An International Woman’s Day event I approve of, with a very impressive speaker who warns of the dangers of selling arable farming land in Australia, New Zealand and Africa to the People’s Republic of China.
I am a free marketer myself but I am not blind to the need for global security. We need to take care where these two issues conflict and I cannot see that selling all our farmland to the Chinese People’s Liberation Army, who clearly admit they need the farmland to feed their own nation, is an act that is entirely free of risk.
As the Chinese official admitted, food production is China’s biggest security issue, so why isn’t it an issue to NZ?
If you are a free marketeer who believes in utter and complete free trade than I urge you to listen to what this lady (and she is cleary a lady) says and think about the implications of the discussions she had with senior officials of the Chinese Communist Party.
Professor the Hon. Dame Marie Bashir addresses an International Women’s Day brunch hosted by Land, Water, Future at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Sydney. The event was to celebrate women working to protect food producing land in NSW. More info: http://our.landwaterfuture.org.au
TrueblueNZ 
This is an area of special interest to me as I believe in the free market but have seen much of New Zealands’ quality arable land lost to urban creep without looking alternatives.The land is the base of so many provinces economies . I note concerns around this issue in the BOP at the present time and Northland also been looking at this in recent planning.The proposed changes to the RMA will put more of this high class land in jeopardy.
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