I was browsing through our image archives and came across this, which I think is from a protest before the election:
Well, they got it wrong about Kiwirail but they got it the main bit right – under National, NZ is for sale to overseas multinationals.
Who else do you think is going to be digging up our national parks and selling our mineral wealth?
Oh, I’m sure they’ll invest lots into New Zealand, just like they always do. I can’t see them demanding tax breaks for carrying out the arduous task of relieving us of our mineral reserves, like the oil companies did in exchange for taking our oil off our hands.
No, I don’t think the multinational mining companies will come in here, try to employ as few New Zealanders on as low wages as possible, then slip away with the loot. That’s just not how we know these paragons of responsible corporate citizenship operate.
As for the environmental damage, if there’s one thing I’ve learned its that giant corporates operating in a foreign land never try lobby for exemptions to environmental regulations, nor do they ever just flat out ignore them. Multinationals know how important our environment is to us and respect that. They’re always more than happy to stay around afterwards, once they’ve made their money for the investors back home, and help us clean up the mess they make.
[incidentally, Farrar writes “[imagine] 11 hectares of [DoC] land has huge economic value. What if we purchased 500 hectares of land over there to replace it in the conservation estate. The conservation estate gets to grow, we get the economic benefits of the land’s economic value a win/win.” Maybe, depending on the conservation values of the land in question but the larger point is that it’s not going to happen. Our Conservation Minister has said DoC owns too much land. They’re opening up more marginal high country land for farming. National has no plans to replace land they let be mined. They’ve got no interest in building up conservation estate, just in exploiting it.]
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