“New Zealanders do not want foreigners to own our airline, nor do we want higher travel costs, and we certainly do not want to see the demise of Air New Zealand,” Winston Peters, Leader of New Zealand First said in New Plymouth today.

“The limit of 24.9 per cent foreign ownership still applies to Air New Zealand as it should apply to all of our strategic assets. New Zealand is NOT for sale!” said Mr Peters.

“The Government has no reason and no mandate to waive the limit on foreign ownership. There should be no such conversation, we are already convinced: Qantas should be told to put their cheque book away.”

“We have already got a balance of payments crisis contributed to by the repatriation of dividends to offshore owners and by high interest payments to offshore lenders. When is this country going to wake up?

“The Minister should be putting his time into developing a strategy of reinvestment in Air New Zealand that secures the future of our world class carrier and protects it from foreign raiders,” Mr Peters concluded.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>