The automatic approvals and the sale of New Zealand land and businesses continues but no-one is checked to see if foreign buyers keep their promises of creating jobs in New Zealand.
The Overseas Investment Office attaches a list of supposed benefits to New Zealand with
each approval, suggesting that the sale will increase our exports and bring more wealth for New Zealand as a whole. No one appears to be checking to see if any jobs are created at all? Who checks to see if our exports increase? Who is checking the ‘contract’ and holding the new owner of our land to account?Among the sales that are approved byt the Office many applicants say they will build exclusive accommodation and hunting lodges. Kiwis are able to do this. How many more fancy lodges do we need anyway? Are they ever built? Is this just a trick, a quick insert into the application by a lawyer so the OIO is satisfied?
August sales and increased investments in land approved by the Overseas Investment
Office include dairy farms, vineyards and bare land in Canterbury, Marlborough, Auckland and Taranaki with buyers mainly from Australia, the UK and the US.Investor groups are prominent again as they are each month - groups that see the money-making possibilities from buying New Zealand land and businesses. It’s fair to say their profits are moved overseas via our banking system which is close to 100 per cent foreign owned. Our wealth is being siphoned off.The National government ignored the call from a majority of New Zealanders not to sell our assets. The alternative for the government is to prove that there are substantial benefits to New Zealand and New Zealanders from sales to foreigners. And to prove that Kiwis are not being shut out of opportunity on their own land because wealthy foreign buyers have pushed prices beyond the reach of locals. It’s the same picture in the housing market.Among land and business sales approved in August is Nelson land for purchasers who “intend to migrate and live here”, the $36 million sale of Tower’s life insurance business to Australian interests and a $22m additional investment in dairy farms near Ashburton.It has also approved British trader Richard Magides’ purchase of land in Queenstown – where he has pledged to build a luxury lodge. Mr Magides has previously bought Ben Avon Station, in Otago, where he also promised to build a lodge, though it does not appear a consent has been lodged yet. He has also previously bought a penthouse and winery.