David Seymour: Associate Finance Minister on a reform to the Overseas Investment Act

The Government is welcoming more foreign investment to New Zealand businesses by amending the Overseas Investment Act.

The Associate Finance Minister David Seymour talks to Mike Hosking about the announcement, why it took as long as it did, how much money is coming into the country, and the sectors excluded from the reform. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So the government going to be more welcoming to foreign
investment by amending the Overseas Investment Act. Unless it's residential,
farmland or fish quota, we will one look to say
yes to do it within fifteen days. The Associate Finance Minister,
David Seymore's with us, good morning, Good well anyway, how
come this has taken so long?

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Well, we've gone through a process of basically speeding up
everything we can within the current law. So when I
got this job started last year, I issued a new
letter to the OO saying, look, you've got to do
it in half your seventy day timeframe. They're now doing
that ninety six percent of the time. Meanwhile, we've been
going through cabinet getting everyone signed up and agreed on

(00:38):
changes to the law itself. That's now agreed and we're
going to put it through Parliament this year. So that's
a two year process over all. Over All the way
that we do overseas investment. I know it'd be great
if we could be like Malay or maybe Trump and
just announce it and make it so. But as the

(01:00):
reality of a coalition government and a parliamentary.

Speaker 1 (01:02):
Democracy, how much money actually comes in. That's not residential
or farm or fishing.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
It's in the billions for sure. It goes through businesses
rather than necessarily land fishing quotas a relatively minor thing.
There's only so much of it. But what's important is
that relative to other countries, we're twenty six out of
thirty four OECD countries monitored. And that sounds okay, we're
still eight people worse. It is probably not because the US,

(01:32):
for example. Well, I mean, you know it could be worse.
But one thing you've got to recognize is that if
the US you've got a huge internal market. You know,
even Australia has a lot more capital inside its borders.
So we can't afford to be in the bottom half.
We've got to be in the top ten.

Speaker 1 (01:48):
Couldn't agree more? Could it be? Though? Like tourism, Yes
we're open, but people decide not to come and we
know where near where we should be.

Speaker 2 (01:57):
Well, I totally agree. There's a bunch of other things
we've got to do. For example, when it can take
twenty eight years to get a rem a consent for
one supermarket, that's going to be a big barrier to say,
getting another supermarket competitor in and getting prices down. But
the government is also replacing the Resource Management Act with
a law based on property rights. We're also fixing up

(02:17):
for a lot of work around labor laws to make
it easier to actually employ people. So the government is
doing across the board a bunch of stuff that will
make it easier to do business in this country. The
part that I'm responsible for, at least we're talking about today,
is the regulations about getting foreign investment in and basically
we're going to say, look, as long as there's no farmland,

(02:41):
fishing quota or residential housing, then it's an overfrastructure or
business or whatever, then we're going to do it within
fifteen days.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
Fantastic, good to talk to you appreciate it very much.
David seem More, the Associate Finance Minister.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
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