Proof that concern about Asian investment is simply racism

Canadians are the biggest foreign investors in New Zealand followed by the Chinese and Americans with Australians coming in fourth: Hosking.

So if Asians are coming and ripping our country out from under our feet — the facts don't back it up.

Thus proving, as some of us have been trying to point out, that a lot of the debate is driven by nothing more than racism.

KPMG has looked into direct foreign investment, the stuff that gets notified that's over $100 million. It doesn't include housing.

The stats on housing are still sketchy as the Labour party can testify too — given the trouble they got into for looking at a list of Chinese-sounding names and deciding who was a foreign investor and who wasn't.

So when it comes to the big money stuff, the serious notified direct foreign investment stuff, who are the big players?

The Canadians, and perhaps more interestingly, the Canadian pension fund, of which many millions of Canadians are part of.

It's the same as our Cullen fund, which by the way if you're one of those people who hates foreign investment, does exactly the same thing in many other countries and many other companies in lots of different parts of the world.

Anyway, the Canadians are by far the biggest direct foreign investors in New Zealand. A very distant second are the Chinese matched by the Americans, with Australians coming in fourth.

Now we haven't had a lot of debate about the Australians and the Americans and the Canadians. Why is that?

Because they're not Asian and they don't look any different, therefore they're harder to spot.

In fact, if you add up the Canadians, Americans and Australians, they account for almost half of all foreign direct investment. Almost half compared to the Chinese 14%.

If we're not worried by the Americans and Canadians, isn't that, in fact, one of the racist ironies of this whole debate?

You'll note we call them Asians — people from China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia the list goes on — they're all Asians.

We lump hundreds of millions of completely separate people into one broad group — and yet we go to some lengths to delineate the Canadians from the Americans. As opposed to simply calling them all north Americans.

If we're not worried by the Canadians and Americans and Australians and their massive presence here, what's with the Asians? Why the fascination consternation and upset over 14% compared to 50%? The only possible conclusion you can draw — racism.

My suspicion when they eventually get around to working out similar stats on housing is it'll prove to be roughly the same and if that's the case can we once and for all, put the whole shallow racist debate to bed?