Invest New Zealand Bill

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party of Aotearoa New Zealand to oppose the Invest New Zealand Bill. Now, for context, this is, again, one of those bills that was introduced under urgency. I think, from the Greens’ perspective, the biggest concern we have with this bill is, because it was introduced under Budget urgency, there was no consultation and, effectively, we’re creating an entirely new Crown entity with no consultation and no genuine advice given. And we will talk more about that advice as part of my contribution.

First of all, one of the things that we do see in terms of the regulatory impact statement is that there is no guarantee that this particular Crown agency is going to work. There are a lot of assumptions and there is a lot of hope. Now, during the committee of the whole House stage, we did engage with the Minister, as well as during scrutiny week; we also engaged with the Minister, on this particular thing. One of the things that we asked consistently is how many one-stop-shops do we really need? Because there has been far too much time and energy and, to be fair, taxpayers’ money being wasted creating entities such as this one-stop-shop, when there are other one-stop-shops. There was no clarity that the Minister was able to provide, for example—and also advice that was given by Education New Zealand being, essentially, the advertisement agency on promoting New Zealand education internationally, and also potentially looking at drawing that. Yes, I agree that—and that might have to do more with what New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) is currently doing. But even if we’re looking at Immigration New Zealand, there is no advice that was being asked of Immigration New Zealand in light of all of these changes the Government is making in terms of investment visa types. I find that lack of consultation concerning and appalling.

During the committee stage, we also didn’t hear from the Minister—and we asked consistently, over and over again—what was the advice from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT). Because, apparently, according to the regulatory impact statement, MFAT advice was sought but it wasn’t included because they didn’t respond in time. We asked the Minister in the chair, what was that advice, and we didn’t get any response, other than political statements. That was, essentially, our experience of the committee stage, and the only opportunity that members of this House have had to question anyone about this particular bill.

The other concern that we have is according to the regulatory impact statement itself, that they were looking at paragraph 4 on page 6: “New Zealand ranks 26th out of 37 OECD countries in its per capita spending on research and development.” Now, the fine print of this is that this is looking at per capita spending by the Government, predominantly. Again, the Government could be like, “Oh, look, with hope, inshallah, that Invest New Zealand may be able to draw in foreign investment, who then may spur on New Zealand innovation and enterprise, who may fund for some of the things.” Again, like a lot of the things this Government does under urgency, we are looking at simply thoughts and prayers. There is no empirical evidence to suggest this is something that will work.

What we do know is that we rank 26th out of 37 OECD countries on per capita spending on research and development. And the bulk funding for this particular Crown agency comes out of the disestablishment of Callaghan Innovation, which is one of the main funders of local and domestic innovation and entrepreneurship. That funding—that $40-odd million funding—is gone. And not only do we see this huge defunding in the arts and humanities space, but leaves a huge gap for the STEM subjects here in Aotearoa to source Government funding. I don’t think that our stats in the OECD are going to improve as a result of this bill. In fact, I think that concern that is in paragraph 4 of the regulatory impact statement will only exacerbate as a result of this.

In terms of other areas of this bill, I think one of the fundamental concerns that we have is while going through the committee stage, there’s still a lack of clarity in terms of exactly what is going to be the performance measures and the outcomes being sought. Yes, we understand, Invest New Zealand—it is in the title. Although I would more accurately call it “Divest New Zealand”. But there is no benchmark; it’s a complete unknown quantity when we’re looking at performance measures of this. All we do know is that, again, we’re taking a huge amount of money out of New Zealand. The price, in some ways—OK, I get it, you want New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to focus on trade and enterprise and, basically, export in many ways, whereas you want Invest New Zealand to look at export and import. You want Invest New Zealand to look more at pure overseas investment. That’s fine, but at least the minimum is to have some sort of performance measures that we’re able to say, “Is this particular agency”—this new particular Crown entity that’s going to take up $86 million—“actually going to meet any form of target?” We don’t have any such stats or data.

We’ve heard that, on one hand, the Government want to draw foreign investment but, at the same time, we don’t address the fact of why aren’t we promoting local investment and domestic investment. As part of the scrutiny week last week, we were told by officials that there are $438 billion—I think was the number that we were given—in foreign investments from New Zealand going out to other places; the New Zealand Superannuation Fund being one of the biggest ones when we were looking at that. Actually, from a New Zealand Super Fund perspective, very little of that is looking at domestic investment. If we’re asking overseas investors to invest in New Zealand, why aren’t we looking at our own investment structure first; for local and buy local, right? That was supposed to be the aim of some of these. At the same time, when we were looking at wanting to attract international talent, we want to attract all of these things, but, in just this week alone, we have seen a new immigration bill being introduced where the Government is going to place another tax on people applying for visas to come here in Aotearoa New Zealand because, and I quote, and unsubstantiated, they’re going to put education and health burdens on our already failing system.

So there are a lot of contradictions in terms of exactly what the Government is looking for when they are talking about investment, when they are looking at growth. But, at the end of the day, when we are looking at the Invest New Zealand Bill, through the hearings in scrutiny week, and also through discussions we had in the committee stage, fundamentally it sounds like what the Government is looking for is for overseas investors to bail New Zealand out of the slump that we’re currently in. But in all honesty, there are better ways to do that. Overseas investors are going to be taken along anyway. They are going to invest in New Zealand because there is investment and there’s profit to be made. Why aren’t we giving those opportunities to people here?

We have mentioned in terms of the Treasury’s very conservative estimate of the upper threshold of 90 percent before we get into risk of defaulting. If we factor in 40 percent for shock in the event of an emergency, that still leaves us a debt ceiling of 50 percent that we are able to do. But the Government has chosen, as a political choice, to limit our domestic investment and our domestic debt to 20 percent. We could invest locally, but we choose not to. So the Green Party will not support this bill.

Fortunately for New Zealand, the ACT Party and the rest of our coalition do support this bill. What does it do? People say, “Why do we need Invest New Zealand?” We’ve heard, from Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan: “Why do we need Invest New Zealand?” Well, because New Zealand has historically lacked a dedicated agency, a front door for investors. Responsibilities were fragmented across the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and regional development bodies. Invest New Zealand brings them all together in one place.

We need access to capital to power economic growth. We need lots and lots of capital—billions and billions of dollars—coming from overseas investors to support the delivery of major projects, like Christchurch Men’s Prison public-private partnership (PPP). If three strikes means that more people are going to be locked up for longer, we’re going to need to build more prisons. It would be very helpful if we had long-term capital to assist us. We’ve heard the Northern Corridor highway project—another public-private partnership—has attracted three international consortiums, partnered with Kiwi companies, design and construction firms, to deliver a major highway. That’s going to take billions of dollars in overseas capital on the table to pay for contractors, pay for materials, as the project gets built. We can only do that kind of thing if we have other people’s money to help supplement our own capital.

Invest New Zealand is a pillar of this Government’s Going For Growth agenda. It’s part of our economic strategy. It’s part of a transformation agenda aimed at improving productivity and improving national resilience—

Hon Damien O’Connor: Sell everything!

SIMON COURT: —Damien O’Connor—via additional capital and innovation—

Hon Damien O’Connor: Sell your grandmother!

SIMON COURT: —Damien O’Connor, I’ll get to you in a minute—global best practice in the way that we triage and test whether people’s investment intentions are good for New Zealand. Ireland and Singapore got it right, Damien O’Connor. They have benefited from focused investment attraction agencies.

Dan Bidois: Are they richer than New Zealand?

SIMON COURT: They are richer than New Zealand, Dan Bidois. For New Zealand to compete globally, it must offer, Damien O’Connor, a predictable and appealing place to invest, an environment that investors aren’t worried about sovereign risk. Invest New Zealand is also highly complementary to existing policies and new policies this Government is introducing—amendments to the Overseas Investment Act which will stop treating investors like terrorists and start treating them like a taonga, because the treasure they bring to New Zealand is a taonga, Damien O’Connor. It makes New Zealand a more attractive place, for more people.

We’ve heard from the Opposition—ideological Damien O’Connor; incoherent, anti-growth, anti - foreign investment. That previous Government wrecked investor confidence in New Zealand. By cancelling oil and gas exploration, they undermined energy security and capital growth. This bill is a corrective measure. You could think of it like New Zealand being a patient that has been in ICU because of the previous Government’s abuse of New Zealand. This is going to revive confidence. It’s going to restore economic momentum. We’ve heard O’Connor say that Invest New Zealand is a glorified real estate agency selling New Zealand and our intellectual property (IP) and opportunities. Do you know what? I think it’s fantastic that New Zealanders who come up with bright ideas get to sell them. They get to take them, maybe, to overseas stock markets, they get to raise capital through initial public offerings, and they actually get to go out there and prove why New Zealand is a good place to invest. Our IP is a taonga too, and we should be allowed to make money off of it.

We’ve heard this fearmongering about foreigners buying New Zealand assets. That is emotional and ideological; it’s not practical. It’s not going to help us. We’ve also heard the incoherency. Today, Labour’s infrastructure spokesperson, Kieran McAnulty, said he was at the Infrastructure Symposium—

Ryan Hamilton: Is he the new one?

SIMON COURT: He is the new one; that’s right. I don’t know what happened to the last one. She spoke at the infrastructure investment conference and, the next thing you know, they’d stripped the portfolio off her. Maybe it’s because she started to make too much sense!

Cameron Luxton: Shepherd’s hooked off the stage.

SIMON COURT: “Shepherd’s hooked off the stage,” says the former dairy farmer from Murupara. Today, we heard Kieran McAnulty say that, actually, Labour would support public-private partnerships, which means inwards foreign investment, Damien O’Connor. What we hear, in the House, is that certain MPs are absolutely incoherent, maybe haven’t got the memo that New Zealanders voted overwhelmingly for a change of direction, for a Government that is rational when it comes to inwards investment.

This is a welcoming and respecting approach to private capital, institutional capital. Those banks, those insurers—they might be from Canada. They might want to build us a light rail. Who knows, they might want to build us a highway to Northland and unlock jobs and investment and growth and better homes and better education opportunities. That’s what infrastructure does. That is why ACT supports this bill. We are going to pass it this afternoon, and New Zealand, New Zealanders, our businesses, our future is going to be assured. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

Thanks, Mr Speaker. New Zealand First will also support this Invest New Zealand Bill. Actually, it is a pretty simple bill. It’s setting up separate Crown agencies. It’s a very functional bill. Invest New Zealand will be a one-stop shop—

Hon Damien O’Connor: What happened to the old New Zealand First?

Hon MARK PATTERSON: No, I’m going to get to you, the Hon Damien O’Connor, in a minute because I do think there are a few scores that need to be settled here. But this is, essentially, a one-stop shop that facilitates overseas capital investment into New Zealand.

We have a massive infrastructure deficit. We are needing to drive growth. We do need that access to expertise and to foreign markets—which I think we established in last night’s bill—that New Zealand does need and that we are chasing, as a Government. It already exists, this particular entity; it just sits within New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE). So this is an issue of just getting NZTE focused on growing our exports, and the outward-facing Invest New Zealand very much a shop front for the overseas capital looking to enter New Zealand.

Damien O’Connor will be pleased because, actually, the stuff that he’s been talking about was in the national interest test bill that came through last night, and he will be relieved to know, I’m sure, that the national interest test is retained—it has been streamlined, but it is retained—for those sensitive strategically important national assets. We have ring-fenced farmland, we have ring-fenced fishing quota, and we have ring-fenced the family home, so there’s no need to catastrophise.

But I’m actually very pleased that he has taken an interest in this particular issue. It is a bit belated because he was nowhere to be seen—he talked about selling his grandmother, or he was accusing Simon Court of selling his grandmother. Well, I do recall that in the last term of Parliament that I was here, the Westland dairy co-op under his watch, which was a family owned company on the West Coast that I know that both he and yourself, Mr Assistant Speaker O’Connor—your families had an interest in. That is now under Chinese ownership with the Yili Co., so it is a belated interest in this, actually, because he was nowhere to be seen, or he was certainly not effective in stopping that transaction. I can recall quite vividly that the Provincial Growth Fund and Shane Jones did try to get a rescue package to that particular company, but that’s now in Chinese ownership. So people in glass houses shouldn’t be throwing stones on this particular issue around foreign investment.

But we are digressing. This is actually a very simple bill. It sets up the structure of Invest New Zealand, the board structure, and the details that sit below that. It will help to facilitate sensible foreign capital investment in New Zealand that will help us grow our economy and build infrastructure, and New Zealand First will support this bill. Thank you.

The Hon Julie Anne Genter—a five-minute call.

At risk of repeating myself in previous speeches on this bill, I have to say that the whole idea of Invest New Zealand is like an episode of Utopia, which is a satirical Australian show about the Public Service—and it just reminds me, like I can just imagine Christopher Luxon coming up with this, and maybe the officials who advised him: “I know. I’ve got an idea. I know how we can grow productivity here in New Zealand. Let’s set up an agency and I’ll call it ‘Invest New Zealand’, and it will go around the world and attract all those wonderful, benevolent foreign investors who will come build our infrastructure for us”—

Hon Phil Twyford: Free money.

Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Free! It’s the magical money tree that they’re always saying doesn’t exist, but they do think it exists; they think it’s foreign investors, but they are so ridiculous and confused in proposing an agency called “Invest New Zealand”. Virtually all of the Government speakers on the third reading of this bill have referred to public infrastructure projects that this is meant to be a gateway to attract foreign investment into. And yet less than a year ago, they set up an entirely separate different agency called NIFFco, whose express purpose is to be the shop front for investment, private investment, into public infrastructure.

Even when I asked the Minister for Infrastructure at select committee, “Wait, where do the investors go? If they’re foreign investors, do they go to NIFFCo, or do they go to Invest New Zealand?”, and he made it very clear: “No, no,”—the Minister for Infrastructure said—“go to NIFFCo.” So it’s almost like the Minister for Infrastructure and the Minister of trade are competing here, setting up separate agencies to be the shop-front for foreign investors. It’s a big competition, where we’re setting up multiple bureaucratic agencies and spending tens of millions of dollars—hundreds of millions of dollars?—on people who are going to go out and court these foreign investors, rather than investing that money in capacity and capability, in science and research, in housing, in education, in the things that actually make a nation productive and actually grow our own capability to develop the things that are good for New Zealand.

This is the nature of this coalition Government, that they have no imagination—well, actually, it’s not so much imagination, although they probably are lacking imagination. But they seem wilfully ignorant about what actually supports economic development and productivity, because it doesn’t match their ideological preferences and the preferences of the people they represent: their donors, who want to continue milking the various ways they can sit and make money off of real estate, for example, just owning a bunch of houses and renting them out and charging a fortune in rent—not actually improving the facilities—and being able to kick out tenants any time they want.

They want to create—they want to continue to develop a New Zealand that is basically an oligarchy. It is; it’s like a feudal oligarchy, where there’s a small percentage of people at the top who get all of the money, and then there’s the workers down there at the bottom who don’t have any rights and who they can exploit. And then, somehow, the foreign investors are going to come to New Zealand and give us money. Never mind the fact that we’re going to have to pay back a higher return to any foreign investors than we would if the Crown itself was borrowing for productive infrastructure.

Then the other big talking point I hear from the Government side is how we have an infrastructure deficit. Well, one thing’s very clear: not a single person over there has read or understands the Infrastructure Commission’s draft National Infrastructure Plan that was announced today. Because what it says is we’ve been spending too much money on roads, and it says we need to spend less money on roads and more money on maintenance and renewals of our infrastructure. That’s what that report says. And it looks at other countries—says we’re not spending enough money probably on rail compared to other countries we would compare ourselves to.

All of this is like basic common sense to anyone outside of New Zealand right-wing commentators. If you go to any other country in the world, the centre-right parties actually understand that it makes sense to invest in our urban infrastructure that moves people and goods, not just cars. They understand that you invest in social housing, public housing, we invest in education. Lots of countries that we’d like to be like—they actually spend money on pure science, research and development, not trying to make everything a commercial model, not trying to make their universities commercial models for making money but, rather, actually investing in research, development, education of our people.

Because if we have educated people, it’s a risk to the right in New Zealand, because educated people tend not to vote for the right-wing parties, don’t they? Because they actually understand and care about how the world works and aren’t simply trying to prop up a failed Ponzi scheme where the 1 percent get all the benefit.

The first bit of money that Invest New Zealand can find is to dig the second tunnel through Mt Victoria, the same tunnel that that member for Rongotai goes to Seatoun and suggests that she’s all for the second tunnel through Mt Vic, but when she’s in Island Bay she’s against the tunnel. I commend this bill to the House.

The Labour Party opposes this bill and has done so right from when it was first introduced. I want to remind the members of how this bill was introduced and the process since then, because it reveals something. This bill was introduced under urgency—under urgency. What that meant was that on 22 May—because apparently it was very urgent for this bill to get passed all the way through as soon as possible—we had the first reading of this bill. Then we had the second reading of this bill. Then we had the committee stage of this bill. Then—well, apparently it wasn’t urgent anymore.

Now, we argued, extensively, that there should at least be a short—even a short—select committee process for this bill. But the Minister for Trade and Investment and the members of the Minister’s party and the people on the other side of the House assured us we had to get this through under urgency. We got to the end of 22 May—as I recall, by then it was about Saturday, 24 May in the real world—got to the end of Budget urgency, the House rose. We had not had the third reading of this bill; they had elected to defer it. So I thought, oh well, they did say it was urgent. I get that urgency was coming to an end. Then we were back in this House in the week beginning 3 June. A sitting week, legislation going through this House. Was this bill on the Order Paper, the third reading of this bill? Nope.

So from 22 May, right through to the end of May, through early June, waiting, waiting, waiting, right through until now. In terms of this bill, which was apparently so urgent that it had to go through in Budget urgency, crickets.

Vanushi Walters: We could have had a select committee process.

Hon Dr DEBORAH RUSSELL: Well, we could have had a select committee process in that time, even a short one, to iron out some of the difficulties in this bill. We could have had a select committee process to examine some of the policy motivations for this bill. It turns out there was time for a short select committee process because this bill has not reappeared in this House until today—a month and three days after we were first told that it was incredibly urgent and it had to be done right now.

That side has abused the urgency process, and this bill is an example of that. The crickets, the nothing doing, the nothing happening shows exactly why, on this side of the House, whenever they move urgency, we oppose it, and we fight it all the way, because that was an abuse of process.

We have solid reasons for our opposition to this bill. On the face of it, the idea looks good—that we want to drive investment in this country. You know, that seems on the surface—of course we want to do that. Of course we want to see our country growing. Of course we want to find mechanisms by which we can finance the projects we think we all need to engage in. But I do not think that this is the way to do it.

Even if we look at the Government’s own regulatory impact statement and looking at the policy options they put up, here was the problem. They said, “We would like to have more foreign direct investment in New Zealand.” Now, leaving aside whether or not that’s a good thing in itself, if you’re going to do that, then how could that be achieved? Well, they said, “You could just stick with status quo.” That’s the counterfactual. “You could make some improvements to existing institutional arrangements.” Seems fair enough. “You could focus on the general business settings and try to improve the attractiveness of New Zealand as an investment destination.”, or “You could establish a dedicated foreign direct investment agency.”, the preferred option.

But looking at the analysis of that, it’s quite clear that the only advantage of the Government’s preferred option is that it sends a strong positive signal to the international market. It’s an advertising gimmick. They are going to spend $86 million of our money, taking money away from science, and spend it on an advertising gimmick. That’s the only advantage that their option has in the regulatory impact statement.

They do say, as well, that other countries—around about the same size as us and so on, which want to have foreign direct investment—do have dedicated foreign direct investment agencies. The comparators they give: Ireland and Singapore. Ignoring that Ireland is part of the European Union. Ignoring that Ireland is an island country, like us, but sits just offshore from the European continent. Ignoring that one of the reasons that Ireland attracts so much foreign direct investment is its extraordinarily low corporate tax rate, which has some countries describing it as a tax haven. That’s why a comparison with Ireland is not such a flash one.

Then when it comes to Singapore, the analysis that just compares us to Singapore ignores the fact that Singapore has a very low-waged class of indentured workers; ignores the fact that Singapore provides large amounts of State-subsidised housing to its citizens; ignores the fact that Singapore, for all the surface detail, is not a democracy. It is not a straightforward combination to compare us to Singapore.

So the regulatory impact statement itself does not lend strong support to the Government’s preferred option. In fact, the extraordinary thing is that the Government’s preferred option of a dedicated foreign direct investment agency has been tried before, and it failed. They couldn’t remember, didn’t have the institutional knowledge to be able to tell us about it. But those of us who’ve got friends who worked in the agencies at the time know that New Zealand Trade and Enterprise used to have this separate agency, separately funded outside. There was an entity called—wait for it—not Investment New Zealand, but Invest New Zealand. But it wasn’t achieving what it needed to achieve and, eventually, the Government of the time realised that it would be better folded back into New Zealand Trade and Enterprise itself. You know, this strategy has been tried before, and it failed. They cannot tell us why we should try it again.

So then, in terms of this particular entity, I think there are some serious, serious concerns about the nature of the foreign direct investment into New Zealand. Now, we might be rolling out a welcome mat—could be a good idea, might not. But in actual fact, the member from ACT, who spoke just previously, pointed to one of the huge dangers. He said, “We’re going to put lots of poor people in prison; therefore, we’re going to need to build a bigger prison. What a great place for foreign direct investment.”

It is appalling to think of private investment in prisons. Prisons represent us locking up people and taking away their freedom. It is the hardest punishment we can hand out in this society. We should be extraordinarily careful about the conditions in which we lock people up. The punishment is not harsh living. The punishment is not hard work. The punishment is loss of freedom—the punishment is loss of freedom. It does not need to come with the sorts of practices that we know are prevalent in private prisons overseas. That’s the kind of foreign direct investment they want. They should be ashamed of that.

Then the particular member who spoke talked about, he said, “Oh my God”—this was verging on hysteria, really, talking about sovereign risk, that “New Zealand had become as synonymous with sovereign risk.” What a ridiculous thing to say. This is a country with a strong rule of law. This is a country with a really rigorous and highly respected court system. This is a country with a good, solid currency. This is a country which has all—all—the factors that make it attractive for direct and foreign investment. Why? Because people know that their investments here can be secure. So to say that we have a high sovereign risk here is just absolutely ridiculous.

So in terms of getting foreign direct investment into this country, it could be a good thing. We think it’s a worrying thing because of the nature of the investments that might come along. But in terms of this particular policy, this policy has failed once before. This policy fails the analysis and the Government’s own regulatory impact statement. This policy simply will not work. It’s $86 million down the drain. That Government should be ashamed.

This is a great bill, and all I’ve really heard from the Opposition—I think deep down they want to support it, but I’ve heard from Damien O’Connor calling it a “real estate shop front” and Deborah Russell calling it an “advertising gimmick”. But I look forward to, in two years’ time, when we start to get some of the infrastructure rolled out and deployed across this country, coming back and reminding them that they voted against it. I commend this bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O’Connor): Five-minute split call.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. This bill and this debate in the House this afternoon are very revealing about the true nature of the National Party and their coalition colleagues, the ACT Party.

There are two, I think, significant concerns that we have on this side of the House. The first is that what this bill does is establish a new agency and, on the face of it, nothing is wrong with that, but how is it being done? It’s being done by plundering the budget that is there for research and science and technology, by taking money from what was Callaghan Innovation and also really carving out a whole lot of resource from what is a high-performing organisation with a fantastic track record—New Zealand Trade and Enterprise—in order to fund what, on the face of it, looks like a vanity project that’s set up to promote sales.

I think this says a lot about the National Party. They are the sales department of New Zealand. They’re taking money away from organisations that are there to improve productivity through investing in science and innovation, and plundering a high-performing organisation that has a track record of actually attracting high-quality investment for New Zealand firms and helping New Zealand firms tap into global markets, to create a sales department. That is the mentality of the modern National Party.

I think if it wasn’t because of those things, and if it wasn’t for all the other information that’s available—including the content of the Overseas Investment (National Interest Test and Other Matters) Amendment Bill going through the House, or having gone through the House—we probably would feel that setting up this new shop front to promote New Zealand as a destination for foreign direct investment wouldn’t be so obnoxious. But, actually, when you look at what this Government has done and is doing and is talking about in relation to foreign investment, it is cause for alarm.

They’re infatuated with the idea that if we attract rich people to come to New Zealand, somehow we’re all going to get wealthier. You can see this in the main media announcements made by the Government, by Erica Stanford, for example, for the new so-called active investor visa. They’ve dumbed it down so an investor only has to be here for one week a year for three years. They’ve dumbed down the requirements to make active investments that might generate jobs and exports for New Zealand firms. Foreign investors can buy residence now, thanks to this Government, by simply parking $3 million in a managed fund, and then, once they get their residence after three years, they can tutu off with a residence visa in their passport and they never have to come back again, unless, of course, they’re wanting a bolt hole in New Zealand for their retirement. They are so absolutely infatuated with trying to get our rich people into New Zealand, as if that will boost our economy.

We’ve seen in the Budget $200 million of corporate welfare for mining and gas companies—$200 million to promote the very kind of extractive petrochemical industries that we should be trying to get out of in order to meet our climate change requirements and commitments. The palpable enthusiasm on that side of the House for getting rid of the ban on overseas buyers of residential property so that New Zealanders when they’re buying a home—whether it’s a modest three-bedroom home in the suburbs or whether it’s a $5 million home on the shores of Lake Wakatipu—will have to be competing in a global market. The Ministers have made it quite clear that’s what they want to do and that they are talking with coalition partners to try and achieve that. So I say to the members: don’t look so shocked and innocent, but it’s actually your Ministers who are talking about that policy.

Time and time and time again in this debate, we’ve heard Government MPs stand up and say that the great benefit of this is that we’re going to have foreigners coming here to invest in our infrastructure, our transport infrastructure, oblivious to the fact that it’s not a financing problem that we have; it’s a funding problem. There is a tonne of finance around, but when you access it privately, you pay more than if the Government borrows it. The problem is the funding to pay back those loans, and foreign direct investment doesn’t help that at all. That is the problem that we have.

To put it on record: foreign investment is a good thing and it helps grow our economy. If we can’t agree on that simple fact across this House, then I’m sorry, this country’s future is screwed. New Zealand has a woeful rate of foreign direct investment, and this bill seeks to turn that around. So, without further ado, I commend this bill to the House.

I rise to oppose this bill. I must say, it is a privilege to return to this House but sometimes it does feel like I’ve wandered down the rabbit hole in terms of how law is being made and how the rationale is being set out. I think the committee stage of this bill truly felt like I’d wandered down the rabbit hole because there were so many questions left unanswered. I do wish that the Government had listened to the many, many, amendments that were proposed—very sensibly—by this side of the House, and taken them on board, but they didn’t. I want to walk through some of the concerns I had at the end of that committee stage, when my questions should have been answered—when members on this side’s questions should have been answered.

The first was, I think, the odd governance arrangements for the statutory board that we discussed at committee stage. I am going to spend a little bit of time on this because I think, on picking up the bill, what first struck me was that this is the creation of a Crown entity under urgency. Crown entities are rather special things in terms of our democratic architecture because there’s a need to ensure that the boards are kept independent; governance structure is extremely important.

So why don’t we start with the governance structure of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), where the current Invest New Zealand is being incubated, because that gives us more of what I would say is a traditional model for what governance architecture would be. We have section 19 of the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise Act, which allows the Minister to appoint a special adviser to the board. Section 19(2) sets out who those special advisers can be. It can either be the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade or the chief executive of the Ministry of Economic Development, and it could be both of them at the same time. Now, we’ll notice there that the legislation is actually very specific about which chief executives can be appointed as special advisers. The reason is, you would not want to appoint the chief executive officer of the entity itself as a special adviser to the board of that entity. That would create two issues: one, it would mean that the Minister would, in effect, have almost a governance shadow in the boardroom, which would be inappropriate; the other thing that would be inappropriate about that would be that it would muddy the waters of the governance relationship between the board, who appoint the chief executive, and the chief executive who’s there to report to the board, not to be there as the Minister’s adviser. OK? So this Act has it correct. I think the governance arrangements are absolutely fine.

The problem we have with the Invest New Zealand Bill is it also has powers to appoint a special adviser. These powers are different. It is currently contained in clause 13 and reads that “The Minister may appoint the chief executive as a special advisor to the Board” and “The special advisor must not give directions”—but they can just appoint the chief executive. Now, the interesting thing to note here is that there is no specific chief executive who has been appointed. The language in clause 13 is very general. So what you’d do then, of course, is you would go to the Interpretation section where chief executive is defined, and it says this: “chief executive means the chief executive of the department.” Which department? This is a question that came up in committee stage. It’s a question that Dr Deborah Russell and I both asked the Minister in the chair, and we raised concerns about a governance system where you would have the chief executive of that entity—so, of Invest New Zealand—also being appointed as the special adviser, for the two reasons that I set out earlier.

The Minister in the chair then responded advising that it would be the chief executive of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE). I was so perplexed by this that I went back and checked the Hansard, and it was the Minister’s response on 4 June, her fourth response to Part 2. She says: “I will respond to that question because it is … pertinent … to confirm … appointing a head of [a] department responsible for the administration of a bill or an Act, and the Crown entity, as a special adviser to that Crown entity board is indeed common. In this instance, it will be the Secretary for the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment … who will be appointed as a special adviser to the board of Invest New Zealand.”

So here’s the problem: we’ve either got a situation where the Minister is correct that it will be and it should be the chief executive of MBIE, which would be more appropriate in terms of the governance function. But we then have an error in the law; we’ve got an error in the bill because it simply doesn’t say that. That’s our first problem. The alternative gives us our second problem. Let’s say the Minister in the chair was wrong and the bill sits as is. We then have an unacceptable governance situation, in my view, in terms of the Crown Entities Act, which doesn’t allow independence of the board. It puts the Minister’s shadow in the room, and it muddies the water in terms of the governance relationship between the board and the chief executive.

Now, this all sounds extremely dull, but it is incredibly important when you are allocating $80 million to create a new Crown entity at a time when the Government are telling us that we need to make hard choices, at a time when the Government are telling us there are a number of things that they can’t do. I’m sorry, but you do need to ensure that the legislation is fit for purpose. This is a prime example of a piece of legislation that should not have gone through urgency, and it looks to me like rather a serious mistake has been made.

The second problem I hit during committee stage was that it felt, to me, like a process of backwards lawmaking. The documents themselves acknowledged the fact that key decisions had been made before an analysis of the options was taken. There was a decision that this was going to go ahead before there was true analysis of the four options that were set out in the spreadsheet. I think that is extremely problematic. It’s extremely problematic generally, but it’s also extremely problematic in light of the fact that we heard the Government introduce that they were incubating Invest New Zealand within NZTE in, I think, December or January. There was plenty of time to be able to start that process to allow for consultation with people to rectify governance issues within the body of the legislation, and ensure that—if the intent was to have the CEO of MBIE, the Secretary of MBIE, in that special advisory role—that was specified in the legislation. The Government simply did not do that.

The third problem—and colleagues have mentioned this but I do think it’s important—is that within the course of committee of the whole House it was very clear that the problem statement identified hadn’t sufficiently linked itself to the solution that this Government have chosen. Essentially, the problem statement is that there isn’t sufficient investment in particular things that we want investment in. Now, that could be infrastructure; it could be other things as well. But the fact of the matter is that the legislation doesn’t direct investment into particular things; it just opens the door. I’m sorry, but if the intention is to direct investment, to truly direct it, then there’s an opportunity to do that within the body of good legislation. Again, my big beef here—I do have ideological problems with some of this, but my big beef here is that this is a Government who are not using the processes that are available to them to get us to a state where we have legislation that can stand and stay responsibly on the books.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Well, there seems to be a problem, on the other side of the House, accepting that foreign investment can lead to jobs. A very quick example: in the great electorate of Northland, there’s a township called Mangawhai. There are three golf courses there, and guess what! They employ over 300 people, more than anyone else in the Mangawhai area, and that was built through foreign investment. So I respectfully say to the members opposite: take your heads out of that bunker sand and accept that foreign investment is good for New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.