Ngai Tgahu know all about asset sales so should be supporting National's privatisation programme. Here are just two recent examples of Maori more than happy to flog off their assets to foreigners who need OIO approvals.
In 2010 they sold 1348 hectares in Kaikoura to an American couple for 7.5 million dollars. They paid 8 million dollars so made a $500,000 loss.
In 2011 they sold 18,000 hectares of forest to a Swiss owned family company for 22.9 million dollars. And continue to manage it. Alf Grumble reported it at the time on his blog noting the hypocrisy and lies of Tuku Morgan in relation to asset sales. Ngai Tahu sold this land under the euphemism of a "change in investment strategy". National are having that same change in investment strategy selling stakes in SOE's.
“Iwi won’t sell and the investment is intergenerational,” Morgan says.
Iwi shouldn’t be flogging off their land. It runs counter to Maori values. Ngai Tahu tipuna spent generations fighting for the return of their land. And for what? For iwi corporates to sell it off in the name of “investment strategy”. The whenua is, in Te Ao Maori, inalienable. Why don’t our so called leaders know this?
When you sell the land you also sell your rangatiratanga. Therefore, you sell your right to a place.
But most importantly, Ngai Tahu is undermining Maori in the eyes of the public. On the one hand, we talk about the land as sacred, inalienable and so on. While on the other hand we slyly flog it off for a handful of cash. Those aren’t my values and those aren’t Maori values.
