Tommy Wilson: Is the silver lining for us too?

There's gold in them there suburbs and just like the gold rush of the early Otago days there is as yet an unknown number of Chinese speculators who see housing as the silver lining of our long white cloud.

Ironically, there are many locals especially the poor and Maori who see it as exactly the opposite and a dark cloud from which there seems to be no silver lining to give them a safe and warm place to live in.

The real winner is Labour who has worked out how to increase its ratings six points in three weeks by having a crack at the Asian Invasion.

If you are to believe the 'Gold Rush' gospel according to Labour, there is a tsunami of yuan heading our way, and it's going to swamp any chance of our own owning their own whare, especially in Auckland that could see Tamaki Makaurau - the land of a thousand lovers, become the land of a thousand-a-month new Asian owners.

Many, including myself, are asking is all the korero being bandied around by Labour racist or is it realist?

Are the figures of 9 per cent of Aucklanders who are Chinese, against 39 per cent of new owners being the same, as claimed by Little and his Labour leaders, on the mark or purely cut n paste political point scoring?

In three months Nick Smith says he will give us the answer.

Sure there is a supply versus demand argument being championed by National's stand-in spokesperson on behalf of captain Keyora, who is ironically out of town talking free trade, and yes this is not just a New Zealand phenomenon. It is happening across the ditch where Chinese money is being dumped at vault-filling proportions on a daily basis.

The trouble is no one is measuring the size of the tsunami and it may well be too late by the time it hits here.

Not only for our housing market by many other immeasurables that could have fall-out for generations to come, one of them for me is the impact it will have on our communities.

Our communities survive by what the residents contribute to their well-being.

When we were kids growing up in the Mount we had wonderful Chinese families who had whakapapa dating back ten generations to the good old gold days in Otago. Jimmy Joe was a mate at school and we went on to work together at this very newspaper. Half a dozen letter boxes down from us in Macville Rd there were the Archees who owned the local fruit shop and the Lim Sans who were my first employers cutting chips and dicing carrots at their Golden Horizon cafe.

These were families who coached softball, helped at the Marae and socialised in all corners of our community. In Te Puna we are blessed by owners who show up at our tangi, sponsor the local rugby club and hold out the hand of help at every opportunity.

So are the Chinese new home owners investing in our country and our communities or are they purely speculating as many or most did back in the good old gold rush days of the early 18th century?

Hopefully it is the latter and we get the Jimmy Joes, Archees and the Lim Sans contributing to our communities and not just taking the money and hiding it behind the Great Wall back home.

The really positive point that many are thinking but no one is publicly declaring is as a country we are growing up very quickly from a cultural point of view and the conversations we would once only hold privately behind closed doors are now being held in public.

Is this about ethnicity or ethical investment? Depends on what poll or political spin you want to believe in.

I suspect it's a bit of a bob each way.

One thing is for sure, Labour has found a new footprint to push its party back into relevance and for that they must be rubbing their hands together just like the Chinese investors who are making money hand over fist and a lot quicker than their stock exchange is losing it.

broblack@xtra.co.nz
- Tommy Wilson is a best selling author and local writer.