Goff’s hypocrisy on foreign land sales

What did Phil Goff say yesterday about National’s changes to policy on foreign ownership of land:

Labour leader Phil Goff said it was a half-hearted effort that did practically nothing.

“It will do nothing to discourage the increasing foreign ownership of New Zealand land.”

Now I wonder how much actual land has been sold under National. According to Maurice Williamson it is 31,000 hectares or 310 square kms. That is an average of around 20,000 hectares a year.

And how much land was sold under Labour to foreign owners?

Over nine years, you would expect it be 180,000 hectares, if at the same rate.  In fact it was a massive 650,000 hectares!!!

Now personally I think it is a good thing Labour allowed NZ land owners to sell their land to the highest bidder, rather than be forced to accept lower bids.

But the hypocrisy is just staggering.

In a profile on new UK Labour Leader Ed Milliband, The Independent said:

He is soft, cuddly and panders to every oppositional instinct in the party. There has been no position taken by the Labour Government of which he was a member that he was not prepared to trash if he thought Labour members would like it.

Is that not a perfect description of Phil Goff?

• One of the architects of GST campaigning against it
• One of the architects of our inflation focused monetary policy campaigning against it
• One of the Ministers who reaped $3b in profits from state power companies at a time of massive surpluses, now campaigning for them to be lower despite the record deficits
• One of the Ministers who refused time after time to reduce the blood alcohol limit, not campaigning for it to lower
• One of the Ministers who sold 650,000 hectares of land to foreigners, campaigning against 30,000 hectares of sales.

Someone should compile a fuller list of these. Feel free to add others to the comments.