Some thoughts about the Overseas Investment Act

These are some notes and thoughts from attending a public meeting on the reform of the Overseas Investment Act.

The reforms of the Act are focused on
1)What assets overseas person need consent to own or control in  NZ
2) Who needs to get consent to acquire sensitive NZ assets
3) How people and corporations should be assessed in order to be given consent to buy NZ assets


In Christchurch, by far the most time was spent talking about Water bottling consents and this was a direct result of what has happened with Cloud Ocean.  It was interesting to note that the Treasury folks felt that there was not much that the OIA could do about managing water bottling and export and that that was more a focus for the RMA (which made a lot of people sigh)
However, a few points were covered that could be of interest and worthy of putting into a submission
We all own the water because it is a common (the opposite of what John Key asserted i.e. "nobody owns water').  It seems that consents effectively privatise it as evidenced by the fact that now if the CCC wants to take more water from the deep aquifer that Cloud Ocean have been granted a 30 year consent to take from, they have to negotiate with Cloud Ocean.
We felt that foreign interests should not be able to "own" "our" water and should be paying for it.  
Part of the issue is in Free Trade Agreements such as the Agreement with China and the TPPA (another sigh)  According to one of the Treasury people, the Govt cannot discriminate between local consent holders and overseas consent holders who come under the jurisdiction of these trade agreements.  (That does mean that there is some possibility that a charge could be made if that charge is also made to NZers taking water)


WHAT 
1) Overseas investors have to get permission to buy a residential property but under the OIA they don't have to get permission to buy property that has a water consent attached which seemed a bit odd to all of us.  They have to get permission to buy sensitive land (eg land on a foreshore or that has public access over it) or to buy land next to sensitive land or land with a house on it, but it is not sensitive if it involves natural resources such as water. 

WHO
A couple of issues here from what I can see - smaller investors don't need permission.   The threshold seemed to me to be quite high and it could be worth advocating to have that raised.

HOW are people assessed
Individual people are assessed but corporations are not.  It seemed to me that we should actually vet corporation based on the way in which they conduct business overseas.  I'd like to see things like Do they pay their fair share of taxes?  Do they provide good pay and conditions for workers?  and Do they have good environmental codes of conduct that surpass what is required is developing countries and at least meet compliance in developed countries with good environmental legislation.

There are of course more things for people to think about - you can look at the discussion document here 
The Campaign Against Foreign Control in Aotearoa have some comments on their Facebook Page here.

Submissions close on 24th May.