Greens approve 20,000 hectares of land sales to Japan

Guyon Espiner reports:

Land Information Minister and Green MP Eugenie Sage has given a foreign-owned forestry company a free pass to buy thousands of hectares of New Zealand land without applying to the Overseas Investment Office (OIO).

Japanese-owned Pan Pac Forest Products was given the special approval to bypass the OIO to purchase land for forestry for the next three years as the government sought foreign forestry money to help meet its tree planting targets.
The pre-approval was given to Pan Pac despite the Green Party having strongly protested land sales to foreigners and Forestry Minister Shane Jones saying he was sympathetic to rural concerns that converting productive farm land to forestry could cost jobs.

I’ve got no problems with the approval, but the fact Labour, Greens and NZ First all campaigned on policies of banning land sales to foreigners exposes their hypocrisy.