Little's claims rile Tauranga Chinese

Andrew Little in Tauranga yesterday defending Labour's controversial Chinese house-buyer revelations. Photo / John Borren

Labour leader Andrew Little denies finger-pointing at New Zealand's Chinese residents when he made his controversial statements that nearly 40 per cent of recent house sales in Auckland were to people with Chinese names.

Mr Little was responding to criticism from Tauranga personal banker Candy Yan, who is president of the Bay of Plenty Chinese Business and Commerce Association.

She told the Bay of Plenty Times yesterday that it was unfair to hear a person in Mr Little's position making statements like that.

Stressing that her comments were personal rather than representing the association, she disagreed with the way that the comments were also pointed at New Zealand's Chinese community and not just overseas buyers.

She said that people were already starting to blame Chinese for Auckland's property woes prior to the statement being issued.

"This will make it worse. I don't like his statements. A lot of Chinese have lived here for 20 or 30 years, or even their whole life. Chinese are a part of New Zealand, so why pick on them?"

Mr Little, who was in Tauranga yesterday visiting successful export businesses and the Merivale Community Centre, said he had used real estate data and had not been finger-pointing.

The data showed that nearly 40 per cent of Auckland house sales in three months were to people with Chinese names. While it did not show the residency status of buyers, it was not credible that the 9 per cent of Auckland who were ethnic Chinese were buying 40 per cent of the houses, he said.

Mr Little said the repeated story being heard in real estate circles was that people living in far off countries were bidding it up at auctions. "Locals were not getting a look in."

He said New Zealand's Chinese residents were clearly not the problem. "They are as much the victim as anyone else."

Although the Government had been dismissive of the issue of non-resident foreign buyers, he said the leaked data told a different story. Labour was illustrating a problem that everyone knew about but for which there had been no data.

Mr Little said the actual numbers of non-resident house buyers could be higher because some sales came through solicitors' nominee companies without a Chinese name.

"The whole point of collecting the data was so that the market is informed."

New Zealand residents should not have to compete with people who lived overseas and were buying houses as an investment or holiday home. Labour would change the rules so that non-residents could only build new houses. "But don't compete with locals for older houses."

Although he understood the concerns of resident Chinese New Zealanders, he was being consistent with Labour's message for the last couple of years. "It is about any non-resident foreign buyer. Locals ought to be grateful."