Bill Rosenberg is the only Webmaster that CAFCA had ever had. He set up our Website in the 1990s and ran it for the best part of 20 years, until 2014 (Watchdog has always had a separate site, set up and run for more than a decade by Greg Waite, and now run by Cass Daley). Running the CAFCA site involved  a lot of work (to give just one example, it includes our analysis of all publicly released Decisions of the Overseas Investment Office [OIO] and its predecessor the Overseas Investment Commission [OIC], going back to 1994). In 2009 Bill moved to Wellington after a lifetime in Christchurch, to become the Economist and Policy Director of the NZ Council of Trade Unions (CTU). That marked his resignation as our long serving Chairperson (he was replaced by Jeremy Agar). Bill’s farewell speech to the 2009 Annual General Meeting is online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Miscellaneous/Forward%20and%20Leftward%20-%20text.pdf and his accompanying Powerpoint is at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Miscellaneous/Forward%20and%20Leftward%20-%20slides.pdf.

The demands of his CTU job meant that he has also progressively shed other CAFCA roles   since moving to Wellington He wrote up those OIO/OIC Decisions for Watchdog and the CAFCA Website for around 20 years until James Ayers took over that job. And Bill had made clear to us for several years that he had little or no time to devote to the Website. I’m pleased to report that, in 2014, we have found a replacement, a volunteer no less. Chris Oakley has a lengthy background in IT and Website work in his native London (marriage to a Kiwi, our very own Melanie Oakley née Thomson, brought him to Ashburton in 2012). In the first few months that he’s been our Webmaster Chris has, on his own initiative, introduced some welcome upgrades (for example, we now have our first ever online Roger Award nomination form). He has reformatted the Homepage to make it much more attractive and user friendly. And he has started the daunting task of reformatting every page on the site (all 375 of them). That is a very labour intensive task and will take Chris several months. This is all much appreciated, because our Website is a vital resource and the first point of contact with CAFCA for many people, including the media. So, welcome aboard Chris, you’re doing a great job.

Bill Not Lost To CAFCA

He remains a Committee member (a role he has held continuously since our founding nearly 40 years ago). Now that Lynda Boyd has returned to Christchurch after six years in Auckland Bill remains our only distance member. But not distant – he plays an active role in all major decision making. And he contributes in other vital ways. Most recently he completely updated our Key Facts (both hard copy and online – the latter can be accessed at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/key-facts.html and the accompanying Powerpoint is at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/pdf/cafca-key-facts-2014.pdf). These played a vital role in my 2014 national speaking tour. We took that Powerpoint and turned it into a series of ten, old school, big laminated posters, which were stuck up on the wall at every venue at which I spoke. They were a major drawcard everywhere I went. And the media keep going to Bill for the real story on major issues like land sales to foreigners. Because he is the undoubted expert in the field.

Here’s the most recent example: “Council of Trade Unions Economist Bill Rosenberg is a stalwart of the Campaign Against Foreign Control Aotearoa (CAFCA). In 2012 - after Key had claimed less than 1% of farmland was overseas-owned - Rosenberg produced a ‘conservative’ estimate that 3.2% of farmland was in foreign hands. Adding forests, his estimate was an again conservative 8.7%. Rosenberg analysed six years of approvals after the 2005 Overseas Investment Act was passed and used older statistics going back to 1991. He found a trend of high sales in the 1990s, a slowdown in the 2000s and a recent acceleration in interest in farmland. In 2011 alone, 173,600ha of freehold and leasehold interests in forests and farmland went to overseas buyers.

“If leasehold interests were included, it was possible that 10% of farms alone were under foreign control, he concluded. Since then foreigners have been handed the keys to another 130,000 ha of freehold land and 90,000ha in leases. Rosenberg supplied the Weekend Herald with updated figures, using year-on-year OIO reports since 2001. He found that 2.3 million ha – 16% of productive rural land - changed hands in freehold and leasehold purchases from 2001-2013. The ‘net’ foreign component was 841,000 ha” (New Zealand Herald, 16/8/14, “Foreign Land Sales: The Facts”, Geoff Cumming, http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=11309648). Bill winces whenever he is described as a “CAFCA stalwart”. So, I have assured him that if I outlive him; that will be the title of his Watchdog obituary. Now there’s an incentive to stay alive, Bill!