In the red corner is Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin Group, whose successful bid to buy the 16 central North Island dairy farms has – according to critics – left New Zealanders as nothing more than tenants in our own land.
Meanwhile, we've seen in the black corner a wide array of characters stirring up anti-foreigner sentiment. This has been championed by a rival group of local would-be buyers – the Crafar Farms Independent Purchaser Group – fronted by the merchant banker and former state asset seller Sir Michael Fay. Politicians are also picking at the corpse of the Crafar deal like vultures – hoping to find scraps to sway public opinion.
We've already seen the metamorphosis of Michael Fay – from the biggest flogger of New Zealand assets and a Swiss-based tax exile to becoming the cheerleader of 'keeping-it-Kiwi'. Ironically, Fay has been aided and abetted in his cause by his former arch-nemesis and fellow 1980s fossil Winston Peters. Perhaps the Hollywood film director and new owner of 1000ha of prime Wairarapa dairy land James Cameron could make a movie about it all: 'The Odd Couple' would make an appropriate title.
The simple fact is the best price may have won the day. Fay's group offered much less for the farms. It might have pushed the patriotic theme – to the brink of xenophobia – but only in an effort to make its low-ball offer more a winner with the public. The farms, which total nearly 8000ha, saw Pengxin offer $210 million; the Fay group's bid was about $40m less at $171.5 million.
Are the opponents of the deal now saying farmers cannot sell their own land to the highest bidder – if it's an overseas buyer? If so then surely that has interesting connotations for people in Auckland, Wellington and Queenstown selling their houses to wealthy international buyers.
Funnily enough, the actual sellers of the Crafar Farms – Westpac and Rabobank – are not iconic New Zealand companies either. How much noise have we heard about their ownership of these farms?
Contrary to some claims, New Zealand is not over-run by overseas owners of our farmland. In fact, less than 1% of our land is owned by non-New Zealanders. Critics of foreign land sales have also peddled mistruths about how it is of no benefit to New Zealand's economy. Again, not true. There will be downstream benefits: more cows, new machinery and dairy shed upgrades on the agenda. No doubt New Zealand stock firms, seed companies and dairy suppliers and their employees will secure the majority of, if not all, this business
Meanwhile, part of the OIO conditions for approving the sale to Pengxin included a $14 million investment in the upgrade of the farms, including riparian planting and effluent treatment and a commitment to training young New Zealanders in dairy farming. Public walking access on at least two of the properties has also been secured.
It's a delicious irony that Landcorp, the country's biggest corporate farmer and a state-owned entity, will manage the farms on behalf of the new Chinese owners. The arrangement with Landcorp is – more-or less – a 50/50 sharemilker arrangement; meaning at least half the profits will stay in New Zealand.
Are these not all a direct benefits to New Zealand and our economy?
Those so opposed to farmland being sold to overseas buyers – especially in the farming fraternity – should be careful of what they wish for, because if they are successful in closing the door to foreign sales, they are robbing themselves and their colleagues of the freedom to sell their own land to the highest bidder.
And do those who hold this view also believe New Zealanders should not have the freedom to buy land offshore either? That will be news to the farming interests in this country who own land in Australia, Chile, Uruguay and the Ukraine.
There is a word for this kind of control which, ironically, was for many years synonymous with China – communism! We should be careful what we wish for.
