It's official: size does matter and what your planning to do with it also matters. That's been confirmed by a woman who should know because if she got it wrong then she'll be in all sorts of trouble.

Zip it sweetie Paula Bennett has decided that Lochinver Station, the prime piece of real estate near Taupo is, among other things, too big to be flogging off to the Chinese. She's also not satisfied that what they were planning to do with it was enough to fill her, or the country, with the warm and fuzzies.

The Overseas Investment Office is less discerning it seems. They clearly feel that size doesn't matter and they were happy to accommodate the Chinese buyer who was willing to cough up $88m for the 14,000-hectare property - several thousand hectares bigger than Blenheim.

But they were told to zip it and Bennett, as Associate Finance Minister, scuttled the sale.

You can imagine the fury of the farm's owner who says they extensively marketed the farm for sale and no Kiwi buyer came forward. The only one with the readies was the Chinese buyer who gobbled up the troubled Crafar farms a while back.

Shanghai Pengxin's spent $18m improving those farms and claim improvements to the property have increased productivity to new historical levels.

Lochinver's owners, the Stevenson Group, rightly say they've been deprived of their property right to sell to the highest bidder.

So understandably high indignation from the would be buyers and seller. But imagine if it had been sold. Luigi Peters would be on the next plane back from media managing the Parliamentary rugger team in London, no doubt claiming he had to get back to a country while it's still called New Zealand.

As it is his sidekick, the rampaging Ronnie Mark ranted that the Beehive was nervous, only acting now because their polling shows they're on the slippery slope. If that's the case they're defying gravity.

On this one the Government would be damned if it does and is damned if it doesn't even if the real lever pullers have taken a spectator's seat on this one.

Bennett's boss Bill English said she didn't consult with him before making the decision but in the same breath there was a Freudian fumble when he said they'd been "kicking the decision," before correcting himself and saying he was interested in it being made but insisted he wasn't part of it.

Break out the Tui's!