Overseas ownership queries for local MPs
ANOTHER ‘‘overseas buyer for station’’ story featured in your paper (ODT, 28.2.17). Driving around the Queenstown Lakes district one can’t help but wonder how much is owned by Kiwis anymore. Do the Government and the two MPs Jacqui Dean and Todd Barclay know? And is there a threshold for how much of our district should be in the hands of overseas owners?
Jeannie Galavazi
Queenstown [Waitaki MP Jacqui Dean replies: ‘‘Thank for your letter. The Government is very careful in ensuring overseas investment is closely monitored in New Zealand. Overseas people must gain consent through the Overseas Investment Office (OIO) before they can invest in this country’s sensitive land, or purchase significant business assets. One of the key criteria is that the investment must benefit New Zealand, through development or job creation, and often public access to the land is also negotiated.
‘‘Based on your questions, I sought a report from the OIO on the gross land area sold to overseas buyers in the past five years, by district. Queenstown Lakes was 13th on a list of 49 regions, with districts such as Selwyn, Hastings, Marlborough and Auckland with far greater land sale totals. The OIO also points out that these transactions were consented, but may not necessarily have ended in completed sales.’’]
[CluthaSouthland MP Todd Barclay replies: ‘‘This Government has struck a balance between ensuring New Zealand remains open for business with the rest of the world to support jobs and higher incomes, and also tightening the rules for overseas investment in sensitive land. An overseas buyer must show they will bring substantial and identifiable benefits to New Zealand over and above what a New Zealand buyer would bring. This is a high hurdle.
‘‘In making a final decision ministers look at factors like job creation, additional investment, export increases, and environmental improvements. A foreign buyer has to be able to show that they will bring more of these kind of benefits than the current New Zealand owner or a hypothetical ‘reasonably funded New Zealand buyer’. In other words, a foreign buyer has to show they will bring benefits that would not happen otherwise.’’]
Babyboomers
IN the runup to the election we are sure to hear much about ‘‘greedy’’ babyboomers. Not so, when you consider what we went through:
High interest rates through the ’70s and ’80s.
Very high tax rates during this same period.
Import restrictions and ‘‘import substitution’’ that made all imports very expensive — including cars, capital equipment, and all overseas travel.
Limited access to mortgage finance because of government policies favouring businesses over housing.
Pensions that were not portable, and lost completely if you left a job within five years.
Redundancies and job uncertainty through the dramatic restructuring in the 1980s.
Babyboomers’ taxes built the electricity stations and transmission facilities, and the motorway network, that we all now enjoy.
Yes, we did have free tertiary education, but our parents paid for that through very high tax rates. Babyboomers actually had it tough, not greedy.
Bonnie Miller Perry (born 1945)
Mt Pisa, Cromwell;