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CTU Media Release: Government trade policy must address land ownership
Posted On: Tuesday, 6 July 2010
Landcorp’s proposal to purchase the Crafar farms might be a short term solution to the current problem of New Zealand land being purchased by foreign buyers, said the CTU today, but the issue is an ongoing one, and will require a fundamental shift in the New Zealand approach to trade policy for a longer term solution to be developed.
“Existing international trade and investment agreements to which New Zealand is a party restrict what the Government can do in this space,” said CTU Economist and Policy Director Bill Rosenberg. “Current negotiations to expand the Transpacific Partnership Trade Agreement (TPPTA) to the US and 6 other countries could further reduce its options and make it even easier for overseas investors to challenge government decisions unless a new approach is taken to these agreements.”
The Prime Minister said yesterday that the Government may look at law changes to prevent increasing land sales to overseas investors, in response to widespread concern at the prospect of the sale of the Crafar farms to interests with links to China and Hong Kong.
“New Zealand commitments in the WTO in 1995 locked in what New Zealand can do to protect ownership of assets to the position in 1994, and our options have been reduced further in regional and bilateral trade and investment agreements such as the free trade agreements with Singapore and China,” said Rosenberg. “That leaves the Government with few options to protect large scale land sales, and is probably why its plans, stated a year ago, to protect strategic assets with a ‘national interest test’ have disappeared behind closed doors.”
A major risk now for New Zealand is that production from New Zealand farms gets tied into vertically integrated chains linked to a single overseas market with reduced benefits remaining in New Zealand and loss of flexibility to find the most profitable markets.
A standard requirement by the US in its trade agreements has been the right of parties to challenge other government actions before international panels of trade lawyers, making it even more difficult and expensive to protect national assets. Such rules are already in trade and investment agreements New Zealand has with China, ASEAN and Hong Kong. Including them in the TPPTA would give investors with a base in the US, Australia, Singapore, Chile, Peru and other signatories the right to take this action and needs to be resisted.
ENDS
For further information contact:
Fraser Pettigrew, Communications and Campaigns Advisor
04 802 3817 / 027 243 7031 / fraserp@nzctu.org.nz
Bill Rosenberg, Economist and Policy Director, CTU
04 802 3815 / 021 637 991
www.union.org.nz
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