Amy Brooke: Downplaying the very real threats to NZ

The very real threats to New Zealand?

It’s not as if they aren’t substantial. And this Key-led government is causing considerable concern, perhaps not to a prattling commentariat, but to the country at large. Away from the political and media areas with their self-absorbed interactions, New Zealanders want to know what’s going on…why our country is being sold out to the highest bidders. And what precautions are being taken to guard against the rise of the same militant Islam that is proving so very damaging to other Western democracies.

Arguing for a silver fern branding to replace a time-honoured flag which carries significant meaning to most New Zealanders is a shortfall in thinking. The John Key–instigated extravaganza is pushing for this. However, if yet another Chinese investor now gains a controlling share in New Zealand’s largest meat company, called Silver Fern Farms, this will rather muddy the waters. To whom will the silver fern emblem belong – to New Zealanders? Or to another in the list of super-wealthy buyers from Communist China hoovering up our land and our assets – while the government apparently couldn’t care less.

On the contrary, Bill English apparently wants to help them. This time Winston Peters is not the only politician speaking out on behalf of New Zealanders. Labour leader Andrew Little has charged the Overseas Investment Office with doing too little monitoring after investments have been okayed, and warning that there is always a risk with this government that they will water down the tighter controls and check and balances {needed} to preserve and protect our strategic interests and industries”.

Little is walking right past the fact that these checks and balances are already manifestly inadequate. At the same time, the Finance Minister, Bill English, so often the mouthpiece for his boss, John Key, when it comes to making unpopular statements, is admitting that “the government may beef up the Overseas Investment Office to make it quicker for foreigners to get permission to buy New Zealand assets.”

Of course. And this is the government which still hasn’t answered why, when the Crafar Farms were originally sold, any New Zealanders interested in acquiring them were told they could bid only for the job lot, as it were. This of course put the farms out of the reach of our own countrymen. However, they were advertised in Asia as being able to be bought individually.

This is known as loading the dice. What the National-led government has not been successfully charged with, thanks to an over-compliant media, is selling out New Zealanders in favour of foreign investors…

Yet the oligarchy now ruling this country can’t be ignorant of the fact that, as a 60 Minute programme recently highlighted, Communist China is intent on taking over and controlling all aspects of productive land here and elsewhere, worldwide, that it can – what it produces; how it is marketed and transported – not for the benefit of the countries it is commercially invading – but for its own purposes. In Australia, vast amounts of productive land are now falling into Communist hands with farmers forced off farms that have been for generations in the same family. The banks on which farmers relied are now apparently only too happy to take cash, and to stand by, while this is happening.

Oh, but, Bill English assures us…” The government won’t dilute strict laws that set out conditions for foreign buyers.” This is basically poppycock. Any clever lawyer well able to be afforded by the multimillionaires muscling their way into this country can run rings around these “strict laws”. Money counts… And what it is saying to New Zealanders is – Goodbye to your own country.

While English is mouthing about the legislation not being watered down, he’s averting his eyes from the fact that it is already far too accommodating to foreign buyers – at the expense of New Zealanders. He has the nerve to say that…[read more here]