Foreign Buyers Ban Reversal A Sell Out By Winston Peters & His Party
Foreign Buyers Ban Reversal A Sell Out By Winston Peters & His Party
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- Date published:
8:59 pm, September 1st, 2025 - 22 comments
Categories: housing, national, national/act government, nz first, winston peters -
Tags: farms, Foreign Buyers Ban, overseas investment act, Sell out
Winston Peters Has Sold Our Country Out For Peanuts
Yes, even putting aside its utter ineffectiveness as an “economic policy”, and allowance for managed funds as an “investment”, it’s also an extremely low threshold for the wealthy.
Peters campaigned on reversing and blocking National’s proposed foreign buyers tax in 2023.
There couldn’t be a greater betrayal.
Peters confirms he will oppose foreign buyers ban reversal in 2023 because his party is “NZ First”
Not only that – Peters has consistently and vocally championed keeping our assets, lands and homes in domestic hands over the years.
Don’t forget – it’s not just expensive homes they are selling off to the likes of Kim Dot-Com, Elon Musk, Peter Theil types: it’s our sensitive lands and assets such as farms, forestries, conservation land in terms of their legislative agenda, and the like.
As Dame Ann Salmond points out, this government Coalition have collectively agreed to remove the special ‘benefit to New Zealand’ test, and the compulsory ‘investor test’ in the Overseas Investment Act Bill.
Isn’t it clear – benefits to New Zealand don’t matter for this lot.
None of them care – but for some reason, Peters’ betrayal on this issue stings hardest.
NZ Last is his final legacy, after all.
PS $5 million is just a nice farm and home owned by a foreigner for investing in a managed fund!
Just a bolt-hole for the morbidly rich!
Having fucked up the rest of the world by not letting climate change get in the way of their extravagant lifestyles, the likes of Peter Thiel et al, when it all turns to custard, will retreat to what they hope will be the least affected place in the world.
We don't need them and we sure as hell don't want them!
Winnie has lost his marbles!
Too right.
About 20 years ago, Labour minister Pete Hodgson objected to wealthy foreigners buying up our high country to use as a convenient hideaway (his comments are somewhere in Hansard).
More recently, the academic Ann Brower has covered a related issue, tenure review, in which foreign buyers have played a part: https://newsroom.co.nz/2021/02/18/we-need-a-new-cat-in-the-high-country/
For your convenience: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/hansard-debates/rhr/document/49HansS_20110215_00001293/hodgson-pete-crown-pastoral-land-rent-for-pastoral-leases.
Thanks for that; I see Hodgson spoke in 2011, so not really 20 years ago.
Give it another 20 years and the government will have sold the Southern alps to a foreign outfit.
Predictable from NZ First the party happy to trash te reo, the environment and whatever else for a buck.
Curious to hear Hipkins on RNZ saying that this new $5m house-purchse ability is unlikely to be reversed because we signed the CPTPP. If this government were able to change the rule, why can't a future government?
He explains it in the RNZ article:
Hipkins acknowledged it was a tricky issue.
"We know when we introduced the foreign home buyer ban, we did that before the CPTPP [Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership] came into force, and a number of those other free trade agreements came into force, so we'd need to look very closely at whether we could reverse it and still stay compliant with our international trade obligations."
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/571742/why-labour-might-struggle-to-repeal-the-government-s-foreign-buyer-plan
If it causes strong house price growth I bet Hipkins will just go get different advice.
It's about the terms of the trade agreement though – you can't shop around for advice like that so what I hear him saying here is it's complex because of international contracts now in play.
Real estate agents seem to think it will:
https://www.oneroof.co.nz/news/nz-for-sale-bring-your-buyers-50m-properties-to-hit-the-market-as-ban-loosens-48132
CPTPP surely ranks as a low level concern-Trump stands off it, world trade is in disarray, so Labour should just do what is best for most NZers rather than be subservient to a dead in the water Trade Agreement.
Trump has disabled the WTO, making bi-lateral or multi-lateral/regional agreements (that the USA is not part of) more important.
It is a limited right, as it would only occur for those of the visa – so end or change the visa terms.
The real problem is the OIO legislation changes proposed and this is where Labour should hound NZF.
Agree – that is a real problem.
Perhaps FTAs (by their very nature) do not proscribe one signatory unilaterally lowering trade barriers, but get conniptions if they unilaterally raise barriers?
This CoC government is selling the furniture to pay for the groceries. What will they start selling when the furniture's all gone?
The new Active Investor Plus Visa has opened up the land (ownership) in Auckland to foreign owned rental property development projects.
This will result in a future flow of rental money out of the economy to the offshore owners.
Ol' Wily Winnie…Was he waving pom-poms?
And he is joking, right? Right?
And oh…the sad irony of NZLast. 'duplicity and cheating'
Maori must be shaking their heads in despair at this.
This is the new colonialism, as we become tenants in our own land.
Just like Great Uncle Rangi who sold a block of land for a couple of muskets.
It's all the same thing.
We are going to have to fight for our sovereignty as our country slips through our fingers and the oligarchs take control. Big Oil, Big Tobacco, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Mining, Big Tech and, I think Big Health too.
Sell BIG or go – home? Offering up Aotearoa NZ assets and institutions to private capital pairs well with Seymour's Regulatory Standards Bill. Who are the 'visionaries' in our CoC govt really working for, and to what end – precarity for all but the wealthy and sorted?
Shows PM John Key standing on an angry sea monster that represents NZ. He is banging 'For sale' signs into the monster's body. [2012]
So they have a fair idea of the level of public support for their policy.
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/foreign-buyers-ban-public-unlikely-to-get-formal-say-on-government-allowing-overseas-purchasers-into-nz-property-market/GV2HTIAXZZFKHBAKEO6QYBGQQY/