This cronyism makes the SkyCity deal look above board and proper…
Spending millions of dollars on a Saudi businessman’s farm was not “compensation” paid to clear the way for a free trade deal, officials say.
Foreign Minister Murray McCully said a push for a regional trade deal was a key consideration when investing in the farm, but there would be no deal if it did not provide a sound opportunity for Kiwi companies.
New Zealand spent $6 million to help establish a demonstration farm near Dammam, in eastern Saudi Arabia, saying it would be used to showcase New Zealand’s agricultural technology.
…we blew $6m on a Saudi’s farm to end a feud created when we banned live sheep exports so we could get a trade deal with a medieval religious monarchy that won’t even allow women to drive???
Meanwhile 250 000 NZ children live in poverty and slumlords build empires off the back of working NZers who are bled dry with rents that melt their pathetic working wages.
I’m just saying there’s a lot more pressing issues to tend to than blowing millions on a farm for a Saudi businessmen so we can trade with a nation diametrically opposed to our values.
Martyn, it is using our tax dollars to buy favours, that Key loves to do, and we have to wonder what he got slipped into his or others pockets in return?
It smells like an Orivida stunk again doesn’t it?
“New Zealand spent $6 million to help establish a demonstration farm near Dammam, in eastern Saudi Arabia, saying it would be used to showcase New Zealand’s agricultural technology”
Talk about the killing off of our traditional Kiwi farmer, so we will all suffer when Saudi In’c massively exports lamb and sheep products globally to our traditional trade partners also?
Milk products are taking a hit because we gave our dairy faming expertise to others globally and now we are doing it with sheep.
Planet Key will fuck our farming practices eventually here as we already have Chinese and the European farming conglomerates here setting up factory farming, and we even have some setting up in our remote Gisborne region that use a lot of resources Water/power to operate so we are screwed.
Planet Key = crimes against the state.
Our farming federation needs to speak out and warn of this to wake their members up before it is to late.
I’d love to know what the kickback was worth to FJK to give our water away.
Ann Johns; I believe the kick-back will come as increased party donations to the Nats. Check out the donors to National who also have connections to Oravida. I believe one of TDB’s bloggers did just just.
The result? Favourable treatment given to Oravida and Judith Collins, also connected to Oravida.
I don’t see that as a problem. If other nations can feed themselves without imports then they will be better off and so will we as we’ll be able to shift productivity to something else far more suited to a rich nation.
We really shouldn’t be so reliant upon a single, low value, product to sustain our economy.
“there would be no deal if it did not provide a sound opportunity for Kiwi companies”-
Must only be a very small number of Kiwi companies that make agricultural equipment suitable for farming in Saudi Arabia. Other than irrigation companies of course.
I’d say this one is only part of many deals FJK will have in the pipeline with the medieval Saudi hierarchy, to initiate a joint trade deal with them!
No human or animal (shipment of livestock) rights concern FJK, as long as he’s able to wheel and deal his way around the table to benefit himself and his equally grubby, immoral, unethical Natsy cronies!
Actually this deal is much more likely to be in the national interest than the SCF rort and coverup, the Comalco bribe, or the decision to destroy Solid Energy by putting the numpty Bill English in charge.
Saudi likes to eat sheep meat, the Seppos don’t. The humaneness of live sheep export is a solvable issue – if we put good people on it.
Capital punishment occurs in many countries that we trade with. They are more likely to move in a liberal progressive direction if we trade with them and visit them than if we make them failed excluded states like North Korea or Zimbabwe.
The tragedy is that contact with Saudi is offered by a scrofulous turd like Key, who taints New Zealand’s reputation at every step, and necessarily reinforces behaviours we might prefer were not reinforced.
Two wrongs don’t make a right.
Oh – capital punishment is ‘wrong’ is it? Shame no-one told Kant.
Hasn’t happened in near to 100 years yet. In fact, it was the British that put the Sauds in power and the British Empire and it’s replacement the US Empire that has been propping it up ever since.
The West trades with Saudi Arabia because it wants its oil and will support any regime no matter how corrupt to get it. This happens across the world and any nation that looks to benefit it’s own people instead of Western corporations gets attacked.
You don’t build a prosperous nation with external trade, you build it with internal cooperation and using the local resources to the nations fullest extent for that nation.
Agreed – but Saudi is reforming. Fifty years ago dissenters were flogged to death in earnest – now they get the sentence but maybe 1% of the lashes – still undesirable but a very considerable improvement. There has been substantial improvement on the slavery issue and treatment of foreign maids also.
Having just got back from Saudi I get a bit annoyed by the uninformed critiques – If the Saudi Royal family were to abdicate tomorrow, a popular democratic regime would enactic identical laws – but without the clemency.
just one question- If human rights should not get in the way of a trade deal should that lack of human rights transfer from the one country to the country which wishes to trade if that would increase the trade, for example would it be OK to imprison someone in NZ who criticizes the saudi regime.
how far do we go to appease our trade “partners”.
Capital punishment occurs in many countries that we trade with. They are more likely to move in a liberal progressive direction if we trade with them and visit them than if we make them failed excluded states like North Korea or Zimbabwe.
I recall this line of argument from Cecil Blazey back in 1981.
Yeah, and it was BS then as well.
Then be consistent and ban trade with all capital punishment countries – that’d include the US, Korea, Russia and China just for starters.
Thanks Martyn, like the old McSaudi has a farm bit ! Creative.
Greed Greed Greed – at the expense of our small farmers and other worthy NZ ventures that should be funded instead of working with the Saudis.
Our leader, out of control, out of touch, and dictated to by the corporate elite. These trade deals that Jonkey says will benefit NZ – hog wash. They benefit mostly unethical countries and criminal corporations.
Instead of investing in NZ , for geez sake, we suck up to countries that do not deserve it. Wake up NZ – as our country and her precious commodities continues to be up for sale and given to the highest bidder. Greed Greed Greed. PROFITS BEFORE PEOPLE.
This National led government is completely ! ! out of control and on the wrong track as they try to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. No disrespect intended to our sheep. They are living creatures as well as other animals and deserve our respect and protection and caring. They are more than just money making items to be used for profit and trade.
What a load of nonsense. We are a trading nation and agriculture is the basis of our economy.
Farmers have coped well with the changes to our economy since the 1980’s but surely if exporting live sheep will improve our economic way of live then we should do it. People need to understand that trade is the foundation stone of our benefit system.
And if needless animal cruelty is the result? Which is why live sheep exports were stopped in the first place.
What price profits?
Maybe giving sheep the vote would assist Labour regain the treasury benches?
Grant; that answer shows your argument to be pathetic.
Frank is essentially right, but rather than cutting off an avenue of trade we should look at what Frank calls “cruelty”. Fix the noted “cruelty to animals” problem is my view.
They already have the vote and they all ticked National.
lol, sometimes I really wish I had more than one ‘thumbs’ up to hand out.
Did you ever see those horrendous videos of Australian cows at a Malaysian (I think) slaughterhouse. I could not watch it all but saw a bit. If we continue to compromise our values – yes VALUES – where animal welfare is concerned, how long before we have to drop our laws in order to compete.
No way Jose, this thing just stinks to high heaven. Putting money before EVERYTHING is utterly abhorent
Actually, that’s the load of nonsense. Sure, we trade and that trade has and does prevent the full development of our economy.
The gift to the Saudi business man wasn’t about exporting live sheep but in giving them NZ technology and sheep strains so that they don’t have to buy our lamb.
And wrong again. If we didn’t have capitalism we wouldn’t need a benefit system.
Not sure I know the answer to that.
Draco what movies have you been watching?
Like it or not trade is what drives this economy.
Our Prime Minister when queried over the differing attitudes of His Government vis a vis Saudi Arabia and ISIS/ISIL when it comes to beheading’s states that Saudi Arabia has ‘laws’ and ‘courts’, a judicial system and ISIS/ISIL does not,
Really, the law in Saudi Arabia, called Sharia Law is an interpretation of the Islamic Koran, Sharia Law is the function of religious clerics, there is no judicial system per se, a system of laws does not exist as such, the religious clerics simply make it up as they please,(starting to sound a little close to the ‘justice’ meted out by ISIS/ISIL is it not???),
The Saudi regime itself has no basis in legitimacy other than that etched in blood across the desert sands through various conflicts which have installed and uninstalled the various House of Saud regimes in the region down through the centuries,(a description of such conflicts differs little from a description of ISIS/ISIL attempting to render a State from what’s left of Iraq and Syria in this modern day),
https:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Saud
”In 1932 Ibn Saud had ‘disposed’ of all His main rivals and consolidated His rule over much of the Arabian Peninsular”,
”He declared Himself King of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia that year”.
(by ‘disposed off, we all can bet that ‘his main rivals’ were not simply invited to leave),
The number of public executions carried out in Saudi Arabia annually is really an unknown,(there is no free press in the kingdom which reports them),
The ruling family admit to 70 of them having occurred annually for the past 3 years, but, according to this:
https://themuslimissue.wordpress.com/…/the-work-of-god-interview-with…
An interview with one of the Saudi State’s executioners the number of those executed could be in the 1000’s annually,(some are beheaded publicly and many more unknown inside prison walls),
If a condemned person is lucky their head will be removed with a single stroke of a sword, if not, a number of blows may be struck,
https:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_executions_in_Saudi_Arabia
The bodies of such victims are often then further abused by a public display of crucifixion, and, in one display over the capital a foreign maid was displayed via being slung under a helicopter for a headless tour of the capital,(presumably to make a point to all those who object to such barbarity),
Political prisoners fare little better in the Saud kingdom, speaking out in favor of being ‘democratically governed’ will get you, sooner rather than later, snatched by the Saudi secret police, and, then disappeared into a prison run by the secret police,
https:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_prisoners_in_Saudi_Arabia
The fact is, when i read any amount of the history of Saudi Arabia and compare the actions of the Saudi ‘royal family’ with those of the mostly anonymous ISIS/ISIL fighters attempting to wrest a State from the ruins of Iraq/Syria the only difference is the dates, 2015 v 1932,
From my comfortable seat, Googling up various aspects of past and present middle eastern conflicts they all appear remarkably the same,
Two different groups of murderous thugs, one having murdered its way into power, using murder without appeal, and, imprisonment without
trial based upon not a system of laws, but, a religious text,
The other, a few short years into exactly the same process as the former,
Whenever i hear or see the hypocrisy of the Amerikan Government, or, listen to the drivel of our own Prime Minister vis a vis the House of Saud and ISIS/ISIL the words of a memorable Clash song ring in the rear of my cranial lobe,
”If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they would send a limousine anyway”…
And now it turns out that the very Saudi farmer we have subsidised with tax payer dollars is the very same farmer whose live shipment atrocities were the cause we stopped doing live shipments in the first place. Priceless.
Several NZ Companies were involved in live sheep exports for many years and provincial ports were used for these shipments in particular Timaru and Napier. The live sheep export business was good for farmers and for jobs (albeit temporary) in provincial NZ during these times. Because the the health of the animals was determined to be inadequate this trade was stopped with no replacement.
To earn export dollars we need to trade and continuing to stop exports without looking at how solutions can be resolved is not the answer. NZ is good at producing food for a hungry world. So let’s sort out the impediments.
There seems no good reason for live sheep exports, Grant. For sure, export food. But that does not entail live exports that stress animals for no discernible benefit to anyone.
Isn’t that why refrigeration was invented in the first place?!
Sorry but I do not hold to the principle of trade-at-any-price. That is a neo-liberal position that is morally bankrupt and ultimately detrimental to the entire human race and welfare of the planet.
Frank, I accept your point but do not agree.
The only way we can compete in the UK market is with chilled lamb which is delivered via air – I have had the good fortune to eat refrigerated lamb in London – delivered by ship and it was not much better than eating cardboard (in my view). When displayed in the shop it looked worse than cardboard, since then I have eaten Welsh lamb.
So grant trade at any price?? …I think not!
WTF.
A …It just doesn’t,t make sense for a country …any country to sell off their trade secrets like we are doing with our farming industry as did kiwi fruit eTc etc.
B….As far as live sheep exporting, it is as immoral, as it is down right insane.Immoral because on welfare grounds it is an obscene and unnecessary suffering of animals and stupid because it takes way employment re processing here . just like exporting other raw materials It takes processing/manufacturing employment away from New Zealanders.
How did the sheep get to NZ in the first place? They are not native, like cattle, wine etc etc
We used to burn women alive, as witches. Stopped doing it. Bad, bad thing.
Wikipedia records that witches were burned during the period 1450 -1750 and no reference is made to NZ as this was before NZ was settled by any Europeans, let alone sheep.
However, Frank I give in to your line of argument.
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