The National-led Government has got itself into a complicated muddle over its position on overseas investment in this country, especially the controversial matter of land purchase.
Although recent debate has been triggered by the Crafar farms case, the sale of land to overseas buyers has been a niggling issue for many people for some years.
A year ago, the Minister of Finance ordered a review of the Overseas Investment Act, which is the legislative control on such sales, in line with the Government's intention of making applications to the Overseas Investment Office able to be processed more rapidly.
The result of that has been an application processing time reduced from 63 days in 2009 to 38 days during the past 10 months.
Additionally, the scoping regime which attempts to set a threshold on the sale of so-called "sensitive" land - that is to say pastoral land - was to be reviewed.
Now, it appears the Government is actually looking to respond to public concerns by looking at how to stop the sell-off of large tracts of land to foreign buyers - or so the Prime Minister has indicated.
Some of the concerns are certainly well-founded.
The interest by Chinese backers in buying dairy farms in this country is suspected by many to be but a first step in developing a vertically integrated business linking land, production, processing and product sale to controlled markets, with all profits remitted overseas, and from which New Zealand would derive very little benefit.
Federated Farmers has quite properly also raised the spectre of overseas landowners converting good pasture land into so-called "carbon forests": there is a lot of a money to be made from carbon sequestration and, the organisation says, some 72% of New Zealand's forests are already controlled by overseas owners.
The argument in favour of asset sales is based almost wholly on the need for more capital investment to create employment.
This has some promise with regard to productive ventures such as dairy farming and processing, but very little employment would be created if good land was to be sold for carbon sequestration.
The sale of land to "foreigners" is also a deeply emotional matter for many New Zealanders, especially if they can see no obvious benefits.
It is not just a matter of xenophobia; issues around land and land "ownership" have been dominant in public debate since the Waitangi Tribunal was first set up more than 30 years ago, and foreign investment has simply added more contention.
The Green Party has proposed a member's Bill to remove the ability of foreign buyers to purchase "sensitive" land, and should that make progress it is bound to upset New Zealand land-owners who want to sell their assets to foreign buyers.
Perhaps behind most of the fears is that foreign owners could become the dominant force in New Zealand land transactions, simply because their pockets are far deeper than potential local buyers.
Even Mr Key has conceded it is not impossible foreign capitalists "could literally buy New Zealand's productive base.
Do we want to be tenants in our own country or do we want to own our own destiny?"The issue of foreign ownership is not confined to land.
The events surrounding the sale of the railways system, the stripping of its assets, and the subsequent need for the taxpayer to buy it back have prompted action to revise regulations to in some way prevent infrastructure sales to investors whose interests do not align with the national interest.
At risk, however, is this country's numerous free-trade agreements, especially with expanding economies such as China's, and its deregulated international image.
The eventual outcome of the review may take a similar form to that found in Australia, where the Government requires - in the national interest - that purchases be made and operated through local companies with local headquarters and with predominantly local management, in effect, with local control and therefore local regulatory standards.
The Green Party's Bill, which is concerned only with land sales, would restrict overseas sales of farmland to 5ha, effectively a complete prohibition, and is unlikely to succeed on that basis.
The Treasury itself has been actively promoting an absence of deterrents, arguing that this would create investor certainty, and that there should be no or very limited regulatory constraints.
A simple condition such as requiring the Minister of Finance to reject applications for foreign purchase of local assets on a "not in the national interest" basis may not in itself be a sufficient impediment, given the contrary political policy factors and increasing public uneasiness.
This is, after all, a Government ever conscious of the art of the possible.
