Government 'rubber stamps' $6 billion worth of farm sales to overseas buyers

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New Zealand MP Phil Goff admits Labour government got it wrong selling land to foreigners.
Stuff | 22 July 2015

Government 'rubber stamps' $6 billion worth of farm sales to overseas buyers - Phil Goff

The Government has "rubber stamped" $6 billion worth of farm sales to overseas investors over the past three years, Labour claims.

Labour MP Phil Goff's bill seeking to curb rural land sales to overseas buyers failed by just one vote in Parliament on Wednesday, sparking an angry debate and accusations of racism.

Speaking during debate on his Overseas Investment (Owning our Own Rural Land) Amendment Bill, Goff conceded the last Labour government allowed too much land to be sold to overseas buyers  - "but to its credit it changed its policy four years ago".

The bill sought to curb foreign investment in rural land by imposing a rule that it must deliver benefits over and above what a New Zealand investor could produce.

Goff accused National of rubber-stamping every one of the nearly 400 applications from overseas investors to buy New Zealand farmland over the past three years.

"It is clear that National has not followed up on public concern about the ease with which foreign investors can buy New Zealand farmland and ministers are just acting as a rubber stamp. The result is 140,000 hectares of our land, worth over $6 billion, has passed into overseas ownership in just three years."

Goff said the legislation was necessary because the real estate market was not a level playing field for New Zealanders, particularly young people wanting to work their way up from sharemilking to owning their own farm.

Overseas investors with deep pockets and access to cheap credit were inflating farm and residential property prices. The dramatic fall in the New Zealand dollar would make it even harder for those young Kiwis.

Farmers forced into mortgagee sales thanks to falling dairy prices would see their land snapped up by overseas bargain hunters, including pension funds and private equity players.

"We will see American pension funds buying up that land."

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There would also be a flood of Chinese money looking for investment opportunities in New Zealand in coming years, Goff said.

"The Chinese Government has eased restrictions on outward foreign investment and the volatility of its own stock market and huge savings will bring more pressure eon land purchases from that country."

Labour supported direct foreign investment but it should be productive, not speculative, Goff said.

National's Melissa Lee accused Goff and Labour of racism over their attacks on Asian property buyers, including their recent survey targeting people with Asian sounding names active in the Auckland property market. Lee said Labour lacked any "understanding and compassion for New Zealanders of ethnic origins".

Buying property was a way of making their dreams of becoming a Kiwi a reality.

National's Brett Hudson said the last Labour government sold the equivalent of the 16 Crafar farms every month for their nine years in office.

Goff angrily rejected the racism label and accused National of a "cheap and shabby" attack.

He refused to accept criticism of racism from a party that had backed Don Brash's "iwi versus Kiwi ads".

Labour's Stuart Nash said Goff's bill "put New Zealand's interests first".

"To say that we are racist, to say we are xenophobic simply means you have not read the bill, not understood the bill," he said.

"All the bill does is ensure that those who are buying our land.....add value. That they do not come over here and rape and pillage."
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