Editorial: Not racist

OPINION: Maurice Williamson, the Land Information Minister, has confirmed his reputation as loose-lipped and politically inept with his comment that New Zealanders' opposition to foreign investment is racist.

The assertion is largely wrong and damaging to the Government.

Williamson was thinking aloud about the application of a Chinese company to buy the Crafars' 16 dairy farms – a subject with which he is directly involved, as the Cabinet minister who must approve the deal. Many New Zealanders have been thinking aloud about it too, not least in letters to the editor of The Press. On that evidence, their views are not xenophobic.

Their arguments are prompted by Chinese interest in the farms but are concerned with wider issues: the alienation of productive land from local ownership; the limited investment in technology and expertise accompanying many such takeovers; the displacement of workers; the withdrawal of processing to other countries; the dilution of New Zealand control of its core industries.

Each of these is a legitimate concern and each is at the heart of the nation's wellbeing. None of them has anything to do with the ethnicity of overseas buyers, a fact borne out by similar worries arising whenever a high-profile land transaction involves a foreigner of whatever nationality. Usually, indeed, it is Americans who are in the spotlight.

There is, though, a Chinese-focused concern this time. Many New Zealanders object to Chinese companies investing here because they dislike the policies of the Chinese Government. Its dictatorial administration is objectionable to freedom-loving New Zealanders, but that objection does not amount to racism.

The Chinese community is long-established here and it has been greatly boosted in recent decades by new arrivals. Racist attitudes and acts have sometimes marred their integration, and no doubt racism motivates some opposition to the Crafar sale, but the process has overwhelmingly been characterised by tolerance and acceptance.

As China has opened itself to tourism it has become a main destination for New Zealanders attracted by its ancient civilisation, momentous history and explosive development as the world's most dynamic economy.

This response of many New Zealanders is testimony to their positive attitude to China and its peoples. But what many New Zealanders do not feel positive about is the seemingly craven attitude of successive New Zealand Governments to China's human rights and environmental record. New Zealand has not spoken out on such issues as it would if they disfigured any other country.

The reason for this silence is, of course, trade – the huge potential and current returns New Zealand is deriving from its sales to China. No New Zealand Government has been prepared to risk that profitable association by tweaking the nerves of the touchy rulers in Beijing.

Some opinion expressed about the Crafar deal has touched on this trade sensitivity – a concern that it will not be blocked by the Government because of its kowtowing to China. The concern has not been addressed by the Government, just as it has failed effectively to address New Zealanders' other concerns about the sale. John Key, the Prime Minister, has initiated a review of the overseas ownership rules but he has not initiated a productive debate on the issues. His occasional comments on the Crafar farms' sale have been indecisive and little more than of a passing nature, although he obviously picked up on the groundswell of public opinion against the deal and is sympathetic towards it.

Into the vacuum has stepped the bumbling Williamson. Key, defending his minister, says he was joking, that his comments were "reasonably flippant". But humour is not associated with the Land Information Minister and his words read as anything but a joke.

The critics are right: Williamson seems about to authorise the sale of the farms to the Chinese. That will put him off-side with New Zealanders' sentiment and open the process to a messy judicial review. Key must be hoping that the joke does not turn into a nightmare.

- © Fairfax NZ News