This wouldn't have happened without people like you standing up for ocean protection - thank you!!

💙 Want to join the movement? Call on the NZ Govt to help create global ocean sanctuaries
greenpeace.nz/8igcnr

This is a huge win for the ocean - and for all of us. After years of relentless people power got us this far - will you use your voice to push governments to turn the Treaty into action and swiftly create a vast network of ocean sanctuaries?

sign here: greenpeace.nz/8igcnr

The Treaty provides a pathway for creating areas of the ocean across the globe that are protected from harmful human activity like industrial fishing - including bottom trawling.

Decades of campaigning, organising, and showing up led to the Treaty being agreed by governments at the United Nations in 2023. Over two years later and the movement of millions of people around the world have continued to work tirelessly to get it over the line.

These changes, driven by Seymour’s ACT Party, serve foreign corporations and offshore shareholders — not New Zealanders or our most precious places. NZ First should do what it eventually did with the Regulatory Standards Act and pull its support.

That test required overseas buyers to show clear benefits to NZ, such as environmental protection or public access. It’s gone. The special forestry test is also gone — meaning offshore forestry investments, despite proven harm, now face fewer checks and fewer conditions.

The Government has also stripped out its ability to impose even basic conditions on these land sales — like protecting biodiversity, preserving heritage, or keeping public land accessible. It even removed the “Benefit to New Zealand” test entirely.

That means corporations with records of environmental destruction, labour abuses or tax evasion will now be able to buy some of Aotearoa’s most precious places with less scrutiny than before. And it gets worse.

David Seymour’s Overseas Investment Amendment Bill passed last week. One of its biggest changes: removing the requirement for the Government to run even basic criminal checks on corporations wanting to buy New Zealand’s most sensitive land.