Invest New Zealand Bill

I present a legislative statement on the Invest New Zealand Bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the Parliament website.

Hon TODD McCLAY: I move, That the Invest New Zealand Bill be now read a first time.

The purpose of the bill is to establish a new Crown entity—Invest New Zealand—and provide for its function and operation so that it can help to position New Zealand as a premier destination for foreign direct investment (FDI). Investment is key to economic growth; it fuels innovation, drives productivity, and assures world-class business have the capital they need to scale. Foreign investment is crucial because as well as bringing in your capital to support the growth of New Zealand firms, it also strengthens our international connections, facilitates technological transfer and the commercialisation of our science space, creates jobs, enhances infrastructure development, and contributes overall to boosting New Zealand’s productive capacity and competitiveness on a global scale.

As of March 2024, New Zealand’s foreign direct investment stock was $158.5 billion, about 39 percent of our GDP. This is below the OECD average of 52 percent and considerably below Ireland, a comparable small, advanced economy, whose FDI stock sits at 260 percent of their GDP. While last year, our FDI grew by 5 percent, compared to Singapore, which grew at 31 percent, we have much work to do.

New Zealand produces world-class businesses with huge potential. Sectors like fintech and finance, renewable energy, cleantech, advanced transportation, aquaculture, and food manufacturing all have companies that are scaling, innovating, and looking for global partners to help them grow. In order to attract that investment, we need to grow the economy, we must scale up our efforts, and take a more coordinated, strategic approach to investment attraction. By establishing a dedicated stand-alone agency focused solely on attracting foreign direct investment, we will do just that.

Invest New Zealand will be the Government’s front for foreign direct investment, cutting through bureaucracy and proactively securing major investments. Through the establishment of Invest New Zealand, we’ll remove unnecessary barriers so that investing here is easier, efficient, and predictable. Invest New Zealand will be able to target high-impact investment in key sectors, like technology, agritech, renewable energy, fintech, finance and advanced manufacturing, and many more; proactively engage with global investors and multinationals, showcasing the unique advantages of doing business in New Zealand; and support high-growth Kiwi businesses to become investment-ready so that they can scale up and expand internationally.

This is a relatively straightforward bill, but I would like to summarise some of the bill’s key features. It establishes Invest New Zealand as an autonomous Crown entity. It sets out the function of the entity. Its main function will be to facilitate and enable increased overseas investment in New Zealand. The bill also lists additional functions of Investment New Zealand in order to carry out the main functions, including facilitating connections and collaboration between overseas investors, New Zealand investors, research institutions, organisations; provide investment opportunities for businesses; and build and share knowledge about overseas investors, the investment environment in New Zealand, and the investment opportunities here. It will provide advice and information to Government on policies and legislation needed to attract overseas investment, including identifying and advising on options for reform that are likely to enable for further overseas investment and carry out any additional function in relation to investment. The bill provides abilities for Invest New Zealand to charge fees and to recover costs if it chooses to do so. The bill also includes some transitional provisions to ensure transfer of employees, assets, and liabilities to Invest New Zealand from the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, which currently carries out investment activity, functions smoothly.

The Government is committed to showing the world that New Zealand is open for business. Alongside our ambition to double exports by value over 10 years, Invest New Zealand will be able to ensure that New Zealand attracts the capital that it needs to drive growth, create jobs, and deliver for all New Zealanders. I commend this bill to the House.

Madam Speaker, thank you very much, and thanks to the Minister for Trade and Investment for explaining some of the bill. Labour has always appreciated and valued the investment that has come into this country over the, I guess, last couple of hundred years that has enabled us to get to where we are as a nation. We acknowledge the importance of foreign investment, but I’m not sure we need a real estate agency to sell off New Zealand, as is being proposed in this legislation.

The question we must always ask of any legislation in this House is why, because, actually, we have New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, and the Minister is responsible for what is a very high-performing Government agency that has, as part of its mandate, to identify and to attract, where necessary, investment into our country, to provide opportunities for New Zealanders and for New Zealand. There are many questions that we will ask in relation to this piece of legislation because Labour is not convinced that this is, indeed, necessary. There are provisions proposed in this that lead to some serious questions around the independence of the agency, the ability of the Minister and the Government to have direct intervention and influence, and who it might be attracting and who it might be facilitating.

We, in Labour, have always, as I’ve said, supported foreign investment, with some safeguards. If it is just to sell off assets, land, or intellectual property (IP) from this country by bringing in investors, that will not deliver the net benefit that our country needs. We have no shortage of capital in this country—

Todd Stephenson: Yes, we do.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: No, we don’t actually.

Todd Stephenson: We do.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: No, actually—

Todd Stephenson: We absolutely do.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: Well, if the members over there would like to go and just do some research on the amount of New Zealand capital that is invested offshore, it is literally hundreds of billions of dollars. This is New Zealanders’ money, hundreds of billions that is invested offshore to attract income—we accept that—and we already have foreign investment in this country that is quite significant. Indeed, in March 2024, we had a level of about $171 billion of foreign investment in our country put to good purpose, for the most part, delivering $26 billion of income for those investors that flows offshore, outside of our economy.

We had, as I say, $128 billion, at last count, of investment offshore. The question should be asked, as we’re moving forward, to manage investment flows in and out of our country, as to whether we would be better off investing in ourselves, and indeed we may reduce the outflow of capital—the $26 billion might be reduced; that could be kept in our country to keep the economy growing—and whether long term that would deliver us the sovereign rights and control of the direction of our economy. This bill simply sets up an agency to shift the investment objectives of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise into an autonomous Government agency, under the direction of a Minister who can direct the chief executive to provide guidance to the board. For what purposes? It’s very vague.

So, while we appreciate and understand the value of foreign investment into our country, and have done to get us to where we are, the question is: do we need a real estate agency, as is being set up here, to simply go out and attract buyers of assets and of the valuable part of our country—be it businesses, be it IP, be it land or houses—just for the benefit of foreign investors? Labour will not support this bill, and we will be questioning it right through the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I think that we first need to address the bigger question, I guess, in some ways, in this room. Here we are, speaking on a new bill, despite the fact that we have pulled the plug halfway through a committee of the whole House stage of a bill, and then we have just stopped the previous bill, the Rates Rebate Amendment Bill, in the second reading to introduce a new bill, because this Government, frankly, can’t handle the fact that every bill they introduced in this House under this urgency is, frankly, baseless and without an ounce of evidence and cannot stand the Opposition’s scrutiny. So what we are seeing is all of these sort of things being pushed through as a result.

Simon Court: Point of order, Madam Speaker. I’m a little bit concerned that the member there, in his diatribe—while I know we’re in the middle of a debate—just forgot that the Greens just supported the last Government bill.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): That’s not a point of order, Mr Court.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: Thank you, Madam Speaker, and I thank that member for his contribution, although juvenile as it is. Now, when we are looking at this particular bill, when we’re looking at this Invest New Zealand Bill, essentially what we are asking for is to set up a brand new agency that’s going to cost New Zealand taxpayers millions of dollars, under urgency, without the ability to scrutinise. That’s the thing: we are pushing through bills under first and second reading only because of the fact that we are under urgency and we don’t have to go through a select committee stage. Let me put it on the record as saying: if for this bill we are going straight to second reading without a committee stage, then it is the Government trying to avoid having to call another urgency for a select committee stage. That is clear if we are going to second reading.

Todd Stephenson: Well, you won’t know, will you?

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN: That’s why I’m proposing the question. That’s why it’s a question. We shall see, but when we’re looking at this bill, I think the first question is—look, trade is important. It is a fundamental aspect of human civilisation and it’s one of the earliest forms of profession in the world. It is supposed to be something that benefits everyone within the community. Indeed, under the last Government, we saw the report All for Trade and Trade for All being produced on improvements that we could be making in terms of our trade opportunities and potential here in Aotearoa. Let me tell you: this new agency was not part of that trade-for-all report.

This agency that we are looking at here will do nothing to genuinely support the people of Aotearoa other than selling Aotearoa off bits at a time, both in terms of human capital and in terms of our physical environment. Why do we need this? I think that is the question. Why do we need this, when in all of the reviews we’ve done for NZTE—that’s New Zealand Trade and Enterprise—didn’t show any evidence, to my knowledge, that suggests that NZTE is not performing? So why are we carving out what NZTE is already doing into a new agency? Who is this agency going to be for? I think the previous speaker, the Hon Damien O’Connor, captured this really accurately. We see in the regulatory impact statement people saying that there are asymmetries of information, investment, and biases between domestic and international. Oh! Should we be criticised and penalised for taking care of our own people? Is that what we are looking at here?

This bill here is nothing more than a terms of reference that is riddled with concerns and issues and biases and monopolisation and lack of transparency for something that should be benefiting everyone in Aotearoa, as expressed in the trade-for-all report. So I won’t, in my first reading speech, talk about the specificities of this, because, frankly, I am still looking forward to the possibility of having a select committee stage to really discuss with the officials and the Ministers and also the New Zealand public why we should be spending all of this money on this agency in the first place. So the Green Party of Aotearoa will not support this particular bill, because we do not see this as something that would be beneficial to trade in Aotearoa in the long term. If we do not have a select committee stage, and we move on to the second reading, there is a lot more for me to say on that. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Simon Court: The ACT Party is going to support this bill—

Are you seeking a call, Mr Court?

Simon Court: Yes, Madam Speaker.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Maureen Pugh): I call Simon Court.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. The ACT Party will of course support this bill. This is a great bill. It establishes Invest New Zealand as a Crown entity to facilitate, promote, and support foreign investment in New Zealand.

New Zealand has historically lacked a stand-alone centralised agency focused exclusively on attracting capital and investment. Investment functions have been spread across multiple agencies, including New Zealand Trade and Enterprise, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, and of course, regional economic development bodies.

This bill responds to recommendations from economic advisory groups telling the Government that the international investors and local investors need to know how to access Government so we can participate in major projects and new assets. We need a coordinated and strategic approach to attract investment. It links this bill to the Overseas Investment Act because, as Minister Jones made clear in his reply to the Budget, this bill is complementary. There’s no point in setting up Invest New Zealand, however, unless we start treating investors as a taonga—rather than terrorists, like the Opposition would. Invest New Zealand makes it clear we want them to come here and we will respect them.

Labour won’t support it, but their finance spokesperson recently agreed with the use of public-private partnerships, which, because of their scale, rely heavily on not just local investors but international investors prepared to bring billions of dollars to New Zealand to help us deliver major projects. That is incoherent and it shows that Labour are not fit to govern New Zealanders, not for years, not for decades at the rate they’re going. And, of course, the Greens won’t support it and they don’t believe in growing New Zealand’s pie with international investment, only cutting New Zealand’s wealth into smaller and smaller plant-sized bites.

This is a positive and impactful piece of legislation. It provides a single point of contact for investors. It’s been hard to connect investors to major public projects. Invest New Zealand is going to play a big part in that. It’s going to help align New Zealand with international best practice where many countries have dedicated investment promotion agencies. It’s going to support economic development. It’s going to attract investment into priority sectors, all of those sectors where we know New Zealand lacks a lot of capital oomph, and it’s going to support regional development by directing investment to areas with growth potential, but that are often overlooked by significant local investors. And, of course, it’s going to facilitate stronger public-private collaboration. It’s going to encourage co-investment models and joint ventures aligned with our national interest. It’s going to direct investors to these major project opportunities like Corrections’ Christchurch Men’s Prison expansion and the Northern Corridor project to link Auckland to Whangārei, 100 kilometres of new highway. That’s going to be a phenomenal growth engine for the North Island and Northland.

Strategically, it supports the Government’s economic strategy Going for Growth, attracting investors to New Zealand so that we can actually grow the market for jobs and make New Zealand a wealthier place to live.

This bill is part of a broader economic transformation agenda focused on lifting productivity, diversifying the economy, and building resilience in the New Zealand investment and infrastructure market through high-quality sustainable investment opportunities that are identified and managed by Invest New Zealand. On behalf of ACT, I commend this bill to the House.

I rise as well to support this bill on behalf of New Zealand First. At its core, it’s a very simple bill. It sets up the Crown entity, the structure Invest New Zealand, which is a one-stop shop to enable the attraction of foreign capital in New Zealand. So we do support this bill.

That said, it is no secret that New Zealand First is at the more cautious end of the coalition regarding foreign investment. New Zealand First—it says it on the tin—and we are unwavering in our view that with regard to assets like farmland, existing family homes, fishing quota, key strategic assets like ports and airports, and this is certainly our preference, that the State builds our own hospitals and schools. We must not become tenants in our own land. There is no free lunch with foreign investment, and we need to be aware of that.

We have a structural current account deficit, and the sale of all our major banks offshore shows that it is not one-way traffic. But we are pragmatic, and we are not for “Fortress New Zealand”. New Zealand has always needed foreign investment, and it certainly does now. We have insufficient funds to address a major infrastructure deficit.

The other thing this bill does is it does actually focus New Zealand Trade and Enterprise on the doubling exports part about getting out and building our export base and creating market opportunities for our exporters. Our vision for Invest Zealand is to attract high-quality, long-term foreign investors who can assist us in building capacity—new capacity—to grow the economy, create jobs, build infrastructure, and bring expertise, particularly in areas around mining, energy, and further manufacturing.

It does give us, as the Minister said, access to their domestic and international markets. That is a good thing. That is actually an essential thing. Every member of the Parliament should have digested this book—the fiscal strategy report—and should be memorising it. It shows us that if we do not grow the growth curve bend in this country, future politicians not too far down the line are going to have to be making some very painful choices.

New Zealand First chooses growth, so we choose to support this bill. In doing so, we’re making New Zealand a more welcoming and seamless entity to attract high-quality foreign investment. So New Zealand First will support this bill.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. I’m going to raise this glass just like my beloved cousin did the other night with oil in it when he gave his magnificent speech expressing what Te Pāti Māori might do with it and what the Green Party would do with it, and I do that just to, I guess, add a little bit of interest to the speech that I’m about to provide you with.

Todd, in 1990, I was in a room with your dad in Taupō, and the question to all that were there—there was a number of politicians. The question was—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): If I could ask—

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Oh, Todd McClay, sorry.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): If I could ask you to kōrero mai ki a au, kaua ki te tangata [you to speak to me, not to anyone else].

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: Oh, I’m sorry.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Teanau Tuiono): Kia ora.

MARIAMENO KAPA-KINGI: I was expressing to Todd McClay that I was at a hui in 1990 with Todd McClay’s father, Roger McClay, and they were discussing—these politicians—what is tino rangatiratanga, and his wonderful kōrero was, “Well, I’ve just been down to Ngāti Porou,” he said, “and it’s about all these young boys planting trees up the maunga, Meno.” I said, “Well, that’s not tino rangatiratanga; that is merely the beginning. That’s just our young fellows planting trees.” Tino rangatiratanga in 1990 was more than that. It was not just about planting the trees; it was deciding whether trees would be planted at all, where would they be planted, how would they be planted, when would they be harvested, where would they be sold, would we sell them, and all of that. That is tino rangatiratanga.

So in regard to this investment idea, it concerns me greatly. It concerns me greatly, Todd McClay, that from that particular time with your dear dad to now, things have, I’d say, gone downhill even further.

So the key to economic growth—so this what I know about economic growth for Māori. Tourists come to Aotearoa to see Māori people. They come to see things: our tikanga, they come to see our haka, they come to understand the indigenous whānau, what we’re made up of—in fact, what I’m about to go do in a couple of weeks’ time when I go to Japan. And what they want to understand is—see, we have our Māori ownership of our own Māori businesses. We have our own diverse range of Māori businesses. Yes, we’ve got the primary industries, we’ve got agriculture, we’re into forest—Te Aupōuri—we’ve got one of the biggest pieces of dirt with lots of trees on it. So I get it from that aspect. That’s Māori in business, understanding and knowing how do we do that at home. How do we look after that at home? How does that flourish on our own lands from our own business models and our own ways? So I want to make those points as I go to the next about—oh, and by the way, we’re great at fashion, we’re great at food, we’re great at health models, and we’re great at rongoā. Those are all the things that Māori have and know in our own kete, right? We do all of that—we do all of that. Would I want to sell that off? Well, absolutely not.

So why this is bad—and there’s a bunch of bad ones. They all link together. So when all the bad things get together, they call it the Treaty principles bill. Oh, it got voted down, that’s right. Sorry, I’ll put that aside. Then you add fast-track approvals—that’s very bad. Then you add regulatory standards—let’s just really worsen the scenario. And then Treaty clauses—all of those together. When you bunch all of that together, we are buried, and that boot is still on our throat. So when you come with a “Look, we’ve got this little idea and we’ve got to set up an agency, and it’s going to be good for you Māori, so, you know, just give us a thumbs up.” It’s not going to happen.

We need to understand how it’s going to occur, whether we even want it—whether we even want it at all. From what I’m reading, it doesn’t look good. No, I wouldn’t want to sell off to the highest bidder. When investors from overseas don’t know us, don’t appreciate us, they will not bring them profits home. They will swan on by and go “See you, Meno. That was really real. Thank you very much.” We never see them again. If they don’t know us and they don’t understand—and I mean us; I mean tangata whenua. They don’t know us; they won’t appreciate us. That is why this is a dangerous idea and, shucks, we will not support it in any regard. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

This is not about selling off New Zealand, this is actually about building New Zealand—building New Zealand. What the hell did they build for six years? Nothing—nothing. We would love to be wandering around the country, cutting their ribbons, but with absolutely no ribbons to cut—they left us with nothing other than debt.

Invest New Zealand will streamline the investment process and provide tailored support to foreign investors. It will increase capital investment across critical infrastructure—building roads, building tunnels, building bridges like that $56 billion bridge you were going to build over the harbour in Auckland; never done, never achievable, but you promised it—fostering greater innovation in key sectors and attracting world-class talent to the shores. I commend this bill.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I finally get to deliver a speech on this Invest New Zealand Bill. I thought I was going to be doing that this morning because I heard that we were under urgency, but it doesn’t appear that there’s much happening very urgently, so I think it’s false advertising on the part of our Government.

I thought it would be very good to reflect before we step into the purpose of this bill on where we are at in Budget week, particularly for our science, innovation, and technology sector, which this bill affects deeply, because what we’ve seen in the Budget, this last week, is a whole lot of money being moved around and away from our science, innovation, and technology sector. This is a sector that, since this Government came into power, has faced unprecedented uncertainty and inconsistency to the point that it has created a crisis in our science sector.

Hon James Meager: Rubbish!

REUBEN DAVIDSON: A member calls out “Rubbish!” He obviously hasn’t had conversations with the people who hold it together.

Now, I will come back to the bill, specifically back to the policy objective of the bill. This bill says in its explanatory note that it wants to “provide a permissive environment”. That does not sound to me like responsible investment. I can see New Zealand First MPs quaking in fear about a “permissive environment”. They will shake and quake even more if they read on to see the note that says, “if directed by the responsible Minister,”. That is singular—just the one Minister: “if directed by the Minister,”.

Trust is at risk here with this bill, with the level of power that it hands over to a small number of people when it comes to the matter of investment in New Zealand. Or let’s talk about what it is: selling New Zealand. Now, I don’t know if you’ve seen one of these before; it’s a regulatory impact statement (RIS), a very rare breed in this House—a very rare breed. Not only do they not read them, as pointed out by one of my colleagues, but very rarely do they ask for them. But option one in this regulatory impact statement has two magic words—“status quo”—which means this very bill and the objective that it sets out already have a function of Government doing exactly what you claim to want to be doing. Reading on through the RIS under “Balance of benefits and costs”, it simply says, “It is difficult to anticipate quantitative benefits.”—“It is difficult to anticipate quantitative benefits.” Let’s keep reading: “Limitations and constraints on analysis”. This will be interesting: “Various factors limit our ability to quantify the exact net increase in foreign direct investment that will be attributable to this policy initiative.” It goes on, and I will too: “Decisions have been made on this process prior to this regulatory analysis. This has necessitated decisions being made about Invest NZ at an earlier stage before analysis could be completed.”

New Zealand First are starting to look like they are feeling a little sick, and they reach for the bucket because this is where it gets bad: “The speed of implementation required for establishing Invest New Zealand presents risk of delivery as inadequate time may compromise development of the entity’s functions.” We should be very concerned, and we are, which is why we are opposing this bill. But it is unbelievable to see that the priorities of this Government, who—under urgency, which I must say they’ve moved at record slowness, their version of urgency—are trying to push this bill through. I have plenty more to say on it. I look forward to further calls, and most of all, I look forward to dissecting it slowly in the committee stage.

That was a weird speech from Reuben Davidson. But what I would like to say is we’ve got a great Prime Minister and a great trade Minister that wants to do business with the real world. Up until now, we’ve been all show, no go—all hui, no do-ey. Well, that stops tonight. I commend this bill to the House.

A tiny bit of history for the newbies on the other side of the House: there used to be an entity called Investment New Zealand. It wasn’t actually especially effective. So, eventually, instead of being a stand-alone entity within New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE), it was folded back into NZTE—this is back in around about 2003. This has been tried before. It didn’t work then, and it’s actually not clear how it’s going to work now. The regulatory impact statement is a joy in terms of finding ways to say to the Minister for Trade and Enterprise, “You’re wrong.” It’s actually just a misplaced policy.

I think one of the ways that we can see most clearly that it is a misdirected policy at best is by looking at the comparisons that are made with invest Ireland, and the claims that invest Ireland is what has made Ireland successful in attracting all the multinational companies and the high-tech investment and so on. I have to say that’s disingenuous at best. Of course, the first thing is that Ireland is much physically closer to the economic powerhouse of Europe—in fact, it’s part of it. But here’s the other thing that is quite different about Ireland in terms of attracting foreign direct investment: it’s not the existence of invest Ireland; it’s the extraordinarily low corporate tax rate, which, in fact, amounts to a huge subsidy by Ireland to the foreign direct investors in Ireland. It is a huge subsidy.

Here’s the thing: we agree. We agree that it is worthwhile working with foreign investors. We agree that there can be a place for it, that it is a useful way to leverage our own capital in order to ensure that we get some of our projects built. That’s not the issue in itself. The issue is that foreign investors want a return. They don’t come here because they think New Zealand is a pretty country. They don’t come here because of hobbits and orcs and mountains and all those sorts of things. They come here because they want a return, and a return that takes money out of New Zealand as well.

Now, ideally, everyone gets better off because of foreign investment, but it has to be really, very, very carefully assessed in the first place as to whether or not it is worth us going down that track—instead of this particular project which is just laying out the welcome mat and saying, “Come in and take what you want.” That is not a good strategy for New Zealand. So we really need to examine this very, very thoroughly.

It’s quite amazing that this project of Invest New Zealand was announced by the Prime Minister way back on 24 January this year. That was an announcement that was off the back of the Science System Advisory Group report. He announced Invest New Zealand back on 24 January, and yet it has taken until now to get this legislation into the House. Not only that, it is being done under urgency—urgency which we suspect will be used to skip the select committee process so that this proposal cannot be adequately examined by this Parliament. That is a disgrace.

The way that urgency has been used this session is appalling. There is good reason for using urgency to put some tax changes through. There is good reason for using urgency when fiscal needs demand it. But doing it for this, for setting up a particular Crown organisation? That is an abuse of urgency. We have fought urgency all the way this time; they kept us here until 1 o’clock, and it’s because that side of the House has abused urgency. Every time that side of the House abuses urgency, we will test and test and test it to the limit. Say goodbye to your families, people. We will test this all the way.

Our vision is about growth, growth, growth, so Invest New Zealand will unlock this potential. Invest New Zealand will grow New Zealand. I commend this bill to the House.

This bill is set down for second reading immediately.

Second Reading