Monday, January 30, 2012



Time to change the Overseas Investment Act

John Key's excuse for the Crafar farms sale? His hands were tied. But he's promising to change the law if we make enough noise about it:

''Obviously that's a sovereign right that we have.

''We can change the law but at this point I would have thought it would be a bit of a knee-jerk reaction.

''We should look at it, if the flow of sales starts to accelerate and people really become very concerned.''

I think we should take Key at his word, and start expressing that concern. Either he'll be forced to keep his promise, or he'll be exposed as a two-faced liar who will say anything to try and get an issue to go away. Either way, we help create the conditions for a law-change to restrict these sorts of damaging asset-sales, which can only be a Good Thing in the long term.