Counting Noses

Principles of Convenience

Owning dairy farms is a risky business in New Zealand, particularly if you are Chinese.  Despite the louidly trumpeted free trade agreement between NZ and China, whenever a Chinese conglomerate attempts to buy dairy farms in this country we are instant xenophobes.

The worm, however, has turned.  Fonterra, New Zealand's monopoly owner/controller of the dairy industry, announced this week that it was buying another dairy farm, at a cost just short of NZ $50m, its third--in China!  These are not family farms.  They are huge industrial enterprises.  According to the NZ Herald:  

Construction of the third farm, which would train and employ about 100 local people, was expected to start in November and be completed by late next year.  The 40ha free stall dairy farm was expected to increase Fonterra's overall milk production in China to around 90 million litres a year.


The first farm was operational but had not reached full stable state production, while the second farm was expected to be fully commissioned by the end of the October, Moore said.  The farms would be capable of managing about 3000-3200 milking cows, with an initial production target of 28-30 million litres a year each. 

Predictably there has been an outpouring of splenetic rage in New Zealand.
  The Prime Minister, John Key, currently on tour in the United States seeking to "score" more US investment in New Zealand, expressed great disappointment at the news.  He has been quoted in the media as saying,

Look, fair's fair.  When the Chinese wanted to buy dairy farms in New Zealand I went on record as saying that we New Zealanders do not want to end up being mere tenants in our own country.  I am deeply disappointed, therefore, that Fonterra has ignored those sentiments and is now busy making the Chinese mere tenants in their their own country.  If I have stood up for the rights of New Zealanders in our country, I have to be consistent and stand up for the rights of the Chinese in theirs.  Fonterra has let us all down.

The Greens in similar fashion are expressing outrage at Fonterra's move.  On record as opposing the sale of NZ dairy farms to Chinese or anyone else for that matter, Dr Russell Norman, Green's co-leader is disgusted at Fonterra's purchase of a dairy farm in China.  Pointing out that he stood up for the human rights of Tibetans, publicly protesting in the face of the Chinese Premier when he visited New Zealand, he said that if the Green's stood for one thing in politics it was the consistent application of principle.

Human rights are universal. They apply everywhere on the globe.  That's why I stood up to the Chinese President for the rights of Tibetans, while my political opponents displayed themselves to be self-subjugated simpering snivellers.  Now I am standing up for the rights of ordinary Chinese whose land is being taken from them by rapacious New Zealand business.  And, its dirty-dairying all over again.  Everyone knows that a farm with 3,000 methane-belching cows, defecating at will both pollutes waterways and places the whole planet under peril of global warming.
New Zealanders expect us to stand for the human right of human beings everywhere on the planet.  And they are right.  So today I am standing up for the rights of those Chinese coolies, humiliated under the weight of filthy bovine defecation, paid for by dirty dairying and corporate greed.  The Greens are going to sponsor a Private Member's Bill, entitled  "China for the Chinese".  It will strip Fonterra of all its assets.  We are going to allow dairy farms in this country to return to wilderness areas.  We are confident that everyone who respects universal human rights will support this.

A spokesman for the Labour leader, Phil Goff declined to comment on the grounds that it would be improper for a politician to get involved in a free commercial transaction of a legitimate New Zealand business.  Privately the Parliamentary Press corps has been led to understand that Goff is worried about persistent rumours of a pitch-fork protest being planned outside his Auckland residence.  Apparently Labour leadership had no idea that their recently flaunted capital gains tax proposal on farms would have generated such anger in the provincial heartland.


OK, so what has been the actual reaction of the chattering classes to Fonterra purchasing a very large, industrial scale dairy farm in China?

Zip. Nada.  Nothing.

All of which demonstrates yet again that the erstwhile noble principles of our governors are nothing more than venal bludgeons only to be brandished when the prospect of a few credulous votes beckons.  Political self-interest trumps secular humanist ideals every time--without exception.

Establishing truth by means of counting noses, then enforcing it with the power of the State, has never been credible. Nor is it sustainable.  But that's secularism for you.