Yay, more Chinese tourists to pour into NZ when our infrastructure can’t cope with the huge numbers of tourists we now have.
Yay, more Chinese tourists to come here and check out the property market that is seeing costs for renters like this…
“MOVE IN COSTS
FIRST WEEKS RENT + LETTING FEE + GST + X4 WEEKS BOND
$750+ $750 + $112.50 + $3000
TOTAL= $4612.50”
While Ray White are trying to get more  buyers from China.
When investors are now 44% of buyers in Auckland.
When the Government is spending millions on housing the homeless in motels.Â
The last bloody thing we need is MORE Chinese tourism bringing more hungry speculators into a country crippled by a lack of infrastructure investment and housing crisis.
What’s that you say? But the Chinese will build our infrastructure.
You mean this Chinese infrastructure?
Steel for Huntly bypass bridges fails test
Sixteen hundred tonnes of steel from China has been found to be too weak for four bridges on the $450 million Huntly bypass that forms part of the $2 billion Waikato Expressway.
Contractors building the ‘Road of National Significance’ chose a very low bid for the steel tubes.
But the test certificates for them have turned out to be wrong, and now an expensive fix-up job is under way.
The contractors, Fulton Hogan and HEB Construction, have admitted to RNZ News the steel tubes were not good enough. They did not comply with standards for structural steel, which for bridges were very high as they must resist impacts, heavy loads and low temperatures.
It was only after a third lot of testing that the contractors found out. The first tests were done in China by the steel mill and the tube manufacturer; it is understood the second tests were done in New Zealand on samples sent here from China.
Both lots of tests said the steel met the New Zealand standard.
A road sign on the Waikato Expressway, showing the speed limit.A road sign on the Waikato Expressway Photo: RNZ / Andrew McRae
As for the third testing, there are two versions of events. The contractors and the New Zealand Transport Agency say that, following established quality control processes, they tested the tubes after they arrived and immediately found out the steel was no good.But RNZ News has been told it was only when workers began pounding the tubes into the ground, and the steel ballooned on the ends, that tests were done by an accredited laboratory.
The steel failed in this third lot of tests.
I simply don’t trust the National Party when it comes to handling our economic interests with China because the National Party itself is now wedded and compromised personally to wealthy Chinese interests.  Jenny Shipley, Don Brash, Ruth Richardson and Chris Tremain are Director’s of the China Construction Bank, Judith Collins interaction with Chinese Officials to help her husbands Chinese Company, Oravida, to gain more Chinese money and Maurice Williamson’s love affair with  Donghua Liu saw him become Liu’s personal handyman when doing up Liu’s batch and heavying the Police to drop domestic violence charges.
The National Government are as dependent on their Chinese friends as the entire economy now has become.
National have sold our economy to China and our mass surveillance to America.
But Martyn … they own us. Bought from Rothschild lock, stock and barrel.
I’ve just blown my lunch break hunting round the interweb for Labours stand on foreign investment in NZ infrastructure…and apart from the Housing issue, I can’t find anything that would clearly indicate that Labour would do anything that differently.
Happy to be corrected, of course.
But it seems to me that we need this ‘stuff’, and if Labour are desperately trying to prove they aren’t Hugo Chavez, and are going to stick to ‘sensible’ spending (ie austerity lite) then how exactly are we going to get anything done…be it massive housing builds or motorways??
.”But not even an hour later, Little was on Radio NZ saying New Zealand was a country “built on foreign direct investment” and more of it was needed.
He said there was a difference between foreign direct investment that generated jobs and wealth locally versus selling land to overseas buyers.
Now that the dairy price was so low, Little said the Government needed to take action in terms of better regional development.
There needed to be a combination of government investment and foreign investment into whatever opportunities the regions offered, he said.” 2015
Thats how.
The ‘Silk Road’ and its significance over millenniums, on and off:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road
The Han Chinese and later the Tang dynasty, made great efforts to protect and control it, they would not have done so if it had benefited others more than them.
What we get presented as the modern day plan for developing a virtually global transport and supply chain network, it may have some “economic” benefits, but ultimately, the way the Mainland Chinese will want to create it, it will be done to make their new rising superpower the major one in the world, to one day replace the slowly weakening and disunited USA.
We are faced with swapping one very powerful master for another, nothing else, and those that dream of higher living standards, beware, we will still need water, land and soil for our own purposes, and if that is not protected, we will sell out to the extreme.
With all this we will not only get more students from overseas, many of course from China also, we will also have yet more immigration, as others will want to ‘share’ this land and its resources with us, i.e. take their share to live here and exploit the land.
New Zealanders should be very, very careful what this government will lead us into, we are already highly disadvantaged. What did the Chinese state Deputy Premier or whatever his title is have done when visiting Fisher and Paykel (its remnants) in Auckland today?
He will have got an impression of how miniscule our industry and manufacturing base is, how weak and how behind we are, really, and how we are willing and desperate prey for further investment from China.
How can we reconcile this ever closer economic approach towards China, our 2nd largest “trading partner”, after Australia, with our “alliance” with Australia, the US and so forth? Australia’s largest “trading partner” is also China, so we are more than doubly dependent on one large economy now.
The new “Motherland”, I suppose, it will be when we have reached more than one million new Chinese immigrants becoming residents here in the coming decades, it is not scare mongering, come to Auckland and see it. There were dozens if not hundreds red flag waving Chinese outside the Langham Hotel here last night, waiting for “their leader”, I bet you, our crap MSM will show you none of this stuff. How “loyal” will they be to NZ Inc., that Sellout Inc., I wonder?
Here is how Wikipedia describe the new Chinese plan for the future trade and strategies:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Belt,_One_Road
Once in ancient times they said that all roads will lead to Rome, one day in the future “all roads will lead to Beijing”.
China is the only reason New Zealand has survived the international economic troubles since 2008 relatively unscathed.
Unemployment is currently at a record low in New Zealand – if we cut economic links with China, where do you think we would be?
Yep, let’s reduce Chinese tourism —how many jobs would be lost Martyn? If you lose your job, its pretty hard to keep up with rent payments.
There are downsides to our relationship with China, and improvement can be made in a lot of areas. But the upsides of the relationship simply overwhelm the downsides. National is simply carrying on the relationship that Labour started, and if Labour gets in things will hardly change a whit.
It doesn’t have to be like this… I have zero problem with NZ having a good relationship with China and US, think targeted migration is beneficial, but that is not what our government seems to be doing, more some sort of colonisation of ideology (USA) and colonisation of assets and population growth (Asia).
Just like I am against the foreign countries going into Iraq and taking over their government and economic interests I’m against the same happening to NZ as colonisation from overseas.
Worse through NZ it is not through a war, but our government’s own choice to trade leadership and control to a small slice of profit off the pie, leave big choices such as security to others, and no need to put that much effort in worrying about the future of Kiwis.
The NZ people’s previous identity as low key, tolerant, socially democratic, environmentalists where quality of life used to be more important than profit replaced by
Profit loving, and increasingly angry disadvantaged groups, poorly educated, low waged, consumers working for foreign owned interests and increasingly not being able to afford to live in our own country while expected to pay for the governments colonisation plans because shareholders of companies like Oravida are profiting from the arrangement?
+100 SAVENZ
See what other countries and people are experiencing and fearing:
http://www.economist.com/news/asia/21714374-its-one-way-pay-debts-china-sri-lankans-protest-against-chinese-investment
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-38541673
http://thebricspost.com/algeria-china-ink-3-3-bn-mega-port-deal/
http://www.globalconstructionreview.com/news/algeria-seeks-chinese-help-2bn-p7or7t-sch7eme/
https://www.menas.co.uk/blog/algerian-protests-austerity-programme/
“The unrest that attracted most media attention was at Oued El-Ma, a town of some 30,000 inhabitants around 40 km from Batna, where violent clashes broke out on 16 January. Initially, the precise cause of the rioting was not clear, apart from the fact that it was triggered by the decision to move a solar plant factory being built by a Chinese company to another wilaya.”
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/rise-anti-chinese-violence-kenya-forces-halt-major-rail-project-1576945
https://www.rsis.edu.sg/rsis-publication/rsis/co15049-anti-china-sentiment-in-africa-why-are-they-unwelcomed/
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21657419-pious-sinophobia-wont-deflect-turkeys-strategic-dreams-bashing-and-wooing-china
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/09/in-africa-an-election-reveals-skepticism-of-chinese-involvement/245832/
https://www.chinafile.com/library/china-africa-project/flash-anti-chinese-xenophobia-dr-congo
http://presstv.com/Detail/2016/11/06/492435/Hong-Kong-protests-China
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-vietnam-protest-idUSKBN15312C
While there are of course elements of racism and nationalist sentiments that also play a role in these developments, one must consider that China and its state and also more privately run businesses have their own interests, same as for instance the US and its corporations has also.
All this talk about “growth” and “opportunity”, “trade” and “jobs” is just more of the same BS propaganda we have been getting for decades now, coming from various more or less neoliberal governments that have made us ever more dependent, consumerist and divided as a population. We have sold state owned enterprises, shares in such that ran energy companies, we hare selling private real estate to offshore buyers, same as local ones (some new, cash rich migrants), we send business offshore and allow overseas companies move manufacturing there. Our farmers get driven or enticed into joining one way supply chains, partly controlled by overseas investors from China and other places, and they will be turned into mere production slaves and serfs, only there to supply what others need, and they will instead of buying local products like Fisher and Paykel, buy Chinese made Haier fridges and washers.
What f**king progress is this?
This is happening because National’s guiding philosophy is: “If it makes a buck for me or my donors, then we’ll make sure it happens.”
Check out this gem from the Executive Director of NZ China Council, Stephen Jacobi, calling for New Zealand to become a fully fledged South Pacific colony of mainland China.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=11826840
I’m all for closer relations with North Asian democracies like Taiwan or Japan, but I think it’s the height of hypocrisy to cosy up to the Chinese Communist Party dictatorship and its egregious human rights violators, just because they have money.
I guarantee if we do make the mistake of allowing the Chinese government to build (with their own workers), fund, and own our infrastructure, it’ll come with very costly strings attached in the long term.
Still, as long as former National MPs and their mates are getting rich in the process, what’s the problem right?
+100… to this post and all the comments
…this is New Zealand not a polluted over populated suburb of China!….this should be the BIG election issue!
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/01/19/commentary/world-commentary/chinas-growth-obsession-leaves-toxic-legacy/#.WNnc29KGMdU
…where are the Greens on this ? ( or is it “crude racial profiling”?)
VOTE WINSTON NZF…he at least is speaking out
Winston has been around he sees what is happening sticking out like dogs gonads, however the media keep screaming at him that he is racist along with the National puppy dog at the Race Relations Office.
Our sovereignty is being sold down the river by the Natzis.
Winston has been around he sees what is happening sticking out like dogs gonads, however the media keep screaming at him that he is racist along with the National puppy dog at the Race Relations Office.
Our sovereignty is being sold down the river by the Natzis.
Successive National and Labour Governments have been incredibly naive, probably because Parliament is infested with political academics, lawyers, school teachers and bankers with no real world commercial experience.
PLEASE TELL ME THE LAST 30-40 YEARS HAVE JUST BEEN A BAD DREAM.
Winston has been around he sees what is happening sticking out like dogs gonads, however the media keep screaming at him that he is racist along with the National puppy dog at the Race Relations Office.
Our sovereignty is being sold down the river by the Natzis.
Successive National and Labour Governments have been incredibly naive, probably because Parliament is infested with political academics, lawyers, school teachers and bankers with no real world commercial experience.
PLEASE TELL ME THE LAST 30-40 YEARS HAVE JUST BEEN A BAD DREAM.
I too worry what these half wits in National are signing over. Their blind obsession with so-called free trade deals that turn out to be anything but free are horrifying.
They like naive bumpkins that used car salesmen dream of walking on to their yards. All on our behalf!
Read the following book.
The Land Grabbers by Fred Pearce
Bill English is signing up for us to become China’s lowly paid factory farm.
New definition for the Oxford Dictionary for these words….
Naive
Stupidity
Gullible
Unworldly
Visionless
Cultureless
Lazy
Clueless
Traitorous
Sellouts
Simpletons
…….Definiton…. N.Z National Party 2009-2017
Your list omits the most important word: sustainable.
Everything the National government promotes is totally unsustainable, yet is described by the wankers as being sustainable.
And though development is clearly the problem, the National government describes destruction of the future of everyone under the age of 60 as ‘sustainable development’.
Tourism is now a major contributor to planetary meltdown, of course.
‘Highest-ever daily average CO2Â |Â Maua Loa Observatory
2017 (so far)
409.56 ppm on March 2017, 2017 (Scripps)’
We’ll be facing 410 or 412 ppm by the end of May. And our grandchildren will be facing 500 ppm (when they need no more than 320 ppm to have a future.
Interestingly, the meltdown of the Arctic -currently way ahead of any other year- will result in multi-metre sea level rise (very likely 3 to 7 metres) wiping out much of the coastal ‘development’ around NZ by mid-century.
But in the meantime the criminals (relatively few in number) that operate the system will manage to make a few fast bucks at everyone else’s expense.
China has also just bought out one of N.Z’s largest and oldest construction companies ‘Hawkins Construction’ and told the born and bred Kiwi CEO he’s got 6 months to find another job.
China want to build the tunnel under the Auckland harbour and then toll Aucklander’s…. The money will go back to China of course…
Because things have slowed down dramatically in China, massive Chinese construction companies are now scouring the world looking for infrastructure work for their workforce.
Silly old N.Z is easy meat for China so they are going in for the kill…..
That is not xenophobia but pure track record logic and some basic maths.
Candy…. baby…
Hawkins was bought out by Downers which is Sydney based and I can little that is China linked. What do you have?
The truth probably is that the horse has long since bolted.
So much of our wealth creating asset has been hocked by successive National and Labour governments that an illusory balance of payments can only be achieved by ever greater and faster disposal of our country.
All any of them can hope for is to have survived to retirement before the day of reckoning when we can’t avoid seeing that we are all impoverished tenants in our own land.
D J S
David Stone, what makes you think the day of reckoning is in the future?
For a lot of us it’s here already…
Sounds like with all this ‘foreign investment’ whatever the fuck that is, now people a lot of people can’t afford to be tenants in their own country and even if you could afford to be a tenant – there’s not enough houses – because someone has decided that cheap labour, profitisation of education, dodgy degrees and a free trade agreement with China that seems to have come with unlimited immigration is more important than their own citizens well being.
Hey, don’t worry you can rent a hotel room when you are homeless at $200 per night, don’t worry tax payers will underwrite it and if the homeless person is even in a position to get a job, the massive debt they will have accumulated will keep them in poverty.
Fucking Market efficiency, my arse! It’s an absolute joke. But local’s aren’t laughing.
Wasn’t trade supposed to be about goods and services, not people transfers and selling off our land and assets for peanuts.
I strongly believe that we should be divesting ourselves as soon as we can of anything to do with foreign ownership etc and in particular in regards to Chinese ‘investment’ into NZ / Chinese immigration into NZ.
The National Party are clearly focusing on their own personal short-term (financial) gain and not the long-term interests of our country and increasingly I am for the 1st time considering voting for NZF.
While no ‘expert’ I have written a thesis on China’s political economy in the past for a politics masters degree and pretty clear selling property to overseas Chinese investors etc is causing considerable harm to our society.
It is time to restrict and protect NZ for NZer’s.
National Planning Light Rail to the Airport by 2040 give us a break the roads are in gridlock now?
AND there are no words for please or thank you in Mandarin or Cantonese. Time to reinstigate the Ancient Order of the Assassins I say.
More Chinese people driving on our roads are wanted only by Bill English,
we have enough problems dodging them at the moment. Bill come over to the Westcoast or any tourist area and drive yourself around to see what it’s like. Whats wrong with slowing down growth and using local resources with decent conditions and wages for locals?
We have only ourselves to blame.
The summing up of ‘Trust at Work: A Study on Faith and Trust of Protestant Entrepreneurs in China’ by Joy K. C. Tong 1,* and Fenggang Yang says. “Based on our limited data, what can be said so far is that for the majority of our Christian respondents, religion is helpful in stimulating and maintaining trust in and from others. It has, to various degrees, oriented our respondents’ daily business practices in a very secular society such as China toward an ethical direction. Overall, instead of shying away, most respondents are keen to express and integrate faith with their business. Our results suggest that Christianity can be one possible source of a new business morality in China. Indeed, the kind of business practices and life witnesses of Christians may have served as a factor for the rapid increase of Christians in China today.”
Irreligion is the cause of it all our problems. Back to the pews. What was good enough for M.J.S.(God rest his soul) should be good enough for us.
http://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/7/12/136/pdf
Mass tourism (including our own) will have to end anyway – all those planes flying round emitting CO2 for utterly trivial ends – like people being driven around in a bus and taking photos of stuff
Phil Twyford said, “You can’t blame Ray White. They’re in business to make a dollar and this move obviously shows it’s good for their business to be marketing New Zealand homes to offshore buyers…”
This is an example of how far sunk into Neoliberal depravity the Labour Party is, when an MP can wave away any and all moral responsibility for a New Zealand company because it’s “in business to make a dollar”.
New Zealand companies are not absolved of all moral responsibility Phil. They are not animals, with no sense of right or wrong. Ray White is actively trying to pack the market full of speculators, and damn the consequences to ordinary New Zealanders trying to buy a home.
These things are not forgotten, and when the tide turns, a lot of these characters are going to be on the bread line, with no recourse.
Yes, it proved to me also, what two faced character Twyford is, he was already flirting with Ockham Holdings, one of the main submitters on the PAUP (Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan), pushing for ever more intensification, less rules for developers and investors.
http://m.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11553128
When you read that article, it sounds rather similar to what Bill English says all the time, what Oliver Hartwich and Phil Twyford say there, it is all the fault of planners and councils.
Enable development, incentivise developers, and the problem is almost solved, it seems.
FFS, what solutions do you have, Phil, is that it?
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