The minister tasked with deciding whether Chinese interests can buy the Crafar farms believes racism is driving some of the opposition to foreign investment in New Zealand.
Land Information Minister Maurice Williamson has told a business conference at Massey University he thinks the general attitude to foreign investment is usually linked to the ethnicity of the buyer.
He says the number of New Zealanders who think overseas investment is bad frightens him and he is amazed that some of them have English accents.
The Overseas Investment Office is currently considering a bid by Chinese-backed Natural Dairy Holdings NZ Ltd to buy 16 North Island farms that were previously owned by the Crafar family.
The farms are mostly dairy with some dry stock properties and were put in receivership last year owing over $200 million.
Natural Dairy has a purchase agreement in place with the receivers but it is conditional on OIO approval.
Williamson will also need to sign off on the deal if it does pass the OIO. The proposed deal has ignited a fierce public debate with a group forming specifically to protest against farm sales to foreign owners.
Bill Ralston, who is acting as a spokesman for Natural Dairy, says benefits of the sale are too good to be ignored.
He said the sale of the farms would add upwards of $200 million a year in increased export earnings, create 120 jobs, and pump $5 million into getting young sharemilkers onto farms.
He also pointed out that just 8615 hectares of dairy farmland out of a total of 1,519,117 ha in New Zealand has been already approved and sold to foreigners in the last five years.
Ralston said last week that Natural Dairy remain confident that the sale will go through.
