• Howick and Pakuranga Times

I HOPE you all had a great Christmas and a happy New Year.

I want to thank you for your support during the election campaign of 2011 and am honoured and privileged to be your elected MP for Pakuranga again.

Being an MP can be a rewarding but also stressful and sometimes thankless task. Recent events have highlighted that for me.

Earlier this month, I approved the selling of 16 Crafar farms to Chinese company Shanghai Pengxin.

It can be difficult to be a politician. There are always people who will hate you or hold it against you for taking a certain line.

But I would like to assure you that there was a very thorough and lengthy examination of the bid carried out.

The Overseas Investment Office recommended to Ministers that the bid be accepted. As Land Information Minister I was bound by the law to accept that recommendation. The bid for the Crafar farms went through the same test that a bid would if it had come from Australia, the United Kingdom, or Canada.

I think it would help to put this into some context. During Labour’s time in office, they allowed the sale of around 650,000 hectares of land to foreign owners. In 2006 alone, they sold over 380,000 hectares offshore.

By comparison, in National’s first term in Government, just over 100,000 hectares were sold.

Of the 72 farm sales to foreigners in the 18 months to June 30, 2011, the bulk were sold to the United States, Germany, Australia and the UK, and only one to China.

It’s important to remember that Crafar farms went into receivership in October 2009, owing banks, creditors and local businesses around $200 million.

The sale of Crafar farms is expected to deliver significant benefits to New Zealand, including supporting our high-quality dairy products into the fast-growing Chinese market, which is now the biggest importer of New Zealand dairy products by value.

This sale sets the foundations for further economic and export opportunities with China.

I recently attended the NZ Inc China Strategy at The Cloud on Auckland’s waterfront with Prime Minister John Key.

There we heard New Zealand is on track to double our two-way trade with China to $20 billion by 2015.

New Zealand is still the only Western economy that has a free trade agreement with China.

New Zealand needs some overseas investment so our businesses have the capital to expand and grow international links so our exporters can sell more of their goods to the rest of the world.

We can’t shut out all overseas investment if we want our economy to be internationally competitive.

A competitive economy can deliver the higher incomes and better public services that New Zealanders want and deserve.