Christopher Luxon: Prime Minister on lifting the foreign buyers ban under new investment visa settings, Amazon date centres going live

The Prime Minister is celebrating tech-giant Amazon's continued moves into the New Zealand market. 

Amazon Web Services' data centres are now open in Auckland - something that is slated as a $7.5 billion investment.

The Prime Minister told Mike Hosking it will create up to a thousand jobs, and make an $11 billion boost to GDP. 

Luxon says it’s probably the largest ever publicly announced technology investment in New Zealand by an international tech firm.  

Speaking of international investors, the Prime Minister wants foreign investors to feel comfortable here so they invest more. 

New rules mean Active Investor Plus visa holders can now buy or build one home in New Zealand if it’s worth at least $5 million. 

They’ll still need to invest another $5 million separately, as part of the visa’s criteria. 

Luxon told Hosking everything will fall into place for these investors once they have a house here. 

He says it's not just about the first $5-10 million they're spending, it's what comes after that when they start seeing more investment opportunities. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we got there at last. The deal has been
struck with the Golden Bee's a hold as they can
buy or build a house to the value of five
million dollars plus The idea that we wanted you to
invest millions in the country but you could go and
rent a rear B ANDB was of course absurd. Crystal
Luction's back with us. Good morning, Good morning, Mike. How
I am very well. So you wouldn't confirm it yesterday?
Was this very last minute? Was there angst behind the scenes.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, it was just that we It's been an ongoing
series of conversations about how you do it, but you
just summed it up in a nutshell, which is, if
you're going to come here and invest five to ten
million dollars of your own hard earned money, you don't
want to be renting a property. If you want to
buy one, we're going to let you do that. And Mike,
it was a fantastic day, you say, because I met
this company called Seaflux right now. They are a young
guy started the software company from New Zealand. He's basically

(00:45):
got a cloud based system where he integrates all the maintenance, safety,
compliance stuff that you need for commercial marine vessels ships
out there in the ocean. Long story short, this guy
raised it with his own money. His mum and dad
put money into it, got it up and running. You know,
Kaiki Fund came in just invested three million dollars with him.
That three million dollars came from those active investor visas.

(01:07):
And now what's he going to go off and do.
He's going to go hire five new people for new
jobs in his business so he can grow the company.
Another company there cleanly. They do cleaning products in a
quite a cool way. They've actually taken they ahead investment
from the same people and they've ended up going off
and investing into opening up new selling the product in
North America and Kroger and Albertson. So this is exactly

(01:28):
what we're talking about, is not dumb specuative property investment stuff,
but actual productive investment in New Zealand that gives capital
to New Zealanders but also connections and knowledge and know
how that's helpful for them to export. So it was
really actually quite excited. I mean, as you've been saying,
you know for a long time, Look it's a no brainer,
and I think yes, it took some time with Winston
and I know both getting to the same place where

(01:50):
we could say, yeah, we want to we both want
to accelerate productive investment. I think it's just sensible stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
He seemed angsty yesterday and his reaction. He's with us shortly,
but he seemed angsty yesterday though. Was he Dravee kicking
and screaming?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Not at all, honestly, not at all. He might have
just he has a peculiar way with the media, as
you well aware, so I wouldn't read too much into that. No, No, honestly,
it's been it's been very constructive, very productive conversation. He
genuinely came from a point of view of I just
don't want to see property speculation because none of that's
adding a lot of value. He's been very pro investment,

(02:23):
talking about Ireland and Singapore in the same way that
I have since. In fact, that was actually Winston and
I when we first met. I mean we spent and
didn't talk about coalition, were agreement. We actually just talked
about Ireland and Singapore, the opportunity for New Zealand, all
of that kind of stuff, and that's how he sort
of connected. So he's been very much into pro productive investment,
as have I, and so yes, we know up the threshold.

(02:45):
We got rid of the stamp duty component, which was
a complexity frankly we just didn't need. But it is
to do exactly this to get capital into particularly our
small medium, startup exporting kind of companies that actually just
need that capital injection to grow. There was a guy
there yesterday I met who who came in on this
active investor VISA plus program. Right, He's done four investments,
He's spent a hell of a lot more than than

(03:06):
ten million dollars investing in these companies, loves it and
is now living more of his time here in New
Zealand than he is in New York and California, where
his base is in America. Good. So that's exactly what
you want because once you get here, and as you've
been saying, once you can buy a house, well actually
that means you get into the ecosystem. You sort of
understand how it all works down here, You see other
investment opportunities, and it's not just that first five to

(03:27):
ten million dollars that you're spending, it's actually what comes
after all of that. Once you're you're wired that way
as an investor to look for more opportunities, and you
understand it, and you've got a comfort level with the place,
which is good.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Couldn't agree more? Just explain to me, give us the
background inside scoop. Why then, did such a simple decision
take so long?

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Oh? Well, I guess we had a lot of things
to sort of work through when we first we had
to retool the active Investor program. We've had to do
a bunch of other things around RMA reform fast tracks,
which took a lot of our energy initially as we
worked our way through all of that time, you know,
and you know in hindsight, yep, you're looking it could
have been done much quicker and much faster, fully agree,
But at the end of the day when you had

(04:07):
quite different positions, you know, as you know, pre election,
and we just needed to get ourselves fully comfortable where
both of us could stand up and say, yep, we're
up for this, okay.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
Were you ever looking to split the cost in other words,
five million Auckland, Queenstown, three million, two million, four million,
whatever elsewhere or not? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (04:24):
We were, I mean I was, I was interested in saying,
could you do five million in Auckland and Queenstown and say,
you know three and a half everywhere else around the
country we couldn't get agreement to do that. But at
the end of the day, I think this is fine.
I mean, if you think about it, Mike, the there's
probably only there's only ten thousand houses itself a five
million or more in New Zealand, so it's about less

(04:44):
than half a percent. There's about almost eighty percent of
them here in Auckland. There's another ten percent sitting in Queenstown.
So basically you've got ninety percent of the houses above
five million in those two places. The people that end
up buying those houses. And I was telling saying yesterday
and you of the different mayors of Queenstown over the years,
the people that are actually doing all the philanthropy and
backing the charities down there are actually these wealthy overseas

(05:07):
folks who are doing exactly that. So yeah, so look
it's it's and you know, we've had I mean, the
cool thing is we've had three hundred applicants. She had
three hundred and eight. We got another seven over the
weekend applying for this Act of for vesta visa. That's
that's almost two billion dollars we didn't have in the
economy on April one. That's now here. It's doing the
things like I talked about with these companies ce Flux

(05:28):
and Cleanalley and others, and you know, it's it's pretty cool.
And probably almost half of them are coming out of
the US. Obviously a number out of China, Hong Kong,
but Germany's another big place as well. So they're coming
from all over the world, which is exactly what we need.

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Yes we do. You're off to Amazon as a headline
out of that today.

Speaker 2 (05:48):
This is this is an incredible story, right, Amazon one
of the biggest companies in the world, probably with over
a trillion dollars, which will be you know, three and
a half times size of New Zealand. You know that AAWS,
which is their web services they do all the cloud storages,
send as all that stuff. They're investing seven and a
half billion dollars in New Zealand. That will have an
impact on our GDP for sure. Crowd up to about

(06:08):
a thousand jobs, and it's about about an almost an
eleven billion dollar boost to our GDP. And what it
is is it's just us to us to be able
to have a big global company like AWS put a
vote of confidence into New Zealand. In that way, that's
probably the largest ever certainly publicly announced technology investment I
would have mentioned in New Zealand by an national tech firm.

Speaker 1 (06:29):
So have you told them we haven't got the power
to run it?

Speaker 2 (06:34):
Don't you worry? That's the next problem, Mike.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
You give me a problem every time we meetstron to
sort the country one day to.

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Trying to help it says just well that's what I'm
trying to do.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Say good, seven and a half billion on a thousand jobs.
You can't argue with that.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
That's great. Is it just a good sign though that
you know? You know, the other day I was telling you,
like this company, Halter, one of our great tech companies,
actually used as Amazon Web Services for all their cloud solutions.
They raised one hundred and sixty five million dollars, have
hundred and seven vacant jobs right there today here in Auckland.
So yeah, it's coming right, it's moving, So we just
got to follow it through and stick with the plane.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
Appreciate your time as always, Christopher Latson, Prime Minister. For
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