Labour goes back to the future on asset sales – Social Credit
The party that sold off the BNZ, NZ Rail, Petrocorp, Postbank, the Shipping Corporation, Air New Zealand, the State Insurance Office, the Tourist Hotel Corporation and a host of other New Zealand assets is at it again – with the assistance of its coalition partners NZ First and the Greens.
Despite a commitment in its policy to “keep forestry in New Zealand hands by requiring the sale of logging rights on land over 50 hectares to be approved by the Overseas Investment Office for overseas purchasers”, Labour is facilitating the sale of thousands of hectares of farmland to overseas forestry companies and by-passing the Overseas Investment Office in the process.
50 Shades of Green is right to protest against that hypocrisy and the country’s urban community should join farmers on the front line protesting as well.
In what appeared to be a ‘turnaround in thinking’ in the 2011/2014 period, Labour’s Annette King wrote in a post on the Labour Party website on November 3rd 2014 under the heading “An asset sale is an asset sale is……”. In the post she says “Dressing it up as anything other than an asset sale is duplicitous.”
And Auckland Mayor Phil Goff told a campaign rally in central Auckland just 5 days before the 2011 general election “Selling assets did nothing to prepare for the future.
Then Leader of the Labour Party, Mr Goff told the rally “Two words – asset sales – had defined the election campaign”
“It simply doesn’t work. It’s just dumb to sell them. Only a Labour government can save our assets from being flogged off to foreign owners”.
But now Labour’s gone back to the future, allowing one foreign investor to become the country’s third biggest private landowner in just four years.
Even more stupidly it’s allowed another recent overseas purchaser that describes its core business as ‘a supplier of bulk carbon credits to large energy and oil companies’ to purchase significant farmland. Planting trees for this company is just incidental to it making big profits by facilitating corporate pollution of the atmosphere.
Land Information Minister and Green MP Eugenie Sage has again proven that the Greens are the dinosaurs of the international green movement by justifying the sale approvals which she personally signed off on by saying New Zealand needed foreign investment in forestry to meet its billion trees programme and climate change targets.
Ms Sage clearly doesn’t know that government investment starting in the 1920’s is what facilitated thousands of hectares of New Zealand forest and it could and should be doing it now.
A Social Credit government would put an immediate stop to the sale of farmland to overseas buyers, progressively return to New Zealand ownership land already sold, and radically re-write the Overseas Investment Office rules.
It would invest in land-appropriate forestry planting and scrap the Emissions Trading Scheme which is just another financial fraud, and is costing taxpayers billions of dollars. The climate has now been monetised, opened up to speculation, and that has not contributed one iota to reduction in emissions.
Instead of penalising our wealth producers we will make Reserve Bank credit available to assist businesses, territorial authorities and other groups in making the transition towards a carbon neutral New Zealand.
“There’s a tidal wave of applications from overseas entities that want to snap up New Zealand’s best agricultural land and agricultural and horticultural businesses”.
“Our view is that’s not good for the long term future of New Zealanders so we’re putting a stake in the ground”.
Social Credit is putting its money where its mouth is and on October 4th filed papers in the High Court in Wellington to seek judicial review of the Overseas Investment Office decision to grant approval for the takeover of Westland Milk Products by Chinese conglomerate Inner Mongolian Yili.
Donations to assist with the High Court action can be made on the Give-A-Little page set up for the legal challenge (Westland Milk Sale Judicial Review).
Donations will only be used for this case or any other subsequent actions the party may take to oppose overseas entities buying up the country.
Thank you Social Credit!
A fairly recent decision on my part, that I needed to try and understand the mechanics of CO2 causing catastrophic overheating of the planet, which I had until then accepted along with all the people I associate with, has led me to the view that it is wrong. In discussion with an intellectual friend committed to the belief, he asked me if I thought it was a hoax. I didn’t ; I thought that most likely the scientists engaged by the IPCC to advise on the question were thus placed in the invidious position that they became responsible for warning the world if it was facing a catastrophe or not. If we are , and they do not warn of it , they will be responsible for failing to warn the world of it’s impending self destruction . But they know that they do not have the comprehensive understanding of all the interacting factors to be able to answer the question and have understandably erred on the side of caution and issued the warning in case it happens. Otherwise it was not obvious who would gain from a false alarm.
But if this wholesale selloff of New Zealand’s farmland to overseas mega rich companies for way above what a farmer can pay, and then basically providing the money to this overseas companies to buy and develop into forrest, : And this is an example of the kind of approach governments generally are going to take to “combatting climate change” then it is going to result in a new wave of transfer of real wealth from states and small businesses to the global wealthy.
All of a sudden I can see a reason for climate change being a hoax. The super wealthy are going to gather up what they don’t already hold out of government’s doing this sort of thing to try to tackle a non existent problem within the framework of the neoliberal settlement.
D J S
I dont think climate change is a hoax by any means and I dont wish to get into that here .
but I applaud social Credit on its very correct thinking and courage .
Yes Fair enough Working Man, I don’t want to denigrate or compromise SC’s position here. In the present general acceptance of the climate change narrative their position is right. If it turns out to be a mistake none of what is argued here will have done any harm.
D J S
I don’t think it is the fact of CO2 in the atmosphere itself that is the problem, but rather it’s rapid increase over the last couple of hundred years. Without the ‘greenhouse effect’ I suspect none of us would be here since the climate would then be too cold to support life.