime that gives us the ability to temper people’s opportunity to trade property in the manner purely for capital gain in the short term.

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: How many years?

Two years—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: Precisely. That’s no protection at all.

Well, when you are my age, and your age, 2 years is a long time. Ha, ha! We need every bit of time we can get—we might not be around in 2 years’ time.

So I think that although I can understand the sentiment behind some of this type of activity, I certainly do not think from New Zealand’s perspective that we should be looking at banning, or even making it more difficult, for foreign people, or people who are coming to New Zealand, to invest in the New Zealand market. I do think we need to collect data. I think Land Information New Zealand is doing a very good job—a much better job—and there was some significant questioning of that in the last week or two around a lot of the stuff that goes on in respect of landownership and property ownership in New Zealand.

It is also doing a very good job in respect of Overseas Investment Office, and it has increased the resource going into that area and the amount of effort going into that area significantly in the last 12 months. Last week its officials appeared before the select committee, and I thought we got, certainly, a massive improvement in the accountability in the way they were performing, and that was primarily because they had been stretched for resource. That has been resolved, and so we are getting a much better result in that respect.

In speaking against this bill, I think that there are some points in it that are worth picking up on in the future, and I am sure future Governments will pick up on some of those. But, in the course of that, I do warn against this very complicated type of legislation, because it leads to all sorts of opportunity for people to find alternative ways of owning land, registering land transfers, and all sorts of things. I think the simpler we keep our structure, the better off we are. Thank you.

Tēnā koe, Mr Assistant Speaker. I am pleased to add my contribution in support of this bill. Can I congratulate the right honourable member on his good fortune in bringing this bill to the House. We are supporting this bill. It is a very straightforward bill. Why should Kiwis not be entitled to know when foreign nationals are buying up our land, where those purchases are, and how much land is being sold? Why?

It is a very clear bill. We have heard, in this debate, people touching on the loss of whenua to Māori, and this cuts deep to every Māori when we are talking about a debate on land. Mr Peters is from the North, and I am actually reminded of the great Ngāpuhi prophet Āperahama Taonui—his prophecy has come to pass. The prophecy was that there is a taniwha coming from across the sea, and its kai is land. It has an insatiable appetite, and its puku will never be filled. To Māori, that prophecy has come to pass, but I fear that the taniwha is coming back and it has grown another head. The taniwha is coming back, and this Government is not keeping a tight rein, or any measure whatsoever, on this taniwha.

That is all we are asking for in this bill. All we are asking for is that there is an accurate, up-to-date register of foreign nationals who are purchasing land in Aotearoa New Zealand. We have heard all sorts of excuses. The Government is great at coming up with excuses and throwing up tax definitions and the like as to why it should not do things. But this is a very simple piece of legislation. All it is asking for is—it is applying the definition that is contained in the Overseas Investment Act 2005, that “Any purchases of lands by overseas persons should be entered into a register.”

So who are we talking about when we are talking about overseas persons? It is better if we say who we are not talking about. Obviously, we are not talking about New Zealand citizens and we are not talking about overseas persons who may be ordinarily resident in New Zealand. So those who hold resident class visas under the Immigration Act, or who are domiciled here and have an intention of staying here, we are not talking about those people; they are all fine. But what we are talking about are foreign nationals who have no intention of being ordinarily resident in New Zealand, who are not New Zealand citizens, and yet have unrestrained access to buying up residential land, rural land, all lands within New Zealand.

All we are asking for is that we keep an accurate measure and a register of that. How can we manage an issue, how can we manage a problem, when the Government refuses to measure it? It refuses to capture the data, and the data that it does use is so crude it is absolutely pointless. So that is all we are asking for. All we are asking for is an accurate measure and that we keep this register. Sure, there may be some tweaks that may be required to the bill. I am sure that the select committee will tease out those issues, but fundamentally the purpose of this bill is very sound, and that is why we are supporting it.

We want to see, and I think all Kiwis right throughout the country would like to know, how much of our land and where, in all of our lands, is owned by foreign nationals, by those who are not citizens of our country, who are not ordinarily resident in our country, and who have no intention of being so. That is all that this bill asks for. I think if it is good enough for Australia, if it is good enough for the UK, and if it is good enough for all those other jurisdictions from around the world to implement exactly what we are doing here, then surely it is good enough for this Parliament to be supporting this bill and putting it to select committee so we can tease it out and, hopefully, usher it into law. I commend this bill to the House. Kia ora.

What a dark and sad day to have this bill before the House on a members’ day when there are so many other worthwhile things that could be debated. On behalf of the ACT Party I rise in opposition to this Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill. This is an example of why politicians are so poorly trusted and have such a bad reputation in our community—worse, almost, than the journalists. The reason for that is simply that this bill promises to do something, but it will not deliver. It is a promise by Winston Peters to his constituents that he will scratch some sort of concern or need and help them and somehow improve their lives, when in reality this bill will do no such thing. The reason for that is that once you get down to the definitions, who really knows what this bill is attempting to capture?

Would a constituent of mine, who happens to be Chinese, who does not spend a lot of her time in New Zealand but owns property, be counted under this bill? That is somebody who under this bill would be counted as a non-resident foreign landowner. What if I were to say that that person actually, being a permanent resident, does live in New Zealand and has bought lands with money that does not belong to them but is actually sourced offshore? What is this bill really trying to work out? Is it the nominal ownership of the land, which in this case is perfectly legitimate and would not be captured as foreign ownership under Mr Peters’ bill, or is it the beneficial ownership, the person who actually provided the money in order to ensure that the land was able to be bought in the first place? Are we trying to work out whose money it is, or whose name is on the title? The fact of the matter is that this bill cannot tell you either of those things.

What about my uncle, who lives in Perth? He has not lived in New Zealand for 40 years. He still cheers for the All Blacks, though. He is not a New Zealand citizen, and might like to buy property in New Zealand. Would that be foreign ownership of land under Mr Peters’ bill? Well, yes, it is, but when we talk about a problem, how is that more or less of a problem than the earlier example I described? I think we all know the answer that Mr Peters dog-whistles to his supporters, and it is that the first person was Chinese. The reality of this bill is that it does not tell us anything about whose money is really coming to New Zealand. It tells us only whose name is on the title, and that information in itself is not particularly useful for any purpose, even the nefarious and dark purposes that Mr Peters likes to bring to this House from time to time.

Worse than that, it is not actually obvious why we should be concerned about inflows of foreign capital into New Zealand. I can give you examples from business. Take Lion, an iconic New Zealand business that has enormous difficulty purchasing vineyards because, technically, Lion is owned by the Japanese—well, actually, Lion is owned by the Japanese firm Kirin Holdings Company. Why would we introduce more laws that make it more difficult for capital to flow into New Zealand, when throughout the entire history of this country one of our greatest challenges has been attracting a greater flow of foreign capital? One of the reasons our productivity growth has been low is that we have traditionally paid about a 2 percent premium on capital, all the way back to Sir Joseph Ward, who was around in Mr Peters’ early days. He took a delegation to London in the 1890s in an attempt to secure cheaper loans for New Zealand.

It used to be something that the Prime Minister and the leaders of this House would do: actually go overseas to try to attract better capital so that New Zealand could invest and grow. Today we have these political stunt bills that will not actually have any effect on who really owns or who really funds property ownership in New Zealand, but what we will have is additional red tape and bureaucracy that makes it less attractive to invest in New Zealand. Sadly, that is the kind of politics that New Zealand First and Winston Peters bring to this House: high on rhetoric, ineffective, xenophobic, populist stunt bills that will do nothing to make people’s lives better but will make New Zealand a slightly darker place. I proudly oppose this bill on behalf of the ACT Party, and I look forward to my colleagues voting it down. Thank you.

Let us deal with the member for Epsom, who was placed there by the National Party. This is how informed this young guy is. He said that Lion is “technically” owned overseas. No, it is not “technically” owned overseas. It is owned overseas, sunshine. Not technically; it is owned offshore. Then he said that Ward went over to get this money in the late 1800s. No, he did not. He went in the 1920s. Does he not know any history?

💬 Ron Mark: No, he doesn’t.

No. He gets up here, beats his mouth off—

💬 Ron Mark: He hasn’t been to school yet.

He has not gone to school. He is a policy wonk. He just makes a right fool of himself.

I want to thank Rino Tirikatene for that brilliant example, and Phil Twyford, and Eugenie Sage from the Greens, for their contributions, and David Cunliffe as well, for making plain common sense. Common sense is what New Zealanders want. They are sick and tired of this ephemeral, neo-liberal claptrap that people like David Seymour cannot get their heads around, as they cannot get their heads around the fact that he does not belong to a political party. He gets up and he says “On behalf of the ACT Party”.

💬 Ron Mark: What’s that?

Well, what party would that be? What party would that be? How did he get here? Well, the National Party guy pulled his hoardings down. Do you feel like a puppet? “Yes, I do.” That is what he should be saying, but he has got the arrogance to get up here to criticise a party that is talking plain common sense.

Let me start with Mr Foster-Bell. He said this would cost each house purchaser $1,500. That is balderdash. Do you know what the register cost in Australia? It cost $186,000—$186,000 for the country. We are living in a computerised age. It is a matter of compilation, so you know what is going on. Then he says it is an offence against foreign owners’ rights. But he did not say it was an offence against New Zealanders’ rights, because they have to go on the register now. That is the law. In fact, Alastair Scott, who lives in Wellington, represents Wairarapa, and speaks for the banks, said he backed the Overseas Investment Office (OIO). He said the brightline test is a bank account number. That is his answer. But no one, Mr Scott, is collating the information. That is my point. Does he not get it?

For example, here is the essence of it all, because it is seriously fundamental: no statement came from Land Information New Zealand for 38 percent of foreign sales. For 38 percent there was no statement.

💬 David Seymour: Who cares?

Oh, “Who cares?”. Well, apparently, everybody excepting the moron does care. We also know from the OIO that the Inland Revenue Department does not record information based on tax residency. But then Mr Foster-Bell talked about all those people—no doubt from the National Party—who have got multiple tax residencies. Well, why do we not name them? Are they going to act for the New Zealand people, or are they just going to act for all these foreigners? We know the answer to that.

I think Mr Foster-Bell also said: “It’s against our free-trade agreements.” Funny, that—China does not allow us to buy land in their country. So that cannot be right, can it? Australia—well, it cannot be against the Australia and New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, the oldest one we have got, because they have a register. I want to say this: it is astonishing, you know, when you get somebody who gets up, like the member for—what is it—Wairarapa, who lives in Wellington, Alastair Scott. He said this: “Does my son have to go on a register if he buys land?”. Well, Mr Scott, if he is a New Zealander, yes, he does now and has done for decades. Look, it is one thing to come from the banks, but your job is to represent Wairarapa and the good people there.

Can I say, also, there, when Brett Hudson got up, what he said was simply unnecessary. Incoherent, he said—that is what he talked about: “incoherent”—and he said the Government had been collecting data. It is not a great problem, he said. Well, it is a great problem when 38 percent of the information is not required to be registered in the first place.

But here is the most important thing—here is the most important thing. Australia, the UK, the Netherlands, France, Ireland, and Norway are all going to it. China, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Malaysia are all heading down this track. So are nearly all the countries of Asia. They know that they are not making any more land. The problem with the ACT Party, and the National Party, which is similarly of its ilk, is that they do not realise that there has been a massive change in this country’s politics in the last 2 years. The game is up. The game of disguising facts for the New Zealand people is simply not going to work. And in fact—yes, Mr Assistant Speaker, I will wind up very fast. I am going to get on the campaign trail, and wind in the Wairarapa, and down to Invercargill—

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

—and all over the country to spread the word because, out there, New Zealanders want to know.

💬 Jono Naylor: What about the people of the Far North?

No, no, in Palmerston North, I will.

💬 Jono Naylor: What about Northland; are you going to visit them?

In Palmerston North, yes—well, unlike your leader, I live there. He lives in Parnell. I have been in my electorate more times in 1 month than he has for the full 10 years, in his electorate.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Trevor Mallard): Order!

We are not here to still have these silly questions again. Thank you very much. I commend this bill to the House.

A party vote was called for on the question that the Land Transfer (Foreign Ownership of Land Register) Amendment Bill be now read a first time.

Could I just, while the Clerk is adding them up, remind members that votes are meant to be held in silence. While I am at it, I will remind Mr McKelvie that he does not wander round and interject. He interjects when seated, if at all.