The Beehive File: John Key- trading New Zealand Futures

The Beehive File
09/02/12
John Key is a futures trader.
He is trading with the future of New Zealanders in several ways.
To begin with there is the sale of New Zealand farms to offshore investors. Has the value of farm land parted company with its earning potential? Has New Zealand farmland become a commodity in its own right to offshore investors regardless of what it earns?
Then there is the sale of state assets. Clause nine, the Waitangi clause in the agreements for the sale of state assets is in John’s way as he wants to sell forward with these assets as well as with land. He wants a clear run at the futures market for state assets.
But where does it all take us? John Key might fel that he is back at Merrill Lynch but as New Zealanders we are being taken back into the past, into the Dark Ages where the citizens do not own the state but they are vassals in it.
Peter Cleave
Rangitikei/Hokowhitu