Written By: - Date published: 6:32 am, April 23rd, 2012 - 203 comments
Fran ‘sell it all’ O’Sullivan says the government’s case for selling Crafar farms “appears robust”. Well, she would say that. But, if you read it, you’ll see they’ve just done a half-arsed, perfunctory attempt to appear to abide by the law as defined by the Court while coming to the same decision on the same offer. It’ll be shot to pieces in Court.
Written By: - Date published: 11:58 am, April 20th, 2012 - 107 comments
As expected, the Nats kept on pushing until they got the answer that they wanted on the Crafar farms. A bit more of NZ has been sold out…
Written By: - Date published: 1:20 pm, April 16th, 2012 - 15 comments
The Right says selling all our stuff and letting the profits flow offshore is great. At least $2b of the asset sales programme will be bought by foreigners. But does overseas investment actually provide the benefits it claims? We don’t know because the government doesn’t monitor the outcomes. The Nats’ obsession with selling our stuff is ideological, without any evidence it’s good for the country.
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, March 17th, 2012 - 141 comments
China’s political counsel (note, not a trade official) has threatened New Zealand over the Crafar Farms deal saying that New Zealand trade to China and investment from China is at risk. It seems an extraordinary action over a supposedly private business arrangement. As was Chinese Officials’ meeting with the OIO while the first Crafar farm decision was being made.
Written By: - Date published: 9:40 am, March 13th, 2012 - 19 comments
There’s been much wailing and gnashing of teeth over Pengxin Shanghai’s attempt to buy the Crafar farms. Justified too. I want to take a step back and look at the strategy that China is executing and the imperatives behind it. Like any successful organisation, China is seeking to perpetuate its power. That requires securing access to resources. And China’s sitting on the low-cost cash to do it.
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, March 12th, 2012 - 36 comments
David Shearer’s private member’s Bill on foreign investment is pure common sense: unless foreign ownership actually adds something substantial to the economy that cannot be supplied by local owners then all foreign investment brings is higher land prices, locking out Kiwis from ownership. Overseas buyers must bring something real to the table. A good first policy.
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, February 18th, 2012 - 303 comments
Fran ‘Sell it all’ O’Sullivan is fuming over the Court decision putting aside the approval of Pengxin’s application to buy Crafar Farms. She knows that Pengxin can’t satisfy the actual legal test because its bid has never been about bringing benefit to New Zealand. Its been about securing strategic assets for China. But some of her whining really needs to be pulled up.
Written By: - Date published: 12:17 pm, February 16th, 2012 - 43 comments
On November 30th, after the election, National received a $55,000 donation from Oravida, a company formerly owned by Terry Lee, director of Pengxin’s Crafar Farms vehicle, Milk New Zealand. In light of National’s illegal decision to let Pengxin buy the farms despite a lack of real benefits to New Zealand, maybe we ought to examine that donation a little more closely.
Written By: - Date published: 7:47 am, February 16th, 2012 - 77 comments
The Crafar Farms decision is sensible and a correct interpretation of the law. Foreign buyers must add something that a local buyer can’t, other than a higher purchase price. Otherwise, our farmers will continue to be out-bid for our land by foreign government-backed companies that can afford a lower rate of return, and NZ will gain nothing. So, why is National rushing to change the law?
Written By: - Date published: 6:47 am, February 14th, 2012 - 340 comments
The Bankers’ Crisis is hurting people all over the world. From the deepest, darkest austerity in Greece, to the continuing foreclosure tsunami in the US, to cutbacks and job losses here, it’s the ordinary people suffering the hangover for the bankers’ wild decades of unbridled excess and profit. But at least the banks are suffering too, eh? Yeah, nah.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 5th, 2012 - 129 comments
While the rest of the world is moving away from the ‘hands off’ monetary policy that became fashionable in the 80s, our government insists on playing by the outmoded neoliberal ‘rules’ of a clean float. Well, what happens when everyone else ‘cheats’ by printing free money to drive their currencies lower and we sit on our hands? We lose our assets and our exporters.
Written By: - Date published: 11:07 am, February 4th, 2012 - 133 comments
Every time some rightwing ideologue calls 80% of New Zealanders racist or xenophobic because we don’t want to lose control of our future and sell our strategic assets to fall into the hands of a foreign dictatorship that is going around the world buying up key resources to secure their own supply chains at the cost of our sovereignty, and reminds us that National is letting this happen, I smile. Keep it up, Fran.
Written By: - Date published: 8:49 am, February 2nd, 2012 - 118 comments
Spot the difference: Mega-corporation with close ties to foreign dictatorship that has a policy of securing strategic resources buys swathes of New Zealand farmland after a bid by a company directly owned by the dictatorship was rejected. New Zealand public company to become the foreign company’s tenant. vs New resident in New Zealand buys farm.
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, January 31st, 2012 - 35 comments
I/S at NoRightTurn says we should hold Key to his latest pathetic excuse making for his inaction on the sale of our farmland overseas: “John Key’s excuse for the Crafar farms sale? His hands were tied. But he’s promising to change the law if we make enough noise about it” Unfortunately, Key doesn’t mean it. He has no intention of listening.
Written By: - Date published: 2:49 pm, January 28th, 2012 - 139 comments
Danyl at Dimpost says it all succinctly on Crafar Farms: while China is a rising economic super-power and a close trade partner of New Zealand, it’s also a totalitarian military dictatorship. People are allowed to feel apprehensive about such a state building its own vertical supply chains within the New Zealand economy without being labeled xenophobic and racist.
Written By: - Date published: 10:09 am, January 28th, 2012 - 701 comments
Fran O’Sullivan is an enemy of the people. Her article in this morning’s Herald will forever brand her as a traitor to this country. She will be shunned and reviled by people who understand what a disgusting sell-out she has become. There is no coming back from this. The Crafar decision is a victory for …
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, January 26th, 2012 - 585 comments
When he was running for re-election, John Key said he opposed selling the Crafar farms offshore: “I am concerned about the risk that New Zealanders become tenants in their own land”. Now he has won what is very likely his last term, he doesn’t give a damn about the farms going into foreign ownership and our publicly-owned farming company literally becoming the tenant of the land.
Written By: - Date published: 12:55 pm, January 14th, 2012 - 54 comments
See Landcorp planning to pay $18m a year rent to a government-linked Chinese firm to run the Crafar farms? So New Zealand is in the enviable position of having to pay rent to foreign owners to farm our own land. Key promised we wouldn’t be tenants in our own land. What’ll be Key’s priority: cutting Kiwi workers’ wages or keeping our land in Kiwi hands?
Written By: - Date published: 1:30 pm, November 3rd, 2011 - 80 comments
There’s a TVNZ poll out tonight and a Herald poll tomorrow morning but, ahead of them, here’s some other new polls results that point to trouble for the Nats. 27% of young people want to leave New Zealand. 82% of people oppose farm sales to foreign buyers. 24% of people will change their vote over the Rena.
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, October 10th, 2011 - 27 comments
Who said this on the double downgrade: “We have this ongoing challenge of a negative investment balance – the profits and dividends that go back to the foreign owners of New Zealand assets. We need to generate the kind of savings that will help New Zealand buy back those assets. A good example would be the Z petrol stations that were bought off Shell (by The Cullen Fund and Infratil).”?
Written By: - Date published: 11:15 am, August 8th, 2011 - 37 comments
National says that you’re a racist for not wanting to sell our assets to foreigners, particularly Chinese state-owned companies. It’s not racism. It’s about our sovereignty. We are never going to be able to choose our way in the world if we sell everything abroad and we do not want to become a vassal of the world’s newest empire.
Written By: - Date published: 10:59 am, July 1st, 2011 - 71 comments
Treasury has confirmed that National’s plan to sell public assets would need foreigners to buy a lot of the shares because domestic demand would be too small for the government to make as much money as it is counting on. Forget ‘mum and dad investors’, the big buyers would be foreign sovereign wealth funds.
Written By: - Date published: 2:13 pm, June 8th, 2011 - 21 comments
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, June 2nd, 2011 - 35 comments
Like the ACC, Pharmac is a Kiwi institution that delivers benefits to everyone at a lower cost than other countries. National has got ACC on the butcher’s block. We must make sure that Pharmac doesn’t follow.
Written By: - Date published: 9:11 pm, May 7th, 2011 - 26 comments
The National Government has relaxed the rules for so-called business migrants, those who can get easy access to a passport by investing in New Zealand. The Minister is proud that the scheme has now raised $562 million. He says it is part of the government’s economic growth programme.
Written By: - Date published: 8:10 am, March 29th, 2011 - 21 comments
The next Fabian Seminar at Connolly Hall Thursday 31 March at 5:30pm will feature economist Geoff Bertram examine how the high level of New Zealand’s overseas debt that figures prominently in much policy discourse is largely an increase in foreign-currency liabilities voluntarily taken on by mainly Australian-owned banks in pursuit of private profit. It will be interesting – all are welcome to attend.
Written By: - Date published: 7:39 am, February 22nd, 2011 - 31 comments
With the TPP being negotiated in secret today the signs from John Key are that he’s planning to sell us down the river.
But given the way he sold out our work rights to Warner Brothers we shouldn’t be surprised.
Written By: - Date published: 6:01 am, January 29th, 2011 - 65 comments
We could look at bailed-out TranzRail and Air NZ, with privatisation leading to risk-free pay-outs for the temporary owners of infrastructure that couldn’t be allowed to fail. Or Telecom that doesn’t look out for NZers interests, and needs us to pay for it to build us a fibre network. But let’s look at the “success” story of Contact, the closest privatisation to National’s new plans.
Written By: - Date published: 6:29 am, November 12th, 2010 - 49 comments
The US Government has begun creating new money out of thin air, to inflate away the value of its debt and lower its currency to make its industries more competitive. It’s not the only country. Nearly all the major currencies are engaged in the ‘Currency Wars’, trying to force down their exchanger rates. We’re in the cross-fire doing nothing.
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, October 20th, 2010 - 54 comments
I’m generally a fan of Gareth Morgan, but boy his facts are wrong in yesterday’s Herald, leading him to really bad conclusions. Basically, Morgan argues that we have to let foreigners buy our assets because we use that money to buy more imports than we export, which we won’t be able to do if we block asset sales. Why is that a bad thing?
Written By: - Date published: 11:59 am, October 20th, 2010 - 7 comments
In contrast to National’s policy vacuum on the economy, Labour has been focusing its policy work on a major change in direction. It’s obvious that the hands-off approach introduced in the 1980s has failed, leading to mal-investment in housing with an economy stripped of its manufacturing capability and geared for import-dependent consumerism.
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