By Tony Orman
The current government needs to instigate far stricter controls on foreigners buying up New Zealand’s countryside says the Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations (CORANZ), as well as keeping the New Zealand public informed of the extent of outsiders buying up country-side.
“Frustratingly figures are few and far between to make an accurate assessment, but the public should be given regular and accurate statistics on an issue which most New Zealanders feel strongly about,” said CORANZ chairman Andi Cockroft.
Most Kiwis oppose foreign ownership
“Past opinion polls indicated as many as 90 percent of New Zealanders were opposed or concerned”, he said.
In late 2019 it was revealed by Radio NZ that the four largest private landowners in New Zealand are all foreign-owned forestry companies.
The investigation found, despite a clampdown on some overseas investment, including a ban on residential sales to offshore buyers, the Labour-led government has actively encouraged further foreign purchases of land for forestry through a streamlined “special forestry test”.
Fewer Jobs
Since the 2017-20 coalition, Labour-led government was formed, the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) has approved more than $2.3 billion of forestry-related land sales — about 31,000 hectares of it previously in New Zealand hands and often sheep and beef farms.
A 2019 analysis of Wairoa, where 8,486 hectares of sheep and beef farmland was converted to forestry, showed forestry provides fewer jobs in rural communities than sheep and beef farms.
Andi Cockroft said the environmental effects of turning the New Zealand hill country into monocultures of pines were detrimental.
Felling trees causes silting, litter and soil depletion
The clear felling practices result in deposition of silt into rivers, streams and coastal estuarine areas and pine debris littering beaches.
There were other negative results from pine trees with impoverished and acidification of soils and excessive water intake by pines resulting in dry creek riverbeds.
He said the only source of data on foreign purchases seemed to be the “Watchdog” bulletin of the organisation Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA).
Not NZ Companies
“In CAFCA’s latest “Watchdog” it was revealed in just four weeks in January 2021 decisions showed overseas forestry interests of a UK company, an Austrian countess and a Japanese company purchased land for exotic forestry.”
It was difficult to pinpoint foreigners as mostly they disguised themselves as New Zealand companies.
In the January 2021 approvals by the Overseas Investment Office, Summit Forests NZ Ltd is 100% Japanese owned while Ellis Campbell NZ Ltd is 100% UK owned.
“Government owes it to the public to strip these smoke and mirrors disguises away and give the true extent of the sellout,” he said.
Outdoor Access
Access for the public’s outdoor recreation such as fishing, tramping, hunting and other pursuits, usually suffered as overseas buyers invariably came from a culture different from New Zealand’s egalitarian society.
“Locked gates are the usual consequence of foreign buyers of New Zealand’s rural land whereas the traditional Kiwi farmers almost always gave access permission to bona fide recreationalists.”
And lets not forget property.
Remember on Nationals dictatorship the vehement denials that immigrants had anything to do with property price increases.
NZFirst tried to reign Labour in but with only limited success.
With NZFirst gone Labour are now able to change the whole shape of New Zealand with its immigration policy changes.
Well the future generations will certainly be paying the price now as a home becomes a distant dream.
Perhaps the Taxpayers Union needs to stand for Parliament and local council.
It’s not just the Jacinda Labour Government that needs to come clean on foreign buy ups. All Political Parties and their Government Departmental employees and advisers at all levels need to come clean on everything. Foreign buy ups, housing, health, education, the economy, unemployment, conservation, agriculture, justice, crown law, transport, policing, local government, the list is endless.
It doesn’t matter where we look the answer is nearly always the same.
Government employees are working for their interests and not ours.
The tail is wagging the dog. The fox is guarding the hen house. Our emperor has no clothes. Government is now big business, it’s been bought by them, advised by them, corrupted by them, brainwashed by them, stripped of their power by them.
“Small is beautiful” I read the book by that name years ago. It changed my life. We are in Alvin Toffler’s “future shock”. I’ve read that book too and his “The Third Wave” that he wrote 10 years later in 1980. Scholars predicted our present problems years ago. We need less government, not more government, decentralisation of power, regionalism, not globalism. We have got too big for our boots. Our legislation is too complex. Most of it could be scrapped and the mindless whose job it is to enforce silly rules could have a very long holiday.
They will discover that Society will prosper in their absence and they will find a new niche somewhere, less well paid but extortion should never have been the name of the game. The meek shall inherit the earth and the sooner the better.
I simply do not know why the people of New Zealand just roll over and accept whatever our government dishes out to us. New Zealand is a democracy. Our government is meant to serve us NOT the other way around.
We see people participating more strongly in their democracy in the U.S.. .. and in Europe.
But not us.
The majority of Kiwi’s .. including every single thinking person I reckon I’ve ever spoken to about it .. is against allowing foreigners to buy land in New Zealand. There is no compelling reason why we should. It denies opportunities for New Zealander’s .. in their own country .. and it is helping to extinguish the opportunity for home ownership, for current and future generations of young New Zealander’s.
So tell me .. why, in a democracy, where the majority of people are opposed to something .. is it allowed to persist? Why don’t we send a clear message to our government .. to STOP FOREIGN LAND OWNERSHIP?
Are we a gutless bunch of cowards? Or, it it just apathy?
I simply do not know why the people of New Zealand just roll over and accept whatever our government dishes out to us. New Zealand is a democracy. Our government is meant to serve us NOT the other way around.
We see people participating more strongly in their democracy in the U.S.. .. and in Europe.
But not us.
The majority of Kiwi’s .. including every single thinking person I reckon I’ve ever spoken to about it .. is against allowing foreigners to buy land in New Zealand. There is no compelling reason why we should. It denies opportunities for New Zealander’s .. in their own country .. and it is helping to extinguish the opportunity for home ownership, for current and future generations of young New Zealanders’s.
So tell me .. why, in a democracy, where the majority of people are opposed to something .. is it allowed to persist? Why don’t we send a clear message to our government .. to STOP FOREIGN LAND OWNERSHIP?
Are we a gutless bunch of cowards? Or, it it just apathy?