New Zealand politicians fight over foreign dairy ownership

Recent comments by New Zealand Labour opposition politician Phil Goff have spurred more debate about how much of the country’s industries should be foreign-owned. Hong Kong-based Natural Dairy is proposing to buy Crafar Farms, which were placed in receivership earlier this year. The matter has become a sore point in the political life of the country, leading to both governing party National and Labour moving to address public fears about foreign purchasers. Natural Dairy has public relations representatives in New Zealand trying to win support for its bid.
However, “Natural Dairy is incorrect if it believes Labour’s policy supports its bid because it would also invest in processing capacity for UHT milk and infant formula products,” Labour overseas investment spokesperson David Parker says. “Our policy is quite clear, and Natural Dairy is most unlikely to satisfy the new rules.”
Parker says New Zealand dairy farmers were already among the most efficient in the world, and overseas ownership was not going to materially increase output. Those facts point to a likely decline in applications such as Natural Dairy’s, he says. However, Green party leader Russel Norman also questions whether Labour’s stance on land sales would make much difference. He agrees that new rules recently brought in by National gave ministers more power to veto sale applications by foreigners, and while that may happen under a Labour government, a “clear, bright line” test was needed so the system couldn’t be circumvented. He says if Labour was serious about stopping the transfer of land into overseas ownership it would adopt the Greens’ policy, which was that anything over five hectares stayed in New Zealand ownership.
Natural Dairy NZ Holdings applied to buy the 80 per cent it does not already own in UBNZ Assets Holdings Ltd as part of the planned purchase of 16 North Island farms owned by the Crafars and put into receivership 12 months ago, when debts topped $200 million (EUR108.1m). The 8,615ha of dairy farms, mostly in the North Island, contain about 25,000 dairy cattle.