Todd McClay: Trade Minister on Invest NZ axing its roadshow approach for the Active Investor Plus Visa

The Trade Minister's defending a decision to scrap offshore staffing aimed at attracting golden visa money.  

Government agency Invest NZ is making tweaks to its roadshow approach to attracting investors, and has cut its US and Europe-based staff. 

The Active Investor Plus Visa lets big spenders invest a minimum of $5 million in New Zealand in exchange for a pathway to residency.  

Trade Minister Todd McClay told Mike Hosking the private sector is already attracting people by itself. 

He says law and investment firms are talking to their own clients and directing it, and while they want to promote New Zealand, they don’t want to replicate what the private sector does.  

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
What's going on with our gold visa road shows in
West New Zealand. Scrapt it's offshore roadshows, cut its to
US and European based staff. Despite seemingly this visa program
being a hit, it to tract at one point four
billion in investment and counting trade minutes. Tom McLay back
will this morning to you. Hey, Mike, come on, who
makes this call? What's going on here?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
So the Board and invest New Zealand, the salves they
are an autonomous agency, but they haven't scrapped the road shows.
They've just done a bit of analysis and decided the
four people that had working overseas they could service it
much better in a different way. There will still be
road shows. In fact, in the US we're seeing great
numbers of AIP visa applicants coming from there. Very few

(00:40):
of them come through the workshops, it seems. So what
they're going to do is work with New Zealand Training
Enterprize who have more officers over there, and they're starting
to have a dedicated, experienced team in New Zealand that
will go out and do much more of the work
from there. So it reduces cost a bit, but I
mean it means they can sort of recycle the money
and apply it more beneficially.

Speaker 1 (01:00):
You're learning as you go. In other words, you're just
refining what you offer.

Speaker 2 (01:03):
Yeah, that's exactly right. So I mean the people that
were doing the job in the US probably we're doing
a very good job. Don't know them personally, but you know,
the cost was possibly ten percent of investing Zealand's budget.
We can use that much much better. We're not going
to have a big team of people all over the
world and flash officers. We're going to have a dedicated
team here who get on a plane and go out

(01:25):
and meet investors and bring them back here for the deals.
You know, very very focused, very experienced people in the
AIP though these golden visas, so they are working as
well as more than two billion dollars committed at starting
to come through. We're also refining that to make sure
it works well. But we're just not convinced that we
need people sitting over there and casually somebody pops into

(01:46):
the office and says, get a visa for his element.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
It's some of the reading I've been doing. There was
a criticism for a while there that these road shows
were spooking the same companies the same investment opportunities. Was
there an element of truth to that? And are there
people that you could invest in here that weren't getting
the fear of suck of the SAMs so to speak?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, it probably is correct. You're going to remember Invest
New Zealand has formerly been set up less than a year,
so they inherited a lot of this from what was
there previously New Zealand Trade and Enterprise was running it.
So you know, we have in Robert Wall who was
the CEO of Invest New Zealand, somebody is one of
the most experienced investment experts in New Zealand. He spent

(02:23):
most of his time overseas. He's bringing quite a different
focus to it. Ultimately, though, we're of the view that
the private sector is doing most of this work. You know,
you've got law firms and investment firms that are going
out there. They're talking to their own clients that are
attracting and they're directing. And we certainly want to promote
New Zealand and put our best foot forward, but it
was very clear when we set up Invest New Zealand,

(02:44):
we're not going to replicate or do what the private
sector does. We shouldn't be doing that. We shouldn't be
taking jobs off them. We're adding value and allowing things
to go faster.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Well, I got you Luxton yesterday off piece. What's he doing?
What's going on here?

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Well, I don't agree. I think it's a very good idea.
I know, harm and having a conversation about our electoral
system and prime ministers are allowed to raise these things.
You know what it does make. It focuses the mind
on New Zealand voters, on the harm that some of
the little parties, particularly those ones on the left that
are going to tax us a whole lot more we'll
do to New Zealand. So so we shouldn't be afraid
of a debate about democracy number one and number two

(03:18):
you know what, are sitting on the left and Chris
Luxon and Christopher sorry Hipkins who's sitting there quietly is
going to tax the living hell out of New Zealanders.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Nice talk to you, have a good weekend, Tom McLay,
the Trade Minister.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
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