Former Kiwi still angry over Aust, land sales

Press, 3 April 1989, Page 4

Former Kiwi still angry over Aust, land sales

NZPA-AAP Brisbane Twelve months ago today, a New Zealander living on the Gold Coast ruffled a few feathers when he said Australians were “gutless” by allowing foreign investors to snap up huge tracts of prime land. A wave of anti-Japanese feeling swept the nation; public meetings on the Gold Coast turned into near riots, some Tokyobased companies shelved multi-million dollar tourist development plans along the Queensland coast, Japanese visitors were abused and a mass circulating Tokyo newspaper warned its readers to think twice about Australia as a holiday destination.

But the former Auck-

land painter and paperhanger, Mr Bruce Whiteside, aged 55, now a naturalised Australian, is unrepentant.

“Australians still haven’t woken up to the fact that overseas developers are buying their land out from under them,” he said yesterday.

Australian concern over “selling the farm” surfaced again recently when a cane farm on the outskirts of Cairns, and valued at sAustl.3 million ($1.73 million), was sold to a Japanese developer for sAust23 million ($30.66 million), to be cut up for housing allotments.

“It’s that sort of thing that still makes me boil,” Mr Whiteside said.

The only way Australia could retain control was to sell only the lease of the land wanted by any foreign investor.

Mr Whiteside said the matter should go to a referendum because it would need a change to the Australian Constitution.

Last year he wrote to the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Bob Hawke, asking for the matter to be included in ■ the national referendum.

The question Mr Whiteside wanted to put to Australia was: “Do you, the people, want Australian soil protected by. the Constitution from foreign ownership?” Mr Whiteside’s plan was to have legislation made retrospective to January

I,_ 1901, the date of federation.

He received no reply from the Prime Minister’s office.

Mr Whiteside campaigned unsuccessfully in the South Coast by-elec-tion last August when the former Minister, Mr Russ Hinze, resigned, but was able to launch an antiforeign investment lobby, Heart of a Nation.

“It is still going. We have about 90 financial members from all states and even one in Canada,” Mr Whiteside said.

At the group’s latest meeting, at Southport last week, 800 people 'turned up.

“Public feeling against overseas investors is still strong,” he said.