New Labour Party leader David Shearer is speaking out against the potential sale of the Crafar farms to Chinese buyers. With government Ministers currently considering the Overseas Investment Office’s recommendation on the Shanghai Pengxin bid Mr Shearer, on his way to a two-day caucus in Taupo, visited a Crafar farm and called for them to stay in New Zealand hands. Country99TV spoke with Mr Shearer and asked why he chose to visit the farm.
"Look we just wanted to get a bit of a visual about the farms and what the area was like. And we met up with a couple of the people who are putting their names forward in the bid to try and buy them back."
At the farm Mr Shearer symbolically stuck a New Zealand flag on a farm fencepost. Country99TV asked him what he made of the Shanghai Pengxin bid currently being considered by the Government.
"Well we’re concerned basically because we think actually this offer brings nothing to New Zealand, and effectively what it does is it sells land into foreign ownership.
"We’re not against foreign investment. We all need foreign investment, but foreign investment should bring some value to New Zealand, and at the moment certainly, this offer doesn’t bring value."
Mr Shearer said he met with local farmers and iwi in the area who have put in a lower bid and said he would prefer the farms to go to them.
But with German groups in 2010 buying up thousands of hectares of dairy land in Southland, more than half the size of the Crafar farms, Country99TV asked Mr Shearer why he’s so concerned about Chinese buying farmland.
"There’s nothing really different but I think the thing is right now is we have an option on the table to keep it in New Zealand hands, which I think is important.
"But what I also think is, that from our point of view, and my point of view as the new leader of the Labour Party, we have to start thinking about what’s in it for New Zealand, what’s in it for Kiwis? What are we getting out of this?"
But when the Labour Party was last in power it flogged off hundreds of thousands of hectares of New Zealand land to foreigners, so what’s changed now?
"Towards the end of the Labour Government there was certainly some tightening of foreign ownership, but I accept that that happened. I’m saying it’s time to put a line in the sand."
The other prominent bid on the table for the Crafar farms includes local farmers and Iwi, and is being spearheaded by Sir Michael Fay.
The Fay consortium has offered $171 million for the Crafar farms, believed to be at least $30 million short of the Chinese bid.
Country99TV asked Mr Shearer about a recent article by business journalist Fran O’Sullivan, suggesting the Labour Party has a history of flogging off New Zealand’s strategic assets to Sir Michael Fay below their true value, and whether this was a case of déjà vu.
"I don’t think his role in this is too overplayed. He is one of several in a group who are making a bid for the farms.
"I mean the people I met yesterday, for example, one of the iwi trusts who have got land completely surrounding the farm that I looked at, effectively all sides, and they’re saying it’s not that we want to get given this, we want to buy this"
