Economic sovereignity and dignity.

Russel Norman, Co-leader of the Green Party of Aotearoa is coming to Opotiki on Tuesday afternoon to present a talk called ‘Economic sovereignty and dignity’, where he will address the question “Is New Zealand in charge of its own economic destiny?”  It will be a presentation and discussion on foreign ownership in New Zealand.

On the other end of the spectrum from buying local and creating local community is foreign ownership.  The globalisation of trade is poles apart from creating Transition Towns. 

Just as out of town landlords are unlikely to care about local issues unless it affects their income, out of town farm and land owners are less likely to care about the natural environment, or relationships with neighbouring farms. 

It becomes harder to create a resilient and vibrant community when land is increasingly sold to foreign nationals who may never have even visited New Zealand.  Our land is a taonga – to be protected.   Not everyone values land the same way; multi-national mining companies see the mineral wealth buried beneath the soil and no amount of beauty in even our National Parks would slow the mining companies down.  It is up to the people of New Zealand, the people in each community to stand and protect what is valuable to us.  When New Zealanders protested about plans to allow mining in our most precious national parks our government backed down.  We need to make sure our voices are heard together to protect the rest of the land that the government hasn’t classed as important enough.

The proposed Sea Cucumber farm which is planned to be established next to Hukuwai beach is a good example of local people making use of foreign finance and expertise to make the best use of the area.  The site could have been sold for profit, which would have restricted future opportunities in the town, but instead it was leased on the basis that the ownership stays here in our community.  

There are other examples of large areas of Bay of Plenty land being sold to overseas investors without any consultation with local people, council or government.  Russel Norman states that “in the last 12 months New Zealand has paid more than nine billion dollars to overseas owners of New Zealand companies and to service foreign debt. Several of the Australian banks have been raking billions each year out of the New Zealand economy while illegally avoiding the payment of billions of dollars in taxes. 150,000 hectares of New Zealand land have gone into overseas ownership in the last five years alone.”

To hear Norman’s presentation, come to the Senior Citizen’s Hall on King St on Tuesday 5th October.  The talk will be from 1:30pm - 3:00pm, and has been organised by Grey Power, but is open to the public.

Tomorrow is the last day that you can post your local body election voting papers in the mail in order for it to arrive in time to be counted.  If you haven’t posted yours by Wednesday, you will only still be able to vote if you take it directly to the Opotiki Council office.  They have a special voting box that will be available up until 12pm this Saturday.  Your voting papers do no good sitting on the kitchen bench, so get them in the mail and make democracy happen.