A couple of days ago the Australian government acted in response to rising public concern with the huge number of cashed up foreign buyers in the housing market.

They proposed fees of at least $5000 for foreign buyers of homes and businesses and million dollar penalties for anyone caught trying to work around the regs. The $5000 is applied to every purchase and increases according to every million dollars of the value of the property.

Frankly I think this is peanuts, and if they were really going to do anything, the first fee should have been $250,000 and increasing by $50,000 after every million. These communist party cronyists coming out of China with cash in suitcases are not put off by a mere $5000. Its chicken feed to them.

Now New Zealand’s national government is under pressure to take similar steps here. However Finance Minister says the housing market’s supply conditions need to be improved before a thought can be given to introducing a fee for foreign investors buying up properties here. He said he preferred to “wait and see”. That makes sense. After 7 years of government he’s still not sure about whats’ going on in the housing economy??? FFS…!!

Apparently the simple fact that there are over one billion Chinese and only just over 4 million NZers is something he needs to ponder.

Here though folks is the real kicker. He also said that “when 25 percent of people living in Auckland were not from there, it made it difficult to tell who was a foreigner and who was not.”

In other words, its too late now and if we were going to take action, we should have taken it when the amount of foreigners in Auckland was manageable. Hey Bill, that’s why so many NZers have been trying to tell government about this problem for a decade or more.

I’m all for free markets, but I’m against an invasion of NZ by Communist Chinese cronyists who cloak their cultural takeover by calling it “foreign investment”. The govt has a duty to protect the realm.