When Hamish Hancock from the Crown Law Office was questioned in the Wellington High Court recently, regarding the Governments approval for Shanghai Pengxin Group to purchase the 16 Crafar farms, he maintained the Chinese company met all the necessary requirements to buy the farms, and went on to say, specific dairy farming experience was not required.
This suggests the only relevant criteria that this Government is really interested in for foreigners to buy our farmland, is that they must be well-resourced with overseas funds. The Overseas Investment Office (OIO) must have also applied the same criteria to the Canadian movie mogul James Cameron, when he recently purchased two farms in the Wairarapa, as he also has no farming experience. I guess Mark Zuckerburg, Bono and other the multi- millionaires from Facebook can expect a phone call from Mr Keys telling them the rest of NZ is also up for sale. They probably neither have any farming experience, so their application shouldn't be too much of a problem either, as they all now meet the main criteria for foreigners wanting to purchase our property, everything else is trivial.

Brian Porter, Welcome Bay.