Chris Leitch is Leader of the Social Credit Party. Ed.

Westland Milk Products had been in operation as a cooperative dairy company on the West Coast since 1937. In early 2019, the company needed an infusion of capital and the Board recommended to its farmer shareholders that the company be sold to Hong Kong Jingang, a wholly owned subsidiary of Inner Mongolian Yili of China, itself partly owned by the Chinese government.

The NZ government could have stepped in and put in place an arrangement similar to the 1% Reserve Bank overdraft that the Dairy Board had access to from 1936 to the mid 80s, and made it available to Westland Milk - the solution Social Credit proposed at the time. That would have enabled the cooperative to swap its expensive commercial bank-created debt for much cheaper Reserve Bank-created debt and allowed the company to use its income for the benefit of West Coast farmers rather than interest payments to Australian owned banks.

The sale required Overseas Investment Office ((OIO) approval, High Court approval, and shareholder approval - all of which were granted and the sale went through on August 1st 2019. The prospect of the sale of Westland's business to Chinese interests provoked a sharp division of views among supplier shareholders and in the months leading up to it a small group of Westland's farmer shareholders who were opposed to the sale investigated possible legal options to challenge it.

Unsuccessful & Expensive

They contacted Social Credit because they were aware of our strong stance against overseas ownership of NZ's land and strategic assets. We undertook to pay for an assessment of the options and engaged a Wellington barrister, Robert Kirkness who, with his junior Scott Fletcher, advised that a judicial review of the Overseas Investment Office decision was the only legal avenue possible, and that it looked promising.

Other parties and even Ministers tut tutted and dived for cover. We decided to take that on - a course of action not entered into by the faint hearted. That decision has to date cost the Party close to $60,000 - money in hand and expected to be raised that had been earmarked for the 2020 election campaign. In addition to the money, an immense amount of time and energy has been expended by the Party's top leadership team.

Along the way we faced an attempt by lawyers acting for Jingang to get the Court to order that the Party pay a deposit of $40,000 into a trust account to cover costs that might be awarded if it lost the case (in our assessment an attempt to make us abandon the action). We won that round. We wanted to put the Overseas Investment Office, and the Government, on notice that rubber-stamping overseas ownership applications was not acceptable. A win in this case would have achieved that.

The basis of the case was that the stricter assessment provisions of the "benefit to New Zealand" test which require the benefits of overseas investment "to be substantial and identifiable" where rural land is involved, should have been invoked. That would have required Ministers to make the decision, not the Overseas Investment Office. In order for that to be triggered, the land on and around which Westland's processing plants are sited (and which it owned) would need to be recognised as rural and sensitive land.

The hearing was in September 2020 and the decision was reserved. When it was released, Social Credit lost the case. That will result in the Party incurring costs awarded against it of up to $50,000. In total a bill of over $100,000. Consideration is being given to an appeal of the High Court's decision - an action that will likely cost a further $20,000.

The Party will need substantial financial support, whichever course of action it decides to take, and is hoping people will back us. Challenging the sale of our country into overseas ownership is a mammoth David and Goliath battle, especially if not in Parliament with access to publicly funded resources.