Foreign Ownership

Jeremy G-H lashes out at foreign ownership blaming it for the closure of the Bright Wood mill in Otautau, and lack of redundancy.

The closure of the mill is awful for the local community. No doubt about that. But let’s look at this logically.

If foreign ownership was banned, then that mill may have closed years and years ago. Unless you are economically illiterate you can not assume that there is as much capital within NZ than there is internationally. So this nasty nasty foreign investment may have kept the mill open for as long as it did.

The fact there is no NZ buyer for the mill would suggest that is correct. I am sure the owners would rather sell than close.

And people also need to remember the flipside of foreign investment. We are the foreign investors when it comes to other countries. Do you want to ban NZers and NZ companies from expanding into Australia and further? Of course not.

So Jeremy’s blaming foreign investment for its closure is silly unless he can point to a NZ company which would keep it open.

His other point is that a NZ company would give more notice and/or generous redundancy provisions. An assertion not backed up by any data. I doubt any company which is losing money tends to pay out more than the contractual minimum, whether NZ owned or not.