It’s Time For Truth

 About How Much NZ Land Is Foreign-Owned
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The endlessly fascinating Crafar Farms soap opera focuses attention once again on the political hot potato of foreign ownership of New Zealand land.

The Prime Minister, recognising the political toxicity of the subject, even among National voters, has tried to soothe public outrage by saying that less than 1% of New Zealand farmland is foreign-owned.

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) knew this was nonsense. If this figure was ever correct, it was a long time ago.

We decided it was time to update our research. So we asked the PM, under the Official Information Act, how he arrived at that figure. The reply we got from Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson (27/3/12) said that in the past decade “about 2% of farmland has been sold to overseas buyers”. So, even the Minister in charge of flogging off land gave a higher figure than the PM. Williamson then qualified his conclusion by saying: ”but we don’t know how much of this land has subsequently been sold back to New Zealanders”.

This feeble response from the misleadingly titled Minister for Land Information just demonstrates that, in fact, he doesn’t have any accurate information about how much land is foreign-owned or controlled.

Maurice Williamson: Minister in charge of flogging off land

So the Crafar Farms saga is just part of a much bigger and ongoing story. One which has nothing to do with alleged “anti-Chinese racism and xenophobia”. The official records from the Overseas Investment Office prove that New Zealand’s land, our prime asset as an extremely successful agricultural country, is being flogged off to any Tom, Dick and Harry, from a wide variety of countries. For instance, Germans are now the biggest foreign owners of Southland dairy farms, something which is definitely flying under the political and media radar.

Every poll on the subject shows that a clear majority of New Zealanders, including National voters, don’t want our land sold off to foreigners, regardless of where they come from. And the first thing that needs to be established in this debate is just how much of our land is already in foreign ownership or control.

An absolutely basic first step to establishing this information would be for the Government to establish a register of foreign land purchases, which should also record subsequent sales of that land, whether to other foreign owners or back to New Zealanders.

New Zealanders need to know the truth about this most controversial of issues, and they’re not getting it from the Government. What a surprise.

Also see

• Overseas ownership of farmland far above PM’s claim

Windflow & General Dynamics: The Old Proverbial Hits the Turbine

The announcement Christchurch wind turbine manufacturer Windflow Technology has signed a ten year licensing agreement with General Dynamics’ subsidiary SATCOM is eyebrow-raising in itself. General Dynamics is a gigantic US transnational corporation and a major manufacturer of weapons, military vehicles and military communications systems. General Dynamics SATCOM will use Windflow’s technology to manufacture turbines for use in US military bases worldwide, among other places. General Dynamics has a subsidiary that makes nuclear submarines (which remain banned from NZ under our nuclear free law).
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Having signed up with such an unsavoury partner, Windflow would have been highly advised to simply hold its nose and stay silent.
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But, no, its Chief Executive, Geoff Henderson, felt obliged to defend the deal with some truly outlandish justifications. “We see it as, to the extent that that is the case, we see the move to windpower as being akin to 'swords to ploughshares'. The manufacture of weapons of war being converted into manufacturers' peace-time implements”. 
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That really is an insult to the Ploughshares Aotearoa activists – Adrian Leason, Peter Murnane and Sam Land – who actually did do something about converting swords into ploughshares, namely deflating one of the domes at the top secret Waihopai spybase in 2008 (and for which they were acquitted by a Wellington jury in 2010).

Gumboots needed to wade through this pile of  brown stuff 

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But wait, there’s more. Geoff Henderson went to say: “Asked whether the deal would sit well with green-leaning or pacifist shareholders, Henderson replied there was an argument that a strong United States in the last 60 or 70 years had ensured the longest period of peace the planet had known and helped avoid the outbreak of wars”.
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Yes, there is such an argument, Geoff. It’s about as convincing as the argument that fascism was good for Italy because it made the trains run on time.
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This really is such bullshit that The old ignorance is bliss argument, eh, Your Worship.
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Where to start? Maybe with the Afghan villagers who had 16 of their number, including many women and children, murdered by a US soldier this week? If his US base was windpowered, Geoff, would that be OK then? Indeed the whole people of Afghanistan and Iraq or, going back a few decades, Vietnam, would have a diametrically opposite viewpoint as to whether the US military “had ensured the longest period of peace the planet had known and helped avoid the outbreak of wars”. In actual fact, the US brought war, mass destruction and misery to those countries, among many others, and still is, in the case of the first two.

The old ignorance is bliss argument, eh, Your Worship. 

Similar self-justifying nonsense was uttered by major Windflow shareholder, Wellington’s aptly named Mayor, Celia Wade-Brown (because you do need gumboots to wade through this pile of the brown stuff). “She had never asked where the energy provided by Windflow turbines was used, and her focus was on how the energy was generated, not what it was used for, she said”. The old ignorance is bliss argument, eh, Your Worship.
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Come on, Windflow, if you’re going to sell your soul to the Devil,  make sure that not only do you get a good price but that you can come up with better justifications than these pathetic ones.
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Text: Peace Researcher Media Release 

Ports of Auckland workers and supporters rally

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Roger Award Finalist Transgresses on a Global Scale

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) declares its solidarity with the Canadian members of the United Steelworkers Union who are currently visiting New Zealand (Invercargill today; Wellington tomorrow) to gain support for their struggle against contracting out by their employer, Rio Tinto Alcan. Their struggle bears an uncanny resemblance to that being waged by the Maritime Union against Ports of Auckland Ltd contracting out their jobs. And Rio Tinto Alcan has used the same tactic – namely, the indefinite lockout –as Affco has against its’ meat workers in the North Island.
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Our Canadian visitors need to know that Rio Tinto Alcan is also a recidivist corporate offender in this country, being one of the eight finalists in the annual Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2011.

www.usw.ca

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New Zealand Aluminium Smelters Ltd/Rio Tinto Alcan NZ Ltd (notorious for decades under its previous name of Comalco) has been a regular finalist and was runner up in both the 2009 and 08 Roger Awards (you will find the Judges’ Reports for those years here). 
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In 2011 the nominator put in a detailed (even footnoted) nomination of the owners of the Bluff aluminium smelter for a new reason – for lobbying two Governments “over several years to secure to secure excessive allocations of free emissions units under the NZ Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS)… NZAS/Rio Tinto has interfered in a democratic process via political lobbying through its industry advocate the Greenhouse Policy Coalition in order to dodge a tax (greenhouse gas pricing under the NZETS), and to profit from the ETS through excessive free allocation of emissions units….there is very little doubt that the NZETS unit allocation rules are so distorted that the smelter would face a higher carbon price if it were exempted from obligations under the NZETS and just paid its electricity bills”. This is the same transnational which, only a few years ago, threatened to quit NZ if the ETS went ahead. If you can't beat them, you might as well make money out of them, eh. 
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A whole book could be written about this company’s misdeeds in New Zealand and a good place to refresh your memory about its outrageous early history here is our 30 year old classic comic booklet “The Amazing Adventures Of NZ’s No.1 Power Junky: The True Story Of Comalco In NZ” It’s an oldie but a goody.
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The winner/s of the 2011 Roger Award will be announced at an event in Christchurch on the night of Friday April 20th.
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The full list of finalists and other details are here.    
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Lockout Resources 

• Fact Sheet 
• NZ Visit Flyer 

Roger Award Finalists Just Keep On Digging Themselves a Deeper Hole

 Great to see workers fighting back

Old habits die hard. In the news today are two of the finalists for the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand who seem intent on getting themselves nominated again for the 2012 Roger Award.
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These transnational corporate recidivists are Sajo Oyang Corporation and the Oceania Group.
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Sajo Oyang is the poster boy for everything that is wrong with the foreign chartered vessels model used in New Zealand’s joint venture fishing regime. In today’s news, one of its vessels being held off the Canterbury coast by a High Court arrest warrant apparently made a run for it and then changed its mind when it realised it was heading towards a Navy vessel, and returned from whence it came.
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This South Korean fishing company made it to the finalists of the 2011 Roger Award for having achieved the not inconsiderable feat of having the worst record when it comes to treatment of the poor buggers from Third World countries who have to risk their lives and health in working on these joint venture fishing boats. It was nominated for exploitation and harm of its crew members (six of whom died when one of its boats sank in NZ waters; others have walked off Oyang boats in NZ ports in protest at the appalling systematic abuse of crewmen). Oyang is the “star” of the report into abuses in the fishing industry, the report which forced the Government to open an Inquiry. 
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For its part the Government was nominated for the Roger Award’s Accomplice Award because of its “neglect and active harm caused to the NZ maritime industry, comprising;

1. the failure to regulate the NZ fishing industry to protect jobs, conditions, the wellbeing of overseas workers, the environment and New Zealand control of its resources, and 
2.  the open coast policy which is responsible for flag of convenience shipping, the decline of shipping standards and NZ shipping, and the failure to sign the international treaty to maximise liability for clean up costs by charterers”. 

In the case of Oceania, its rest home workers throughout the country went on strike in protest at the criminally low wages that they are paid. It is New Zealand's largest rest home provider and is owned by a foreign equity fund. It made it to the 2011 Roger Award finalists because it is the perfect illustration of what has happened to this sector which used to exist to provide a service for old people no longer able to look after themselves in their own homes. Now it is a profit-driven business, with the residents the “product” and the workers are overwhelmingly female, brown and/or Third World, who are paid very low wages to do the literal shit work – while the owners of Oceania cream it. 
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It is great to see those workers fighting back and CAFCA declares our full support for them (particularly those in Oceania’s Christchurch resthomes. Those lowpaid workers looked after our most vulnerable old people in the chaotic aftermath of the February 2011 killer quake. The thanks they get is a pay rate just above the minimum wage). Likewise we declare our support for the grotesquely exploited and abused foreign fishermen who are unfortunate enough to work for Sajo Oyang and its ilk.
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The winner/s of the 2011 Roger Award winner will be announced at a Christchurch event on April 20th. With contenders like this, the judges have a tough decision and are spoilt for choice. The full list of finalists can be read here.

Those Slave Ships and our Fishing Fleet

Radio NZ's Kathryn Ryan speaks to Ben Skinner, a US journalist whose story for Bloomberg Business Week outlines allegations of abuse on board foreign-flagged fishing vessels; as well as Eric Barratt, the CEO of Sanford, which is investigating the allegations of abuse on one of its charter boats. (30′29″)



Also see 


> Whistleblower in hiding after 'slavery' storm 


> Fishing inquiry must shine a light into dark places

Checkout Slave Free Seas on Facebook

Crafar Court Decision A Welcome Outbreak 0f Sanity

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"Take the opportunity of this major rebuff to reverse its self-defeating policy of allowing the country to be sold off, farm by farm" 

Justice Miller’s decision to order a review of the decision to approve the sale of the Crafar Farms to the appropriately named Milk NZ, owned by Shanghai Pengxin of China, is a welcome outbreak of sanity in this whole sorry saga. Not to mention a two fingered judicial poke in the eyes of the Government and its Overseas Investment Office rubberstampers.

"a two fingered judicial poke in the eyes
of the Government and its OIO rubberstampers."

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It’s only three weeks ago that the Government was trumpeting the “strict conditions” attached to the approval. They have been swept aside by the judge for the load of piffle that they are. The decision recognises that the would-be foreign owner has no dairy farming experience, thus failing the legislative requirement that it have relevant business expertise. The Chinese company, and the Government, aimed to get around this inconvenient law by contracting Landcorp to manage the Crafar Farms. The appellant’s lawyer pointed out that this would set a precedent for future land sales as any “well-resourced overseas conglomerate could come and buy dairy farms in New Zealand provided it had a contract with Landcorp”. This attempt to sugarcoat the bitter pill of loss of yet more of our land could be described as a policy of phony New Zealandisation. Landcorp would be nothing more than a property manager for the Chinese owners.
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The judge recognised the central fact that the sale would bring no discernible benefit to New Zealand, as required under the Overseas Investment Act, saying that the benefits were likely to accrue regardless of who owns it. “If a given benefit will happen anyway, it cannot easily be described as a substantial consequence of the overseas investment”. Exactly. CAFCA couldn’t have put it better. .

 “any well-resourced overseas conglomerate could come and
 buy dairy farms provided it had a contract with Landcorp”.

CAFCA stresses that the race or nationality of the buyers is irrelevant. Flogging the Crafar Farms overseas is reprehensible regardless of whether the foreign buyers are Chinese, Americans, British or Australians. 
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But CAFCA doesn’t carry a flag for Sir Michael Fay and his merry men. His track record speaks for itself. If his consortium succeeds in buying the Crafar Farms there is nothing to stop it onselling them overseas for a tidy profit. The opportunity to have the Crafar Farms genuinely stay in local hands was lost when the receivers rejected Landcorp’s bid to buy them outright (as opposed to the booby prize of managing them for a foreign owner).
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This decision provides a chance to halt this whole policy of flogging off the country’s agricultural land (of which they ain’t making any more), which is New Zealand’s comparative advantage in the global market. New Zealand is, first and foremost, an agricultural country. And we’re very, very good at it, which is why foreign buyers want to snap it up. As a bare minimum first step, freehold sales of such land to foreign buyers should be stopped ASAP, with them only allowed to lease land, as is common practice overseas. And all such leases should be subject to much stricter conditions and scrutiny than is the case now. 
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CAFCA urges the Government to take the opportunity of this major rebuff to reverse its self-defeating policy of allowing the country to be sold off, farm by farm. Or will it do what it has done in other such judicial defeats and simply change the law in order to get its own way?

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Download the decision 

Increase the Tax on Profiteering Aussie Banks

Squeeze them until it hurts
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The Government is asking loaded questions about how  Christchurch’s multibillion dollar post-earthquake recovery will be financed? There are less than subtle hints about flogging off Christchurch’s large and very valuable portfolio of publicly-owned assets. Wrestling back some of the ill-gotten gains of the big foreign banks is a much more palatable alternative. 

News that the Big Five Australian-owned banks made a combined NZ profit of $3 billion in 2011 means only one thing – they’re making too much money out of us. They must be laughing all the way to the bank. Hang on, they are the bank.
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These banks always make a big PR fuss about how much they contribute to the NZ community. But these are exactly the same banks who, in December 2009, settled out of court with IRD for attempting to dodge payment of an astonishing $2.2 billion of taxes that, between them, they avoided via deliberately complicated structured financial transactions. And that out of court settlement was for 20% less than what IRD was seeking – plus they would have had to pay costs if they’d persisted in going to court and losing (two of them had already lost in court before they all decided to throw in the towel).
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So that's how they rode out the recession, by not paying nuisance costs such as taxes. Not an option for the rest of us mugs who have to pay our taxes, whether we like it or not. This was the biggest tax avoidance case in New Zealand’s history – and it happened at the same time as the deposits in those Australian-owned banks were guaranteed by New Zealand taxpayers (who got no say in the governance of those banks).
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The Government wrings it's hands
about the global financial crisis while
super profits are sucked out of the country 

As a result they paid 47% more tax in 2011 than they did in 2010. But they still sucked $3 billion out of the country. These super profits need to be taxed more. This comes at a time when the Government is wringing its hands about how is it going to finance NZ’s recovery from the global financial crisis? Its’ only ideas are to borrow more; sell public assets; slash the State sector and public services; and bash beneficiaries. Here’s an idea – instead of grinding the faces of the poor to pay for a global crisis caused by the crimes of transnational banks, it should raise the tax on the transnational banks that are creaming it here in this country. 
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Specifically the Government is asking loaded questions about how will Christchurch’s multibillion dollar post-earthquake recovery be financed? There are less than subtle hints about flogging off Christchurch’s large and very valuable portfolio of publicly-owned assets. Wrestling back some of the ill-gotten gains of the big foreign banks is a much more palatable alternative. Make the rich pay.
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That would be poetic justice in the case of at least one of those Aussie banks. One of the reasons why Westpac was selected as one of the eight finalists for the 2011 Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand was because, shamefully, it pressured its Christchurch tellers to meet normal sales targets by pushing loans and insurance products onto financially stricken Christchurch customers after the earthquakes, adopting a “business as usual” policy. That bank can definitely afford to pay more tax. It paid its’ Chief Executive Officer $5.8 million and $5.4 million respectively, over the past two years, making him the highest paid CEO in NZ.
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Squeeze them until it hurts. They've been bleeding NZ dry for too long.

Crafar Farms Sale Approval Surprising Only In That It Took So Long To Rubberstamp

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The announcement yesterday of Ministerial and Overseas Investment Office approval of the sale of the bankrupt Crafar Farms to Chinese buyers is no surprise to the Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA). The only surprise is that it took them so long to rubber stamp it. This was all supposed to be a done deal back in 2010 when it was supposed to be sold to the first lot of would be Chinese buyers. That all turned to custard because of an even greater of lack of good character than usual of the company’s principals, who are now facing serious criminal charges in Hong Kong (but nothing in New Zealand, which tells you a lot about the diligence of NZ’s “regulatory” authorities).
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Sale a “political hot potato” prior to election 

So it became not only an embarrassment but a political hot potato, one which exposed deep rifts within National’s supporters and within the Government itself, at the highest levels. It was parked up out of sight until after the election. But it has still taken a further two months to find the cans of air freshener with which to mask the stink of what is yet another huge sale overseas of New Zealand’s comparative advantage in the global market – prime agricultural land (of which they ain’t making no more).
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The lily is being gilded by the announcement that Landcorp will manage it on behalf of the Chinese buyers. Everyone knows that there is the world of difference between being the owner and the property manager. Ownership is power; owners make the decisions (including onselling it); owners get the profits. The lily is being further gilded by a number of conditions being attached to it (Labour set the precedent for this in regard to the equally controversial Shania Twain land purchases when it was in office). Conditions such as the buyers remaining of good character (this could be renamed the May Wang clause) and paying millions of dollars to various worthy causes. These should be taken with a well deserved grain of salt. Why? Two words – Kim Dotcom.

Prime Minister “disingenuous”

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The Prime Minister keeps issuing soothing noises about foreign land purchases only totaling around 1% of the total land area. He is being disingenuous. What is important is what percentage of the total area of productive land is foreign-owned. These statistics are no longer issued by the Overseas Investment Office but when they were, last decade, CAFCA calculated the figure at 7% - and it was never officially denied or disputed. We’ve seen no evidence of that figure having gone down, quite the opposite. Plus the PM is stressing quantity when, once again, the key factor is the quality of the land being flogged off overseas. Foreign buyers are cherry picking, not buying the rubbish (that’s left for the locals).
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CAFCA stresses that the race of the buyers is irrelevant. Flogging the Crafar Farms overseas is reprehensible regardless of whether the foreign buyers are Chinese, Americans, British or Australians. Despite attempts to reorient the economy into other directions (finance companies, anyone?), New Zealand still remains an agricultural country. And we’re very good at it, which is why foreign buyers want to snap it up. CAFCA doesn’t carry any flag for Michael Fay’s rival bid. All we need say about him is that patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. The opportunity to have the Crafar Farms genuinely stay in local hands was lost when the receivers rejected Landcorp’s bid to buy them (which gets the management contract as a consolation prize). The Prime Minister said in 2010, when controversy was raging about the original Chinese proposal to buy these farms; that he didn't want to see New Zealanders become tenants in our own land. A commendable sentiment, one with which CAFCA completely agrees. But yesterday’s decision by his Government ensures that is exactly what is happening.
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Visit the "Save The Farms" webpage 

No Corporate Welfare for Coca Cola and other Transnational Bludgers

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Speaking at the opening of Coca Cola Amatil’s Christchurch bottling plant, group managing director Terry Davis called on the Government to consider “incentives” for food and beverage manufacturers (Press, 19/1/12; “Coca-Cola calls for incentives”). 
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Why? This is a very slippery slope. Why should the New Zealand taxpayer subsidise a gigantic transnational corporation such as Coca Cola, one for whom the $15m cost of the bottling plant would be what its American executives would refer to as “chump change”? Would they like breakfast in bed while they’re at it? And this is not even to raise the subject of whether Coca-Cola itself is a product worthy of any taxpayers’ dollars.
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.The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) says that it simply adds insult to injury for the transnational corporations which dominate the NZ economy to demand that the New Zealand people pay them for the privilege of profiting from us. But don’t take our word for it. A decade ago when the Labour government gave taxpayers’ money to giant American transnational EDS National’s associate commerce spokesman called it “corporate welfare” (Press, 12/3/03). And who was that then obscure National MP? None other than John Key. It’s a rare day when CAFCA agrees with National but Key expressed our views exactly. 

The sugar daddy Prime Minister

 and the  squalid Warner Brothers/ “The Hobbit” saga

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Of course, once in power, Key became the transnationals’ biggest sugar daddy, as evidenced by the squalid Warner Brothers/ “The Hobbit” saga in 2010. What happened to calling it “corporate welfare”, Prime Minister?
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In the US, individual states, counties and cities undercut each other to attract foreign investment, such as car assembly plants, with guaranteed union-free workplaces. Some US states have paid transnational corporations (TNCs) hundreds of millions of dollars to pick them. “You want our foreign investment? OK, then you’ll have to pay us to come there. And pay again for us to stay".
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What are the N.Z. numbers?

Of all cities in New Zealand, Christchurch should be the one most wary of offering “incentives” to transnational corporations. In December 2002 Pratt and Whitney, a huge US transnational, announced an $80 million expansion of its Christchurch Airport jet engine testing centre; yet, by March 2003, Christchurch’s then Mayor, Garry Moore, announced that the centre would close and move overseas, with all jobs lost, unless the Council put up $20 million of ratepayers’ money. Sir Angus Tait, chairman of Tait Electronics, put it most succinctly when he said: " …One could, a little unkindly, interpret it as Air New Zealand and Pratt and Whitney putting a gun to the city’s head, saying ‘build this new building or we’ll go elsewhere’" (Press, 1/3/03).
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Ten Myths about Welfare

Don’t worry about the much maligned solo mothers and other beneficiaries who are regularly attacked and subjected to draconian measures. They’re not remotely in the same league.  It’s the transnational corporations who are the country’s biggest bludgers. They suck billions of dollars in profits out of this country every year, so they can well afford to pay their own way (whatever happened to “market forces”?). If anything, they should be paying the NZ people for the privilege of being allowed to operate here.

Source: CAFCA Media Release  

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