Criticism of land sales ‘racist’

Press, 7 May 1980, Page 20

Criticism of land sales ‘racist’

PA Auckland People have taken a “disguised racist point .of view” in attacking the principle of land sales to n o n-N e w Zealanders, according to the Minister of Lands (Mr V. S. Young). “Phrases such as ‘selling land to rich wogs,’ 'New Zealanders will be foreigners in their own land.’ are insulting at best,” he said. Mr Young told a meeting of the salesmen chapter of the Real Estate Institute at Auckland that he was surprised and disappointed that people should attack land sales to non/New Zealanders along those lines. It added nothing to reasoned debate on an important topic. There had been a lot of emotional talk in recent weeks about selling off land to the Arabs, keeping landless young farmers off the land,’ and about a slap

in the face for New Zea land sheep bre J ed ® rs „ n T r ,! Government’s decision to allow Prince N aWi * f ’ °* Saudi Arabia, to buy a 380 ha farm on the Coromandel Peninsula was clearly of great merit and potential benefit to New Zealand. Mr Young said he would have thought that any proposal for specialist breeding programmes would have been w’elcome. , . .. , “The plain truth is that very little research has been done in this country in breeding sheep especially for the Middle East lean meat market. This is a new market which requires new' research. Mr Young said he had recently returned from a tour of major forest products customers (China, Japan, and South Korea). He w r as greatly' impressed by the potential for New' Zealand to gain big econ-

omic benefits from i n . “Such increases will not come overnight, but we are in the enviable position of having one of the fastest growth rates for tree crops in the world. A world shortage of timber was expected in the next 20 years. With New Zealand’s increased foresgt plantings in the last 20 years, “we will be in an excellent position to capture a large slice of the expanding market for timber.” To a question about Fletcher's take-over bid for Carter Holt, he said “The Government would be quite concerned if it got to a stage where there were very few operators in this (timber) industry. “We want to see competition. 1 do not want to see it in the hands of two or three operators.” creased forestry products exports.