The Great Australian Buy Up of New Zealand
Not content with getting Peter Dunny killed off, I see dear old Winston is playing the "Yellow Peril" card to the oldies. I bet that goes down well.
Trouble is, it's not the Yellow Peril we should be wary of but the Aussie peril.
Over 5% of our entire GDP is exported to Australia as profits from enterprises in New Zealand.
The banks make the lion's share of profit remitted to Oz, but most of our beer, half of our supermarket trade, half the insurance market, and once-great Kiwi names like Goodman and Wattie's are now thoroughly Australian companies that just suck the blood out of NZ. Then we need to factor in the huge number of private equity firms that have bought assets in business, waste disposal, transport, farming and retailing. The total adds up to around $10,000,000,000 annually, or 5% of all trade done by Kiwis.
It should be pretty easy to work out that that means 2 hours you work every week are devoted solely to sending profit to Australia.
In return, Australia gives us nothing. Our exports there are at an all-time low, tourism runs enormously in Australia's favour, with the attractions of Sydney, Melbourne and QLD attracting more Kiwis annually than NZ attracts Australians. Given the five times greater population of Australia, that means tourism is running at over 5:1 in their favour.
I have nothing against Australians and have many Aussie mates, but the corporate takeover of NZ by Australian companies is bleeding us dry.
Just count it up for a while, if we are giving 5% of our entire GDP to Australia annually, how much greater will the sum be in 20 years' time? Every acquisition by Australian companies increases the imbalance, and with the relative strength of their economy against ours, the trend will continue.
If you want to really help New Zealand, don't worry too much about buying Kiwi-made only, but stop throwing money across the ditch. The buyout of NZ by Australians is only helping Australians.
Copyright © Alan Charman