Only letting foreigners lease New Zealand land will not be much different from the status quo of letting them own it freehold, Prime Minister John Key says.
A bid from Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin to purchase the Crafar farms sparked a nationwide debate over the merits of foreign land ownership, with the Green and NZ First parties saying they are completely against any foreign ownership of sensitive New Zealand land.
The Labour Party, while opposed to Pengxin's Crafar farms bid, is still OK with foreign purchases as long as the new owners live here.
David Mahon, a New Zealand businessman based in China, said earlier this month that the New Zeland government needed to quickly decide on how it dealt with foreign purchases of farmland. His comments came after the High Court threw out the Overseas Investment Office's initial decision to approve Pengxin's Crafar Farms purchase, with the court saying the OIO had applied the wrong economic benefits test to the application.
The OIO revised its processes, and last week gave its approval for the sale again under a stricter interpretation of the Overseas Investment Act.
Speaking on TV One's Q&A programme over Easter weekend, Mahon suggested the government look at allowing New Zealanders to sell their land into a trust, which would then allow foreigners to invest in on a leasehold basis.
How about it?
On TV3's Firstline programme on Tuesday morning, Prime Minister Key said only allowing foreigners to invest in land leasehold was always a move a government could take.
“The challenge with that, of course, is that when you have leasehold land, if it’s a perpetual lease - forever for instance - then it has all the characteristics of freehold land," Key said.
The government was currently reviewing pastoral leases in the South Island, which were effectively the same negotiations as would be had with a freehold land owner.
“100 years [for a possible lease timeframe] is a long time. What ends up happening, of course is, those owners end up saying, ‘I’ve invested a lot on the property.' There’s a bit of a moral obligation to roll over their lease.
“So I’m not sure the characteristics would be terribly different to be honest,” Key said.
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“The challenge with that, of course, is that when you have leasehold land, if it’s a perpetual lease - forever for instance - then it has all the characteristics of freehold land," Key said.
What utter rubbish - Any lease leaves the owner in charge.
Has the Duke of Westminster's wealth been diminished or affected by only leasing his properties?
Under leasehold the regional councils could dictate stocking rates and retire areas with conservation value. When labour undertook the High Country review, (letting farmers buy the lower areas while the rest went into the conservation estate), farmers along lake fronts became developers.
2 tooth - Nats are pretty onto it - see latest polls - do try and keep up...
Key, National well ahead in opinion poll
Sunday, 22, Apr, 2012 6:37PM
The National Party's well ahead, as is Prime Minister John Key in the latest opinion poll.
The 3 News Reid Research Poll has National on just under 50 percent support, a clear 20 points ahead of Labour which is polling just below 30 percent.
The Greens are on just over 14 percent and all other parties in parliament are well below the five percent MMP threshold.
John Key has a commanding lead in the preferred Prime Minister stakes with 44 percent support, compared with Labour leader David Shearer's 10 percent.
Dear goNZ just shows how very little you know about politics.
Opinion polls and the like mean nothing.... the fact is it all comes down to the night of election old boy and all ways well.
The issue is does key understand the difference between leashold and freehold, it would appear not.
Cheers (opinion pols LOL)
Just curious as to possible backlash of selling it, then at some point in the future, passing laws that create forced sell back to government owned at lower prices... could be a good scam to get some capital at no cost, may as well rip off other countries since our own citizens have faced it for years? Someone with more international know-how could come up with some repercussions?
Interesting. A bit like what Argentina has done recently with the Spanish owned YPF company, the largest oil producer in Argentina. The Argentine government has just 'bought' a 51% share in the company - at a very low share price. Funny that. "We'll have that back thanks very much!".
Very interesting Q, there are several scenarios.............
You could simply nationalise it....Argentina has done this recently, Spain is p*ssed but Im not sure there is much they can do.....and I suspect it will happen with oil assets more and more as a start and move onto food producing assets later.
Is there an International court for this? I suspect not. I think I saw in here posted a specialist hedge fund that bought Countries debt and sued in a NYork court, seems they nailed Peru over it. So you would have to go after the countries International assets in a civil presumably US New York court. In Argentina's case Im not sure they have much after they defaulted some years back? If the NZ Govn did that to say an American corporation....could the Americans sue in Chile say and seize Fonterra's assets? Could china do the same thing? but in china? yes easily, "we" take their farms they take Fonterra's but I think they will be some of the first to do so (Nationalise).
The big thing is the passing of globalisation....I would assume there will be little such nationalisation until globalisation dies its death and that is a decade or two away.......at that time voters will simply be voting in a Govn that kicks foreigners out....pure and simple....as by that stage it wont matter.
or maybe be more subtle, say you bring in a 50% earnings tax and say all food exported and on all $s sent home after a certain date....that way faced with certian huge losses the foreigners might run.....
Also the longer view I have is assets are being bought using cheap credit at insane P to Es even before the effects of Peak Oil are worked in....so farms for instance are never going to re-pay the capital put in by foreigners.....or for that matter NZers who are buying today, so the price will collapse.......Im not clear if ppl think we are going to have inflation and hence a decent capital gain tax free on the farms so are buying like crazy or if they are buying knowing they are going to lose a packet but its better than a total wipe out.........musical chairs with billions!
regards
Nat's are on to it alright goNZ! Thats why bright young people are fleeing the country like rats off a sinking ship. Nats are borrowing 20 billion a year and still can't give the young a job, instead of kicking off major infrastrutre projects they gave the wealthiest tax cuts.
Now in a truely desperate attempt to not look totally fiscally incompetent they are selling our assets and rubber stamping land sales to get any money through the door with no consideration for tomorrow.
Just because the pack believe doesn't make them right, the only place NZ is going with Key at the wheel in bankrupt, but you stay with the pack you obviously like to follow
How do you know who is leaving? From the little Ive seen a decent % is the unskilled going to work in the OZ mines.......some % trades ppl also....neither I'd class as "bright" minds....
So please back up your assumption with some data, I would love to see it.
The rest of your post suggests you think Labour has the answer? look at what they achieved in 9 years. A huge property bubble, they had a fantastic opportunity to re-align knowing full well the pending issues and did diddly except hand out tax bribes via WFF which made the ponzi schemes worse....what are they saying today? nothing much.........and Yes sure I think if National had been in power for those 9 years we would have been worse.....both are in-competant, just in different serious ways.
Since 2008, National has managed to steer us through the worst times in 8 decades, I have to give them reluctant credit for that and I think Labour would have been way worse..........but we will never know....
Kick off major infrastructure projects? such as bridges to no where? more roads? not needed. The economy has suttered so electricity use has declined or at best gone flat....so new power stations are on hold.......Now I could see electrification of the main rail line from Auckland to Chch a good idea, but that would take vision no Govn has....and then there is the debt we would have to take on to do it.....Look at what Muldoon achieved...he paupered NZ....
Our youth is going to be hard hit, yes....but circumstances are beyond anyone in the present and future paradigm of less enery to do anything about it........we should have been doing soemthing about that 10 years ago, we choose not to.........
regards
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