Silver Fern Farms Has New Zealand First Drafting Bill
Rt Hon Winston Peters
New Zealand First
Leader
Member of Parliament for Northland
Silver Fern Farms Has New Zealand First Drafting Bill
A week after New Zealand First revealed Chinese moves on New Zealand’s largest beef exporter, Silver Fern Farms, the Party expects confirmation on Mondaythat it will involve up to half ownership.
“New Zealand First is urgently drafting a Meat Industry Restructuring Bill in an attempt to head this off,” says New Zealand First Leader and Member of Parliament for Northland Rt Hon Winston Peters.
“If Mr Seymour can get pub hours extended for the World Cup then keeping our largest beef exporter in Kiwi hands is equally pressing. Funding will come from the same source Mr Key used to pay into the Asian Infrastructure Development Bank.
“Messrs Key, English, Joyce and Guy also need to look New Zealanders in the eye and confirm whether Silver Fern Farms had approached them or not. We have lost too much ownership in other industries and today we say enough is enough..
“For certain, Silver Fern Farms will go through the motions consulting its shareholders, but securing $100 million from them at the 11th hour in the midst of lambing is designed to have only one outcome.
“For a song, are we seriously going to let our second largest meat exporter head towards foreign ownership? Not to mention hundreds of millions worth of R&D, much of it taxpayer funded, thrown in as some corporate “buy one, get one free?”
“We cannot blame the Chinese, but we can blame the ineffectuals in power who should have National stripped from the governing party’s name as a breach of the Fair Trading Act,” says Mr Peters.
ENDS