This project started as a bit of personal curiosity. Why do kiwis go away, and why are we not returning to New Zealand? In my case, my dad brought me as a very young child to Hong Kong where he found the business culture so much better than in the narrow minded backwards and restrictive New Zealand with its supremacist elite establishment. I never found a reason to go back to that very insular, prejudiced and highly regulated place called New Zealand.
We spent the summers back there, and I loved New Zealand, I still do, its nature, fresh air, and then friendly people, but as I grew up, I felt it a nightmare. Still I remained a kiwi at heart, but always whished I could make it change.
The reason for kiwis leaving in the first place is not taxes or more money as often is suggested, it is adventure and getting out of the very tight New Zealand social straight jacket of regulations and political correctness, away from that blinkered control and snoop society and supremacist elite establishment.
This is a list of reasons, as I found them, why Kiwis do not migrate back home again by talking to Expat Kiwis, and reading a lot of blogs and web discussions. As much as 40% of the Kiwi skilled workforce is said to have left the country. This is why they don’t fly back home.
Everyone may not have every reason mentioned here, but Expat Kiwis see many problems with moving back. Almost invariable tax level and pay level are not two of those reasons. Similar reasons apply to businessmen and investors or students, why they hesitate to come to New Zealand to do business or to deal with Kiws.
Sorry for the negativity, but I am trying to illustrate what is perceived as wrong, and what need to be addresses and corrected to enable a positive development of New Zealand. As I live in China, I tend to se the world from that perspective.
Immigration.
Many Expat kiwis are married to local overseas women. New Zealand immigration is seen as racially biased against Asians. I have heard many a personal bad experience. Immigration is slow, difficult and bureaucratic to deal with. Too many bad stories on the blogs.
One Chinese person get badly treated and made to loose face by New Zealand, in Chinese interpretation, then 100,000 more will not have anything to do with New Zealand
Marriage, and the divorce industry.
In New Zealand a divorce “industry” has developed. 80% and more of the marriages are broken up on the initiative of the women, coached by marriage consultants and divorce lawyers. Friends, lawyers, marriage advisories, work mates urge her to separate and divorce as one-fit-all universal solution to her own perceived or real problems, feelings or mindset, and of course there is that financial gain, half of the assets, whatever she contributed or not.
Male Expat Kiwis do not want to expose themselves to this when they are married overseas. I have been taken aback over how much this threat play in their decisions to stay away from New Zealand.
Finding a job.
Getting a job in New Zealand is a nightmare if you are an Expat. Maybe 98% of job ads are anonymous employers hiding behind recruiters and so called management consultants. They filter our “undesirables” as Asians, Kiwis over 50, and Expat Kiwis with the “wrong” attitude.
Why not implement a law, as in most countries, that anonymous job ads are illegal, the employers name with a personal contact must be included in any job ad, and there are to be no secret information.
Then if you apply you often get run trough a 1950 style personally degrading procedure with aptitude test, three interviews and two references. References are not used in China.
Management is usually seen as very low quality in New Zealand, positions primarily held by primarily accountants.
New Zealand simply needs to change these ancient procedures towards a matchmaking, and a partnership system in employment.
Medical care and dental care
The New Zealand medical services are highly standardized, but internationally it is of relatively mediocre standard. Expat kiwis can access is generally of much better standard than in New Zealand, and even if they have to pay the cost themselves, the cost is significantly lower, probably only one tenth.
Dental care is not free in New Zealand, and cost is significantly cheaper in China as a rule and the work is of significant higher quality. A root filling by a top skilled dentist in China could be NZ$60, while the same treatment in New Zealand would be NZ$1,500.
Eye care is not free either in New Zealand, and a pair of highest quality titanium prescription glasses in China would be about NZ$200 including the examination, but in New Zealand the same pair would be NZ$1,300 to $2,000.
Banking.
Banking in New Zealand is another disincentive to come back and work here. Just about every authority has easy access to your money and banking information with easy and simple administrative procedures. Any lawyer can just call the bank and order your account and funds frozen citing a “dispute”. Nothing more than a telephone call is needed. Banks are unsafe in New Zealand
Racism
The New Zealand well hidden but well established racial and age discrimination and this is another disincentive to come back if you have an Asian wife, and the issue is nearly taboo for a debate in New Zealand.
The treatment of immigrants and travellers by the New Zealand immigration is looked upon as state racism. One bone fide visitor or immigrant loose face in front of his colleagues, 100,000 will never apply.
Snoopers and dobbers
What deter many is a general “snoop culture” in New Zealand and lack of privacy that is felt as uncomfortable. Authorities and even private companies and certainly the justice system see it as their right to be “peeping toms” and collect intrusive information, financial and other, they see as needed and their rights to have and use. “If you want to be considered for the job, give us what we ask for or we get someone else in who does.” If you want your super, you get us the information we ask for or you go without you super.
New Zealand must be the only country in the world, leave the dictatorships aside, that have toll free line where anyone anonymously can dob in their neighbour or anyone.
Regulations
The New Zealand highly regulated society where the individuals are tightly controlled also feels uncomfortable to those who once have gotten used the personal freedom overseas and in China. If feels like New Zealand officials decide to what standard and ways residents are to be kept and they have an efficient and tight control system to ensure they do keep people on a very short leash. Symptoms of this are CCTV, red light cameras, random road blocks, boos busses, swimming pool inspectors, toll free dob-in lines, internet logging of people browsing habits, registration of internet connections, monitoring of mobile calls and positions, etc.
Finances
The New Zealand bankruptcy system is another scary thing. Anyone in the world can come here and get a Kiwi or even non-Kiwi declared bankrupt if he can not prove his innocence. New Zealand lawyers and shady business people use this as an intimidating threat in negotiations and disputes.
Tax and IRD
IRD and tax is another incentive to stay away. The tax level and pay level is not in itself a disincentive to return and IRD is usually very good to deal with, but in New Zealand there is a very hard core system of punishment that the politicians have implemented to get more money off the public, and that the IRD have no choice but to follow. In China you can discuss or even haggle over your taxes and the IRD is usually quite negotiable.
Kiwi passports and Travelling.
Passport in New Zealand is another issue. A New Zealand citizen is entitled to a passport by law, but bureaucrats have added the condition that you must have a friend who has a New Zealand passport and known you for 12 months to get it, or is a New Zealand lawyer, JP, etc. and known you for 12 months. They will not accept any application without that. Those people are a bit difficult to find when you live overseas. So – you take out another citizenship, and that removes another incentive to go back home. Many countries welcome you as citizens after only a short time.
In New Zealand the validity period of a passport has been shortened to five years. China has one year visas and a requirement that the passport is valid for another six months, so in reality we now have a 3.5 year passport. Britain and China still have ten year passports. More incentives to dump New Zealand.
Re-implement the ten year passports, and a three year possible extension. If countries as the US are objecting, issue a special passport for the US, and make other passports valid for ten years and not valid for the US. Reduce the procedures for getting a new passport, a one page application should be enough, and no more if accompanies by a used, not expired or recently expired old passport. Reduce the fee to $20 or thereabout.
Driver’s license.
You can drive in many places in China on your Kiwi license as long as it is valid, but when it expires you must travel all the way back to New Zealand to renew it. That takes a couple of weeks and cost maybe $5,000.
All other countries I have asked, including Australia, you can fill in a form and mail a photograph, and your license is sent to you.
So – you get another license and remove another incentive, and cost and inconvenience, to go back to New Zealand.
Retiring.
The Kiwi retirement system is another disincentive to come home. You must be “ordinarily a resident of New Zealand” to get super there and of course when you are an Expat you are not. If you work for New Zealand overseas or not is irrelevant. WINZ have complete free and unfettered rights to make a judgement here, you have no rights at all because it is a social welfare handout in law, and if you save for a retirement overseas, your overseas payments gets deducted from your New Zealand Super, so you get screwed to the max whatever you do.
If you move overseas they may allow you to get half your super, if you first get it here, and the country where you move have no reciprocal agreement on super. You have no rights anyway, so why not ignore it. Save for your own overseas, and no incentive to ever go back again.
Most overseas countries super system is a collective KiwiSaver type savings scheme, so it is your own savings, and the New Zealand super is below the poverty level anyway, given it is one of the most unaffordable country in the world to live in.
Change the system so super is paid irrespectively where you live and irrespectively of any overseas payments, develop the Kiwi saver further and raise the super to minimum pay level.
Personal Security.
The frequent street violence against Asians, and even in their homes, is another disincentive for Kiwis to come home if they are married overseas. In China you feel safe.
Drinking culture
The New Zealand youth binge drinking problem is yet another reason not to come back. Expats do not want their children to be exposed to this culture, which is not a problem in China.
Youth Crime
The apparently widening problem with youth criminality and violence is another problem that scares Kiwis from coming back. Especially since it is so closely connected with drugs.
Justice
The many high profile allegations and court cases of alleged rape and child molestation have not helped the New Zealand image either, not to mention the David Bane and Arthur Allan Thomas trial and a few more. Especially not since many accusations are decades old, most old accusations are usually not upheld anyway, and many are proven false when the accuser later admit to having other reasons for the complaint. Most cases seem to have been targeting high profile or wealthy people, and have had a money or revenge aspect as the primary driver.
People overseas think, what about if I am the next target???? Will my life, reputation and future be destroyed by Kiwis if I get involved with them??? Not worth taking the risk.
Most countries have statutory limitations on such things. Especially since a number of them has proven very old and false. If a formal complaint of a rape is not made within 12 months, it can not be taken to court.
Police prosecutions
That the police are both the investigating and prosecuting party is another problem. Most foreigners and many Expat Kiwis would see that as a systemic corruption after seeing the overseas usually rigorous procedures to avoid any miscarriage of justice. There must be a clear separation between the investigation, evaluating the credibility of an investigation, the prosecution, the courts, the experts, and the defence.
Courts
Courts in New Zealand are perceived as unreliable, unpredictable, very expensive, untrustworthy or even corrupt. It is so bad that even some judges now are starting to publicly raise concerns. I don’t believe that judges and lawyers are meeting in dark back street restaurants exchanging cash, but judges are also lawyers, and the judicial fraternity is often seen as a closed club of think-alike, do alike and work alike with an invisible common relationship helping itself to safe cash and maximising their take by being able to make their own rules. A reformation must one day come.
Nuisance laws
People are also wondering why New Zealand is so obsessed with what they see as nuisance laws, as bicycle helmet laws, swimming pool fencing laws, etc. and why it is that council worker can even control how children play and remove their creations as tree houses on private property. (Published in Hutt News 3-09). Parents are told to take responsibility for their children, but even council workers can take that way at any time and they apparently do, not to mention the huge array of other authorities with unchecked powers.
“International Law”
Another major issue is that New Zealand is regularly thumbing its nose at what we often, somewhat incorrectly, call “international law” and other countries laws and rights. Judges in court say that they can choose to ignore anything in the world in that respect.
A scary case was when customs started to require all visiting vessels to comply with local laws several years ago. It was illegal as all visiting vessels under long standing international and well accepted rules must comply with the laws of the country of registration and failing to do so may bring criminal charges when they return home.
NZ enforcement system
New Zealand is a country that must be one of the most highly regulated in the world, and have the most efficient enforcement system to make sure everyone stays and behave within the narrow and complex boundaries the authorities and officials have decided.
China has to the contrary a very strong culture of self correction and self rehabilitation, and a large degree of personal freedom and expression. In China if you get caught without your drivers license or diving the wrong way on a one way street, you are likely to be asked why, told off, and asked to do it better next time, and if you are regretful and accept the mistake, and commit to do it better next time, that is the end of the matter. In New Zealand you are immediately fined as the police have a fine quota to fill.
Free speech
The censorship of media and information in New Zealand is another major issue as seen from overseas. The draconian defamation laws are an effective way to intimidate anyone to silence and control critics and whistle blowers and free speech. Those laws are the best tools any shady white collar criminal, scam operator or fraudster could have. All they have to do is using lawyers to intimidate and threaten a potential whistle blower to silence. Those who stand up to the threats have paid the price as we have recently seen (2008).
The Attorney General has closed down web papers with a phone call and nothing else that was uncomfortable to the establishment as kiwisfirst and stiassny (I think it was). Courts have extensive easy rights to censor, and whistleblowers and informers have in reality no protection and seldom dare to do or say anything. This need to change.
A rigorous protection of freedom of expression needs to be implemented, with a solid protection of anonymity for media informers and for the journalists and the media, especially internet based media. The defamation laws of today need to be removed.
Police and councils
The New Zealand Police cannot freely enter your home and grab what they like, but council workers have immediate and unfettered access, and can even remove you from your home, but of course, the Police only need a signature from a junior court official to get access, and take and do what they want. China has a rigorous system to protect the individual in their homes.
That the New Zealand Police operate on commissions to collect fines is also scary and deterring, as is the unfettered powers of councils and council workers. Councils now make, and have an incentive to make, rules to maximise the fine takes.
The solution here is to implement transparent and rigorous checks and balances on any interference by any authority in people’s lives. All fines should go to a common national fund for a sensible use. Councils and local authorities should no longer be able to collect money this way. The right to anonymity in the society and in communications must be paramount.
Education
Compared to the standard of education Expats can access overseas, New Zealand is of very mediocre quality.
In a recent publicised survey, the China government has determined the top ten countries and 97% as preferred by Chinese for overseas study. New Zealand is not in that category, but Australia is number two.
Doing business in Kiwiland
This becomes very difficult for returning Expat Kiwis, as the country largely work on a “closed shop basis”. Many local established companies work on a selective and exclusive basis to eliminate or restrict any competition. If they deliver goods and services to newcomers who can operate more efficient, they state that existing customers may delay paying the bills or stop ordering from them.
Another issue here are the slow paying of bills in New Zealand. New Zealand companies and operators are well known to use the upstream guy as a bank and delaying paying their bills for even something like six months.
The IRD has draconian rights to jump the queue, so the rest of us have to wait even longer.
Personal Guarantees
The wide spread New Zealand typical system of “personal guarantees” is another problem. One business simply is guaranteeing their profits on the expense of another, if they are in a position of power over the other party. .
Other events that have tainted New Zealand’s reputation are the well known cheating and rip-off of Asian students, immigration consultant scams, the mail forwarding scams as Privatebox, the back room racism that brought down the
Currency
Another disincentive to deal with New Zealand is the wildly fluctuating currency value. Most buyers overseas want a steady price with regular supplies over long term, not just something cheap. The New Zealand currency is fluctuating with some 70% based on present value (50 cents to the US dollar 3-09). If buyers overseas establish a supply today, will the price increase 70% to 82 cents next year by currency fluctuations? It is too big risk to take. New Zealand has been made a $2 shop, and if they raise the price, the currency go up, people stop buying.
Information about China
Chinese get very upset when false, misleading and incorrect information is spread about China and Chinese overseas. The melamine disaster in China, where adulterated baby formula from a nearly half New Zealand owned company, killed six babies and made half a million sick, is well known. Authorities have put it behind them, the public has not.
It is known in China that Fonterra and the Kiwi directors was not actively party to the contamination, but it is also know that they passively and knowingly allowed it for at least a year as they did not understand what was happening. There is a common law requirement in China that directors must have a certain competence and qualifications, and that was not the case. In reality, almost all Directors in China are engineers to comply with that requirement.
What has gone up the nose of many Chinese is that the full story has been censored in New Zealand and that web articles have been pulled off the web with the full story describing how Fonterra have paid compensation by way of a donation to make up for the mistakes, and it also saved the Kiwi directors from a court case. It is a parallel situation to that China is upset that Japan has not told the full story about the atrocities in China during the war, but omitted them in any Japanese publication.
Finally
New Zealand makes it very difficult for Expat Kiwis to return as well as for overseas businesses to do business there. Please understand that these are not about a few isolated cases. This was not so nice reading maybe, but if you want to fix a problem, you first have to find it, identify it, isolate it, and that is by nature something negative.
New Zealand is said to have as much as 40% of its skilled workforce working outside the country as expats and they seems very reluctant to move back home where their skills are badly needed to help get the country right and stave off a looming national bankruptcy. It is a world unenviable record.
All the attacks in the past of immigrants and investors have been noted overseas, the Britomart scandal, Pakatoe island, Maori Television, Young Nicks Head, Vince Siemer, and now a Chinese businessman. Nobody wants to go to a place where they get attacked.
harriss.rick@gmail.com
Friday, July 3, 2009
Kiwis Loose face – again.
New Zealand is the puh financially, the country is fast going broke, but it does not seem to care. New Zealand desperately needs investor immigrants, but keep scaring them off with attacking them, insulting them, charging them with defamation if they dare to speak up against the supremacist existing establishment, and making them bankrupt, but most of all by incompetence and lack of understanding that the rest of the world is not just like New Zealand.
The latest row is over how officials in New Zealand, with their unchecked and unbridled powers, have attacked someone over his name usage.
Let us release ourselves from that for now, because it is before the courts, and look at Chinese names and birthdates.
Have you ever heard of Jiang Jieshi? Probably not, but he is best known in the west as Chiang Kai-shek, Chinas former nationalist leaser and Mao Zedong’s adversary. Both his names are quite legal in China, but how can that be. One person with two names.
In New Zealand we identify a person with the birth date, and the name is a precise western spelling. In China neither birth date nor name in western spelling has any legal or other significance.
Only Chinese writing characters have any legal meaning in China, quite naturally, but Chinese writing character give no clue to how to pronounce it. You can easily read Chinese writing without knowing a word in Chinese, using any language to pronounce the writing characters.
China has over 700 languages, three major languages, five major language groups, 56 official domestic nationalities, and 55 minorities, all with attached cultures. These languages are not dialects of the same language, as is a common misconception, but they are completely different languages, phonetically and grammatically.
So if you read the name in one language, it becomes different than if you read it another, and as the western writing is phonetic, it is written differently.
Chinese people are identified by their family registration, the so called Hukou, and the Chinese characters. A Hukou is a family registration where all members of one family are registered under one family head on one address, whatever they live there or not. Then, everyone must register at the local police station for “temporary residence” where they actually live.
It is very common in China to adopt additional names, or different names for a particular business venture, especially western names, but those have no significance at all legally, even if they sometimes can be written into a Chinese passport. It is easy to change your name in China, but you are then obliged to change your name everywhere, as there are no central register. That can reasonably easy be done when you are young, but become complicated as you get older to change everywhere you have used the old name.
There are two systems to determine age in China. The old system is that you are one year old the day you are born, you are living your first year. The other is the western system, you become one year old after 12 months. People can switch between the systems, and one young lady used that at the latest Olympics to legally become one year older so she could participate in the games.
As birthdates have no legal significance you can change your birth date in China. Chinese put quite some significance on the meaning of numbers, Eight means luck, safety and prosperity, while four means death. The word “death” and “four” are pronounced in a very similar way.
Chinese do not have names for months, but only call them by number, so April in month four, and that system is also used for days in the week. So if you are born the fourth of April 1944, you are born on the year of death the month and day of death. If you are born on a Thursday, which is day number four, you are born the day of death.
It lends itself to understand that Chinese may want to make changes sometimes.
New Zealand is becoming off limit for just about anyone in the world, after persistent and sustained attacks on any immigrant investor, the Britomart, the Young Nicks Head, Vince Siemer, and frequent education scandals, cover ups as the Fonterra disaster, and the extensive media censorship are all becoming well known across the world. The message to investors and skilled people is to go away and stay out. New Zealand can no longer be trusted. Even 42% of skilled Kiwis themselves have already left.
Opinion from Rick Harriss.
Harriss.rick@gmail.com
The latest row is over how officials in New Zealand, with their unchecked and unbridled powers, have attacked someone over his name usage.
Let us release ourselves from that for now, because it is before the courts, and look at Chinese names and birthdates.
Have you ever heard of Jiang Jieshi? Probably not, but he is best known in the west as Chiang Kai-shek, Chinas former nationalist leaser and Mao Zedong’s adversary. Both his names are quite legal in China, but how can that be. One person with two names.
In New Zealand we identify a person with the birth date, and the name is a precise western spelling. In China neither birth date nor name in western spelling has any legal or other significance.
Only Chinese writing characters have any legal meaning in China, quite naturally, but Chinese writing character give no clue to how to pronounce it. You can easily read Chinese writing without knowing a word in Chinese, using any language to pronounce the writing characters.
China has over 700 languages, three major languages, five major language groups, 56 official domestic nationalities, and 55 minorities, all with attached cultures. These languages are not dialects of the same language, as is a common misconception, but they are completely different languages, phonetically and grammatically.
So if you read the name in one language, it becomes different than if you read it another, and as the western writing is phonetic, it is written differently.
Chinese people are identified by their family registration, the so called Hukou, and the Chinese characters. A Hukou is a family registration where all members of one family are registered under one family head on one address, whatever they live there or not. Then, everyone must register at the local police station for “temporary residence” where they actually live.
It is very common in China to adopt additional names, or different names for a particular business venture, especially western names, but those have no significance at all legally, even if they sometimes can be written into a Chinese passport. It is easy to change your name in China, but you are then obliged to change your name everywhere, as there are no central register. That can reasonably easy be done when you are young, but become complicated as you get older to change everywhere you have used the old name.
There are two systems to determine age in China. The old system is that you are one year old the day you are born, you are living your first year. The other is the western system, you become one year old after 12 months. People can switch between the systems, and one young lady used that at the latest Olympics to legally become one year older so she could participate in the games.
As birthdates have no legal significance you can change your birth date in China. Chinese put quite some significance on the meaning of numbers, Eight means luck, safety and prosperity, while four means death. The word “death” and “four” are pronounced in a very similar way.
Chinese do not have names for months, but only call them by number, so April in month four, and that system is also used for days in the week. So if you are born the fourth of April 1944, you are born on the year of death the month and day of death. If you are born on a Thursday, which is day number four, you are born the day of death.
It lends itself to understand that Chinese may want to make changes sometimes.
New Zealand is becoming off limit for just about anyone in the world, after persistent and sustained attacks on any immigrant investor, the Britomart, the Young Nicks Head, Vince Siemer, and frequent education scandals, cover ups as the Fonterra disaster, and the extensive media censorship are all becoming well known across the world. The message to investors and skilled people is to go away and stay out. New Zealand can no longer be trusted. Even 42% of skilled Kiwis themselves have already left.
Opinion from Rick Harriss.
Harriss.rick@gmail.com
Sunday, June 21, 2009
The New Zealand Milk Wars
The "Maori Wars" were renamed the "New Zealand Wars" in the interest of political correctness, and now we see the beginning of the New Zealand Milk Wars.
Whatever we like to call them, the "New Zealand Wars" were hardly anything positive. Hopefully the New Zealand Milk Wars can have a more positive outcome.
Fonterra was created in October 2001 out of the New Zealand Dairy Board and two dairy cooperatives. The purpose of this was to create a single company to manage New Zealand's larges export, dairy products. It is not working well.
The problem we got now is that Fonterra has become another "Telecom" monopoly. A near monopoly that survives on its dominance, financial and legal muscle, and much less on its competence and ability to compete. It is slowly proving to become a loosing formula for New Zealand, and controlling farmers income and wellbeing, even survival.
While Fonterra is a near single face outwards for New Zealand dairy export, it has also become a monopolistic plug for developing a loosing New Zealand market share of the world, with a disastrous trade balance development. Fonterra make it very difficult for emerging New Zealand new entrants to develop and sell new products and develop new markets on the increasingly protective and competitive world market.
We may be excused for wondering what Fonterra is hiding and why. Why have Fonterra used legal intimidation to cover up the inside story of the China melamine disaster, why did they cover up the latest melamine scare in February this year, why did the cover up the information that Fonterra allegedly had approved melamine as an additive, why was the information on melamine contaminated dairy protein lactoferrin from Morrinsville-based Tatua quieted down, why was the alleged $640,000 'cover up' leaked memo over poisoned babies covered up, why did Fonterra threaten a $17 million law suit against a Sri Lankan newspaper over an article alleging contamination, and why are they continuously using legal intimidation to force publishers to pull any uncomfortable news?
The "inside story" of the melamine disaster was published in New Zealand Scope, but soon pulled off the web after a Fonterra intervention, the article alleging Fonterra paid off customers to keep quite was pulled within hours from the Chinese QQ web site.
The Chinese authorities have put the Fonterra melamine disaster behind them, but the Chinese public definitely has not. There are too many unanswered questions, and the public in China are suspicious in the light of how uncomfortable news has been handled in the past in China.
Apart from appointing people to represent Fonterra that obviously were not even near competent for the job, on the surface it seems that Fonterra have done things right in China and in line with Chinese law and tradition. It appears the Kiwi directors quietly or actively approved the melamine as an additive as they did not understand what it was, much less the effects it would have, but Fonterra probably accepted culpability, and in line with Chinese justice culture compensated the Chinese with an $8 million donation. That would have kept the Kiwi directors out of the courts and any punishment. Chinese justice still works in the old "father and son" ways, "if you prang the widow, you fix the window, and if you do we forget that it ever happened".
While New Zealand justice has a major focus on punishment, not to say revenge, the Chinese justice culture have a hard focus on the victims and on rehabilitation and re-education of the offender, whatever the offence was deliberate, by ignorance, or incompetence. You admit your wrongdoing, and work to do it right, it replaces the western punishment.
The new emerging Dairy company Oceania Milk was originally going to be called The New Zealand Milk Company, but, as so often is, Fonterra stopped them with legal intimidation.
Competition is well overdue, but it remains to see if the new entrant will go anywhere. Looking at the main players it does not give you much confidence, a failed business person and failed politician and a former electricity boss. It would have given more confidence if any one competent in marketing, sales and with experienced from the main markets as China would have been involved.
We certainly hope it will go well for them, but New Zealand need to take a step away from its traditional beancounter and "famous face appeal" approach. In China, where the dairy market is increasing some 40% annually, bosses keep a low profile, and they are all out of the famous Chinese successful engineering culture. No back room pretty suit clad boys in tall glass towers shuffling the money in accounts trying to make it all just look better, in China managers are in the front line getting their hands dirty, and they know what they are doing.
The Oceania Milk setup reeks of the traditional Kiwi attitude that "we are experts, but we just have not done it before." Would you fly with an airline who appoints economists and accountants as pilots? Probably not, but it seems like Kiwis love the concept when it comes to managing companies and ventures.
We can only pray that this in some way turn to something positive for New Zealand. Lets hope they at least hire some China competent and sales and marketing competent people.
Rick Harriss
Writer in Hong Kong
Whatever we like to call them, the "New Zealand Wars" were hardly anything positive. Hopefully the New Zealand Milk Wars can have a more positive outcome.
Fonterra was created in October 2001 out of the New Zealand Dairy Board and two dairy cooperatives. The purpose of this was to create a single company to manage New Zealand's larges export, dairy products. It is not working well.
The problem we got now is that Fonterra has become another "Telecom" monopoly. A near monopoly that survives on its dominance, financial and legal muscle, and much less on its competence and ability to compete. It is slowly proving to become a loosing formula for New Zealand, and controlling farmers income and wellbeing, even survival.
While Fonterra is a near single face outwards for New Zealand dairy export, it has also become a monopolistic plug for developing a loosing New Zealand market share of the world, with a disastrous trade balance development. Fonterra make it very difficult for emerging New Zealand new entrants to develop and sell new products and develop new markets on the increasingly protective and competitive world market.
We may be excused for wondering what Fonterra is hiding and why. Why have Fonterra used legal intimidation to cover up the inside story of the China melamine disaster, why did they cover up the latest melamine scare in February this year, why did the cover up the information that Fonterra allegedly had approved melamine as an additive, why was the information on melamine contaminated dairy protein lactoferrin from Morrinsville-based Tatua quieted down, why was the alleged $640,000 'cover up' leaked memo over poisoned babies covered up, why did Fonterra threaten a $17 million law suit against a Sri Lankan newspaper over an article alleging contamination, and why are they continuously using legal intimidation to force publishers to pull any uncomfortable news?
The "inside story" of the melamine disaster was published in New Zealand Scope, but soon pulled off the web after a Fonterra intervention, the article alleging Fonterra paid off customers to keep quite was pulled within hours from the Chinese QQ web site.
The Chinese authorities have put the Fonterra melamine disaster behind them, but the Chinese public definitely has not. There are too many unanswered questions, and the public in China are suspicious in the light of how uncomfortable news has been handled in the past in China.
Apart from appointing people to represent Fonterra that obviously were not even near competent for the job, on the surface it seems that Fonterra have done things right in China and in line with Chinese law and tradition. It appears the Kiwi directors quietly or actively approved the melamine as an additive as they did not understand what it was, much less the effects it would have, but Fonterra probably accepted culpability, and in line with Chinese justice culture compensated the Chinese with an $8 million donation. That would have kept the Kiwi directors out of the courts and any punishment. Chinese justice still works in the old "father and son" ways, "if you prang the widow, you fix the window, and if you do we forget that it ever happened".
While New Zealand justice has a major focus on punishment, not to say revenge, the Chinese justice culture have a hard focus on the victims and on rehabilitation and re-education of the offender, whatever the offence was deliberate, by ignorance, or incompetence. You admit your wrongdoing, and work to do it right, it replaces the western punishment.
The new emerging Dairy company Oceania Milk was originally going to be called The New Zealand Milk Company, but, as so often is, Fonterra stopped them with legal intimidation.
Competition is well overdue, but it remains to see if the new entrant will go anywhere. Looking at the main players it does not give you much confidence, a failed business person and failed politician and a former electricity boss. It would have given more confidence if any one competent in marketing, sales and with experienced from the main markets as China would have been involved.
We certainly hope it will go well for them, but New Zealand need to take a step away from its traditional beancounter and "famous face appeal" approach. In China, where the dairy market is increasing some 40% annually, bosses keep a low profile, and they are all out of the famous Chinese successful engineering culture. No back room pretty suit clad boys in tall glass towers shuffling the money in accounts trying to make it all just look better, in China managers are in the front line getting their hands dirty, and they know what they are doing.
The Oceania Milk setup reeks of the traditional Kiwi attitude that "we are experts, but we just have not done it before." Would you fly with an airline who appoints economists and accountants as pilots? Probably not, but it seems like Kiwis love the concept when it comes to managing companies and ventures.
We can only pray that this in some way turn to something positive for New Zealand. Lets hope they at least hire some China competent and sales and marketing competent people.
Rick Harriss
Writer in Hong Kong
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Nigeria is now in the South Pacific.
We have all heard about Nigerian scams, how scam operators, many based in Nigeria, rip off unsuspecting victims. It appears that another country now has also gained the unenviable reputation of “Nigerian scams”. That county is called New Zealand.
New Zealand is a small country highly dependent on its export and reputation, so you would expect it take good care of its international standing. Not quite, and it does show in the balance of trade and the future predicted demise.
Minister of Immigration Jonathan Coleman in a recent press release labeled New Zealand immigration a disaster that needed urgent attention after a damning report by Auditor General.
Urgent is not the word because the potential overseas students, skilled immigrants, tourists, business people and expat Kiwis have known that for years. New Zealand is already off the shortlist.
In a recent China government survey New Zealand does not figure at all among preferred destinations for overseas study (97% of countries) and no New Zealand university is mentioned among the top 100 preffered, but Australia is number two, after the USA. The resent published events where Asian students were thrown out because they became pregnant have just added to the impression that New Zealand is a country with state racism with an edge against Asians.
Tourism could be, and should be, a core industry in New Zealand. Unfortunately it is not, the New Zealand immigration has established a reputation of being a nearly impenetrable firewall against getting into the country, if you are Asian of course. Other nationalities are obviously treated differently, and the Asians know. Chinese are no longer traveling in the proverbial flock following a guide with a flag. The travel as individuals, just like Kiwis, but New Zealand has established a firm reputation of being off-limit for Chinese individual travellers.
Any tourist operator knows that tourists choose destination to 80% based on recommendations from other tourists. New Zealand’s reputation is not exactly good. The most simple scam is to establish a check out time of 10 in the morning, then only put that in some obscure sign or “terms”, and when the guests check out late, they are charged for an extra day. The international well accepted standard check out time is noon. Stories about guides taking tourists to expensive back street warehouses to buy Chinese made Kiwi souvenirs, preventing them from exploring on their own, or feeding them cheap Chinese food are well known, and it is done by Kiwis, not migrant Chinese as often is claimed in defense by New Zealand.
Immigration consultants are another well known scammer group. They are now required to be registered, but there is an easy way around it. They strike up an alliance with a person or group in China, that group recruit the applicants, email the data to New Zealand where the work is done as usual, then the application is sent back to China, and the “immigration consultant” is now in China and New Zealand law will not apply, but the unregistered immigration consultant in New Zealand can carry on business as usual. It is also an excellent way to avoid tax in New Zealand as fees are paid cash in China. Much of the money finds its way to overseas banks not reporting anything to IRD.
Here are a couple of examples how scammers are alleged and reported to operate.
A company called “NewJobz” and “Skills New Zealand” are repeatedly alleged to have taken an upfront fee to find immigrants job offers so they can get a visa. They take a sizable “membership fee”, and then nothing happens. They also claim to be an immigration consultant. Names that pop up repeatedly are “Stuart Leck”, “Stu Macann” and “Stu Macann and Associates Ltd”. What is said to be happening is that one company is closed down and the information passed on to another, and the new company say it has no obligations to honor commitments the first one made, financial or other, to “members” of the old company. It is just that all the companies have the same owner and operates from the same premises. Potential immigrants lost their up front fees. The money appears to have been “filtered” out as costs, pay and salaries to the owner and media reports claim that potential immigrants lost NZ$600,000. It has been reported to the Commerce Commission and the ministry, but no action.
Another alleged scammer is mail drop provider located in New Zealand. People from overseas and Kiwi expats need a mail address in New Zealand, even if they are traveling overseas. The owner is running a mail center, he sign clients up as “private users” for a smaller fee. Then find ways to "upgrade" them to more expensive options. It is also alleged that he regularly opens customers letters, register their forward address or senders address to find reasons to charge their credit card extra fees. If the customer is using chargeback, which is a feature to protect the credit card users against fraudulent charges, or refuse to pay, they receive threatening letters, and he has been know to retail letters as a “security” until they pay what he asks.
When people have challenged him on opening and reading their mail, he boldly claim that that it is his right under the postal act to open and inspect any postal item. Maybe it is just that the act did not foresee this kind of use of the rights. He also offers a service to have a "secret" address if you are running a business.
We have also seen reports that letters, bank information and bank cards have just disappeared. Another method is to offer a trial, then pretend not to have received the cancellation, and so keep running up fees and debt, or charge them to the customers credit card, until the hapless trial customer pays up.
The authorities seems to accept this behavior, the Commence Commission is apparently not acting on complaints, the courts are too expensive and residents overseas must of course take on the cost of traveling to New Zealand and pay expensive lawyers and even the law firms now agree that any dispute under NZ$70,000 is not worth taking to court.
Using the Disputes Tribunal is also impossible for anyone outside New Zealand, you must be present or the claim is thrown out. To travel maybe three times from Asia to New Zealand may cost in the vicinity of NZ$25,000, and it is not worth it when you are scammed out of a few hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
It is this sort op operator that over the years has given New Zealand a bad reputation, and lately the less flattening reputation of being “The Nigeria of the South pacific.”
Rick Harriss, Kiwi writer in Hong Kong.
New Zealand is a small country highly dependent on its export and reputation, so you would expect it take good care of its international standing. Not quite, and it does show in the balance of trade and the future predicted demise.
Minister of Immigration Jonathan Coleman in a recent press release labeled New Zealand immigration a disaster that needed urgent attention after a damning report by Auditor General.
Urgent is not the word because the potential overseas students, skilled immigrants, tourists, business people and expat Kiwis have known that for years. New Zealand is already off the shortlist.
In a recent China government survey New Zealand does not figure at all among preferred destinations for overseas study (97% of countries) and no New Zealand university is mentioned among the top 100 preffered, but Australia is number two, after the USA. The resent published events where Asian students were thrown out because they became pregnant have just added to the impression that New Zealand is a country with state racism with an edge against Asians.
Tourism could be, and should be, a core industry in New Zealand. Unfortunately it is not, the New Zealand immigration has established a reputation of being a nearly impenetrable firewall against getting into the country, if you are Asian of course. Other nationalities are obviously treated differently, and the Asians know. Chinese are no longer traveling in the proverbial flock following a guide with a flag. The travel as individuals, just like Kiwis, but New Zealand has established a firm reputation of being off-limit for Chinese individual travellers.
Any tourist operator knows that tourists choose destination to 80% based on recommendations from other tourists. New Zealand’s reputation is not exactly good. The most simple scam is to establish a check out time of 10 in the morning, then only put that in some obscure sign or “terms”, and when the guests check out late, they are charged for an extra day. The international well accepted standard check out time is noon. Stories about guides taking tourists to expensive back street warehouses to buy Chinese made Kiwi souvenirs, preventing them from exploring on their own, or feeding them cheap Chinese food are well known, and it is done by Kiwis, not migrant Chinese as often is claimed in defense by New Zealand.
Immigration consultants are another well known scammer group. They are now required to be registered, but there is an easy way around it. They strike up an alliance with a person or group in China, that group recruit the applicants, email the data to New Zealand where the work is done as usual, then the application is sent back to China, and the “immigration consultant” is now in China and New Zealand law will not apply, but the unregistered immigration consultant in New Zealand can carry on business as usual. It is also an excellent way to avoid tax in New Zealand as fees are paid cash in China. Much of the money finds its way to overseas banks not reporting anything to IRD.
Here are a couple of examples how scammers are alleged and reported to operate.
A company called “NewJobz” and “Skills New Zealand” are repeatedly alleged to have taken an upfront fee to find immigrants job offers so they can get a visa. They take a sizable “membership fee”, and then nothing happens. They also claim to be an immigration consultant. Names that pop up repeatedly are “Stuart Leck”, “Stu Macann” and “Stu Macann and Associates Ltd”. What is said to be happening is that one company is closed down and the information passed on to another, and the new company say it has no obligations to honor commitments the first one made, financial or other, to “members” of the old company. It is just that all the companies have the same owner and operates from the same premises. Potential immigrants lost their up front fees. The money appears to have been “filtered” out as costs, pay and salaries to the owner and media reports claim that potential immigrants lost NZ$600,000. It has been reported to the Commerce Commission and the ministry, but no action.
Another alleged scammer is mail drop provider located in New Zealand. People from overseas and Kiwi expats need a mail address in New Zealand, even if they are traveling overseas. The owner is running a mail center, he sign clients up as “private users” for a smaller fee. Then find ways to "upgrade" them to more expensive options. It is also alleged that he regularly opens customers letters, register their forward address or senders address to find reasons to charge their credit card extra fees. If the customer is using chargeback, which is a feature to protect the credit card users against fraudulent charges, or refuse to pay, they receive threatening letters, and he has been know to retail letters as a “security” until they pay what he asks.
When people have challenged him on opening and reading their mail, he boldly claim that that it is his right under the postal act to open and inspect any postal item. Maybe it is just that the act did not foresee this kind of use of the rights. He also offers a service to have a "secret" address if you are running a business.
We have also seen reports that letters, bank information and bank cards have just disappeared. Another method is to offer a trial, then pretend not to have received the cancellation, and so keep running up fees and debt, or charge them to the customers credit card, until the hapless trial customer pays up.
The authorities seems to accept this behavior, the Commence Commission is apparently not acting on complaints, the courts are too expensive and residents overseas must of course take on the cost of traveling to New Zealand and pay expensive lawyers and even the law firms now agree that any dispute under NZ$70,000 is not worth taking to court.
Using the Disputes Tribunal is also impossible for anyone outside New Zealand, you must be present or the claim is thrown out. To travel maybe three times from Asia to New Zealand may cost in the vicinity of NZ$25,000, and it is not worth it when you are scammed out of a few hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
It is this sort op operator that over the years has given New Zealand a bad reputation, and lately the less flattening reputation of being “The Nigeria of the South pacific.”
Rick Harriss, Kiwi writer in Hong Kong.
Saturday, June 6, 2009
My first Blog and it is about China
This is my first try to blog.
I am born in New Zealand, still a real Kiwi, retired now and have Hong Kong as my base, and I lived and worked almost all my life in China. I should know something about the place, how it works and what makes it tick and where it is heading.
I travel a loot in China, I have local ID so that makes it easy to go anywhere, even places as Tibet, and I read enough Chinese to get around and I travel and live like the Chinese. Someone once told me I was "environmentally damaged". Maybe true, but I fit in easily. People here are not even noticing I am a "foreigner". I am seen as one of them, and I feel proud of that.
I am an old bugger, a chip out of the old block, still very much a passionate Kiwi, and I am passionate about the truth, a clean nice world to live in, and personal freedom and openness. That is the reason I have staid here in China, personal freedom and freedom of expression and the right to remain private or even anonymous is great in China. Much better than New Zealand, believe me.
Many would feel it strange that I say that, after hearing about China's censorship and "oppression". Well, in New Zealand you are supervised, checked and controlled to the hilt. Your Internet browsing is logged, cameras register every move, regular road blocks and cameras keep tabs of you, and good help those who do not have a "Joe Karam" to support them in the in the corrupt justice system which is now so bad that even the judges have started to raise concerns publicly.
Good help those who step outside the "norm" and boundaries the officials and business elite have laid down, and those who dare to speak out against the establishment get very quickly silenced with the help of hundred year old laws, defamation laws, million dollar damages and threats of bankruptcy and ostracism forever from the business, political, or social society.
I am furious that it has gone as far as Asia are now viewing New Zealand as the "Nigeria" of the South Pacific exercising state racism, full of scam operators that take your money and future, and seemingly always get away with it
New Zealand has a great future, if Kiwis just cared to pick up the opportunity. Now they are starving to death in a closet full of canned food, jusr because they have not figured out how to use the can opener. The whole country is on the slippery slope towards a national financial disaster.
The way to handle this as far as China goes is to hire and bring in Kiwis who understand China, who has long and recent experience, has the China competence, who can handle the Chinese and be the counterweight, taking care of New Zealand jobs and interests.
There are not many of those Kiwis around, most live in China now, but for now they seems to be ostracized, "persona non grata", unwanted, in the beancounter based New Zealand corporate world.
Until we see a change, we will see more disasters as Richina, AFFCO, Lions and Fonterra. The Chinese government has put the Fonterra disaster with the dead and injured children and Fonterra cover up behind them, the Chinese public has definitely not.
You want a future for New Zealand, get the people involved who can create it, not the proven failures as now. Rick (harriss.rick@gmail.com)
I am born in New Zealand, still a real Kiwi, retired now and have Hong Kong as my base, and I lived and worked almost all my life in China. I should know something about the place, how it works and what makes it tick and where it is heading.
I travel a loot in China, I have local ID so that makes it easy to go anywhere, even places as Tibet, and I read enough Chinese to get around and I travel and live like the Chinese. Someone once told me I was "environmentally damaged". Maybe true, but I fit in easily. People here are not even noticing I am a "foreigner". I am seen as one of them, and I feel proud of that.
I am an old bugger, a chip out of the old block, still very much a passionate Kiwi, and I am passionate about the truth, a clean nice world to live in, and personal freedom and openness. That is the reason I have staid here in China, personal freedom and freedom of expression and the right to remain private or even anonymous is great in China. Much better than New Zealand, believe me.
Many would feel it strange that I say that, after hearing about China's censorship and "oppression". Well, in New Zealand you are supervised, checked and controlled to the hilt. Your Internet browsing is logged, cameras register every move, regular road blocks and cameras keep tabs of you, and good help those who do not have a "Joe Karam" to support them in the in the corrupt justice system which is now so bad that even the judges have started to raise concerns publicly.
Good help those who step outside the "norm" and boundaries the officials and business elite have laid down, and those who dare to speak out against the establishment get very quickly silenced with the help of hundred year old laws, defamation laws, million dollar damages and threats of bankruptcy and ostracism forever from the business, political, or social society.
I am furious that it has gone as far as Asia are now viewing New Zealand as the "Nigeria" of the South Pacific exercising state racism, full of scam operators that take your money and future, and seemingly always get away with it
New Zealand has a great future, if Kiwis just cared to pick up the opportunity. Now they are starving to death in a closet full of canned food, jusr because they have not figured out how to use the can opener. The whole country is on the slippery slope towards a national financial disaster.
The way to handle this as far as China goes is to hire and bring in Kiwis who understand China, who has long and recent experience, has the China competence, who can handle the Chinese and be the counterweight, taking care of New Zealand jobs and interests.
There are not many of those Kiwis around, most live in China now, but for now they seems to be ostracized, "persona non grata", unwanted, in the beancounter based New Zealand corporate world.
Until we see a change, we will see more disasters as Richina, AFFCO, Lions and Fonterra. The Chinese government has put the Fonterra disaster with the dead and injured children and Fonterra cover up behind them, the Chinese public has definitely not.
You want a future for New Zealand, get the people involved who can create it, not the proven failures as now. Rick (harriss.rick@gmail.com)
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