Now there is a surprise (not). The Crafar farms sale doesn’t conform to the economic benefits required under the OIO’s act. I guess that Fran O’Sullivan is going to be distressed. “Anonymous” authors here actually knew what they were talking about, and the decision by the OIO and government was not in conformance with the Overseas Investment Act.
The NZ Herald in a rare act of informational political reporting says
The High Court has effectively overturned the Government’s decision to grant Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin permission to buy the Crafar dairy farms.
Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson and Associate Finance Minister Jonathan Coleman two weeks ago signed off on the Overseas Investment Office’s recommendation that the application to buy the farms by Shanghai Pengxin’s subsidiary Milk NZ be accepted.
A consortium of rival bidders led by merchant banker Sir Michael Fay lodged an application for a judicial review of that decision.
In his decision released this afternoon Justice Forrie Miller said the application for a review was granted.
“The ministers’ consent to overseas investment to be made by Milk NZ in the Crafar farms is set aside. I direct that the ministers reconsider Milk NZ’s application.”
Justice Miller’s decision appears based on his view that the economic benefits to New Zealand of Shanghai Pengxin’s purchase were overstated in the Overseas Investment Office’s recommendation.
Relevant legislation was intended to allow overseas investment in farm land only where that investment was likely to benefit New Zealand.
As I was pointing out when opining on Fran O’Sullivan’s ridiculous shill for the government‘s wishes, the OIO and government case didn’t look like it conformed to the requirements of the OIO’s enabling act.
But what is interesting in her diversion article was a following paragraph…
To my mind the deal provides much greater upside for New Zealand than many of the other farms sales which have gone to foreign interests in recent years.
Ah yes, that is the crux of the actual question that Red and many of the 700 odd comments on his post were asking. It is also the question that Fran in my view seems to wish to avoid addressing at all costs.
Fran smeared every opponent of the Crafar farms sale to Pengxin with this bit of ignorant bullshit
The Crafar decision is a victory for economic rationalism over blind xenophobic nationalism. Long may the former reign.
Ah yes, Fran could see it that way if you don’t think about the actual legislation. However anyone who had actually read the damn act and understood it could see that the decision didn’t met the requirements of the legislation.
Of course one of our authors taking strong exception to her daft smear got the usual nasty response from the governments’ favourite shill.
The Standard is reputed to have been started by a bunch of Labour Party activists. Most posters won’t sign their names to their comments because they are frightened they will be held responsible. They are frankly cowards.
I finally branded them the “Ku Klux Klan” of the internet world on Twitter. A bunch of lily-livered word jocks who hide behind their virtual cloaks of anonymity.
But I would have engaged them directly in the argument if they had signed their names.
Yeah right… She equates an author with the entire site and indulges in some gratuitous denigration and then gives a completely spurious reasoning to not answer the arguments.
In my view the reason that she didn’t engage was because the arguments she was using were at best questionable. She simply didn’t like having that pointed out to her.
Like far too many other poorly prepared and informed journalists I have seen over the years, she was far too susceptible to being spun by the government and didn’t use her frigging brain. And like many journalists she just doesn’t like being criticised in public. She didn’t “engage” because the arguments she used in her articles were poor, not suited to the real debate that needed to happen over Crafar farms, and were just damn wrong. Look at the judge’s decision….
I’m afraid that having access to a printing press or having the ego to become a talking head for broadcast media doesn’t confer miraculous analysis powers. Many people outside of the beltway, including the many of the authors and commentators on this site, have been highly educated. Many like myself have spent large amounts of time either involved in or spent time thinking about politics.
Unlike politicians, their minons and the wannabe media egos like Farrar and Slater; most bloggers are just not reliant or even interested in the media goodwill. In fact most of us have jobs that have very little to do with the segregated wasteland that is the beltway that Fran and most political media types inhabit. We don’t have to pander to those fragile egos in the way that the more dependent sycophants of the political spectrum do.
Opining on politics is a small and not all that important part of our lives. That is the reason almost all political bloggers use pseudonyms especially when starting. We’re not interested in ramping up our ego’s with real world attention. Quite simply we write because we want to discuss things without the strange broadcast view of the main stream media talking down to readers, watchers, and listeners where we don’t get to discuss their lofty opinions. Also having vindictive arseholes attacking our lives or workplaces with extra-legal attacks because they got upset about something we said (as has happened to me) is not something that anyone enjoys.
So we use pseudonyms to stop the casual readers from treating us as if our lives depended on our blogging (the guru effect)*, and stopping the vindictively obsessed like Whaleoil and his ilk from easily stalking us (the idiot effect), and write so our opinions are just opinions and can be viewed mostly from the strength of their argument.
And the reality is that with the a few notable exceptions like Slater, almost all political bloggers act well within the legal bounds for fair comment. It is certainly what we strive for on this site. We almost certainly know the legal limits better than some puffed up media personalities with their sense of fairness and legality having atrophied from having a corporate legal team vetting their words.
Authors here and in other blog sites can and often do criticize the bloated egos of the 4th estate. The press had better get used to it and learn from Fran’s example of things not to do in response.
* That is the main reason you won’t find my picture anywhere on the net that I know of. Bad enough getting embarrassed with having peoples heads twist around at Labour party events when they hear my name. It’d be hell if I had my image plastered all over the place like Fran, DPF, and Whale. I’d never be able to sit in meetings playing mindless games on the pad again without people getting offended by my inattention.
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