Where There’s Muck There’s Money
This month’s highlighted Decision involves a notorious transnational corporation (TNC), well known to CAFCA for decades. The Minister for Land Information and the Associate Minister of Finance approved Tui BidCo Limited (Australia 63.8%, Canada 16.7%, Japan 13.5%, USA 4.5%, Europe 1.3%, Cayman Islands 0.07%, Various 0.1%) buying 100% of Beijing Capital Group NZ Investment Holdings Limited (China 100%), for $1.9 billion.
“The Applicant is a company incorporated in New Zealand for the purposes of this investment. It is ultimately owned by First Sentier Funds which is managed by First Sentier Investors, a global fund manager which invests in economic infrastructure assets such as waste management, energy, water and chemical storage facilities as well as transport and telecommunication networks in OECD countries”.
“The Applicant has been granted consent to acquire 100% of the issued share capital of Beijing Capital Group NZ Investment Holding Limited which is the parent company of Waste Management NZ Limited (WMNZ). WMNZ is New Zealand’s largest resource recovery and waste management services provider. The Applicant will acquire all the assets of WMNZ and WMNZ’s 28 subsidiaries, some of which hold interests in sensitive land. The majority of the land comprises landfills and buffer land”.
“It also includes farm land, residential land, and land containing fresh or seawater areas, public access, and areas of indigenous flora and fauna. The investment is likely to result in additional investment for development purposes, environmental benefits including the reduction of CO2 emissions, increased employment, advancement of Government policies on emissions reduction, and continued public access”. The land involved includes Waste Management’s landfills in places like: Dome Valley, Dairy Flat, Redvale, Springhill, Kate Valley, Wayby Valley, Tirohia, Fairfield and Bonny Glen.
Type “Waste Management” into the search engine on the CAFCA Website and you’ll get many pages of references going back to the 1990s. The very first online Watchdog was 92, December 1999 and it contained an article simply titled “Waste Management”. The 91 issues before that, some also containing articles about Waste Management, are on another site and are no longer able to be accessed free of charge.
“Not Of Good Character”
Over the decades, CAFCA has laid several “not of good character” complaints against various TNCs to the Overseas Investment Office and its predecessor, the Overseas Investment Commission. Waste Management was one of them (unsuccessful, like all of our other such complaints). For example, see: “Waste Management. Another ‘Good Character’ Case From The CAFCA Archives” (Watchdog 123, May 2010). Waste Management featured in the Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand more than once, although it never won.
For example, it was a finalist in 2009, when it was owned by Transpacific Industries. You can read that year’s Roger Award Judges Report here. It didn’t take kindly to featuring in the Roger Award. In my speech at the Wellington event to name the 2012 winner, I detailed the TNCs which had sought to argue the toss with CAFCA and the other Roger Award organisers, saying that we had been sent “a video from the former owners of Waste Management about how their Auckland rubbish dump is good enough to eat”. Yum, yum.
For decades, Waste Management, under various company names and various owners; has been stirring up opposition from local communities the length of the country. CAFCA was actively involved in one such Canterbury campaign in the 1990s; the latest such battle is being waged by Fight The Tip, Save The Dome. This is the campaign by locals to save Dome Valley, north of Auckland, from Waste Management. You can contact them on Facebook.