Phil Goff has just announced that Labour is putting up a private members’ bill to entrench SOEs. This would mean they could only be sold either with 75% support of Parliament, or with majority support in a referendum. Great Stuff. These are our assets. They should not be sold without our permission.
Labour proposes a new law to stop asset sales. More like this please!
Natural monopolies should be controlled by councils or government. The so called free market has only one plan for them: extract as much money as they can, then keep milking them for all they are worth till the government steps in and regulates or is forced to buy the asset back with the private owners making a huge profit.
An attempt to promote asset sales in yesterday’s Dom ended up falling on its face. The author takes the government line, that Contact provides the template for ‘mum and dad’ investors buying SOEs. But the article admits the truth: only a tiny fraction of Kiwis ever invested in Contact, less own it now, and even they may soon be forced out.
Question Time: David Cunliffe wipes the floor with Bill English in the House today, as he shows up his missing costs of asset sales.
So, that’s National’s great big plan: get rid of our electricity assets and use the cash to build more prisons. Not much of a brighter future there. National still hasn’t come up with a convincing reason why we would sell highly profitable monopolistic companies. Instead, we’ve seen a series of weak excuses. Now, English has revealed the truth.
National has announced plans to privatise ACC’s work account. Currently, they don’t have the numbers to get it through the House. ACT won’t vote for it because its not completely rabid and the Maori Party won’t vote for privatisation. So, this becomes another election issue: another bloody good reason to vote National out.
Labour’s Chris Hipkins has the inside word: On Wednesday this week, Nick Smith is going to announce what amounts to the effective privatisation of a large part of ACC. You won’t hear the word privatisation uttered from his lips, he’ll use all sorts of other words like ‘competition’ and ‘market discipline’, but privatisation it will be.
No Right Turn on National’s spin about “Mum and Dad investors”.
Based on the Herald’s latest poll, that is a message the Left will be well advised to push hard. The poll shows 62% opposition vs 29% support for asset sales, while NACT polls at 56%. So, at least 18% are prospective NACT voters AND oppose Key’s main policy. The Left can win over many of these people on this vital issue.
Labour’s new online game is hilarious. Choose whether or not to take the options presented and see the results. Politics is all about choices
Remember when John Key was promising that he would seek a mandate from the people at the election before starting to sell public assets and cutting Kiwisaver. It was only a week ago. And he’s breaking his promises already: the Kiwisaver cuts actually kick in on July 1, and the privatisation process is underway.
*Key says that we will get to vote on his Kiwisaver cuts in the election. Truth is, they passed the law last week and the tax credits are cut from July 1. *What’s up with the dodgy Kiwibank numbers? Plans for sale? *The govt is importing World Cup workers while 270K are jobless. *Key’s jokes falling flat with pissed off voters.
It matters not who owns a thing, what really matters is “who controls it” . We have been watching our house being burgled for to long haven’t we? We seem to forget we are still in control of this country, and we the people need to get back that control, the control of our parliament, that belongs to us!
Not in John Key and Bill English’s third budget. The ‘good times’ they are promising would have looked pitiful under Labour. 4% wage growth will be below inflation once the Kiwisaver clawbacks get you. National have pinned their hopes on Christchurch rebuilding itself, and claiming the credit for themselves. Oh, and their projections assume asset sales.
Colin James tips National’s plan for our water: ” a Crown company like that for ultra-fast broadband fibre-laying, capitalised from the proceeds of selldowns of state-owned enterprises and operating in public-private partnerships to get projects under way and then sell them on to farmers. Now where does China fit in that?”
Sounds like one disaster after the other. Decisions after the election of course.
I’ve long held to the principle of owning your mistakes and as such I’ve gotta say I was wrong about one aspect of the “stop asset sales” campaign – the signs are authorised.
The TV3 poll has the NACT vs Lab/Green/NZF gap at 22% vs 9% in the latest Roy Morgan. I’ll tend to pay attention to the company that polls every fortnight to the one that polls once in a blue moon. Nevertheless, the story of both polls is the same: Labour struggling to make headway + Nats potentially with a majority = opportunity for Winston Peters
National came to power promising to close the wage gap with Australia. Not only have they failed to fulfill that promise but Bill English now portrays it as a good thing. His appearance on Q+A yesterday only confirms how out of touch National is: determined to sell our assets for no good reason, against our will, and happy with our low wages.
The PSA is the frontline in our fight against National’s plans to savagely cut our public services. Much in the same vein as the sticker campaign that Eddie posted on yesterday, the PSA has used humour to get across an incisive message: what the rich elitists in National consider ‘nice to have’ is very different from what we value.
This post is largely by the head of the IMF. “[T]he pendulum will swing … from the market to the state,” Mr Strauss-Kahn says, “The benefits of growth must be broadly shared, not just captured by a privileged few … the invisible hand must not become the invisible fist.”
The economy, shall we say politely, is facing some difficulties. With a National government there was no plan as to how to weather the economic storm, we just got tax cuts for the rich and an economy that just can’t get growing.
I’m really pissed off that politics has come into the Christchurch earthquake so quickly. But make no mistake, the Nats are pursuing a strongly ideological agenda. They’re using the quake as cover for radically cutting important policies and making other extreme decisions, while preserving the tax cuts for the rich. It’s called the Shock Doctrine.
Kiwis are strongly against selling our public assets. National’s policy is opposed by 60% and supported by just 30%. That’s more opposition than the mining proposal. There’ll be no back-down from the Nats – pillaging the State is a core reason for them wanting power. On these numbers, it may lose them the election.
As you know, National has been trying to justify selling off our assets and cutting our public services to pay for tax cuts for the rich by saying that debt is at dangerous levels and we risk a credit downgrade. Numerous commentators have shown that’s false. Now, the final nail in the coffin has come from credit ratings agency Standard & Poor’s.
To avoid another three years of backhanders to the rich, falling wages, rising unemployment, and asset sales, we have nine months to chip away at National’s support. As in 2008, The Standard will be running a campaign offering flyers etc for your to print off and deliver around your neighbourhood. Privatisation is an obvious first target.
Today’s Herald contains the first unequivocal defence of National’s plan to sell our assets to pay for tax cuts for the rich. It’s disappointing to say the least – confused, piecemeal, and unconvincing. Ironically, it’s written by some guy from an insolvency company – ie. someone who makes money from cleaning up after others’ poor business decisions.
Brian Fallow has put the nails in the coffin of the Nats’ privatisation arguments. His column goes through the excuses that National has come up with for selling the family silver and none of them stack up. Nor does Key’s ‘money-go-round’ where the state-owned Cullen Fund buys these state-owned assets to free up cash for the state.
*English vs English on assets sales, as business commentators come out against the flawed business case for privatisation. *Will Hide honour his word and resign over Supercity debacle? *Foreshore Bill to join CERRA as a constitutional outrage. *Economic woe keeps coming. *Is the ‘brighter future’ on its way or just more Key stunts?
There are some interesting legal and constitutional parallels between the Maori party’s attempts to rid themselves of Hone Harawira and previous unsuccessful attempts […]
The kneejerk righties have praised John Key’s plan to sell our public assets (indeed, the Herald seems to be calling for something far more radical in today’s editorial) but all the substantive analysis of the proposal continues to show it’s an ideologically-driven rip-off. Here’s Geoff Simmons’ take.
One of John Key’s excuses for selling our SOEs is that we need the cash to buy $33 billion of new assets over the next 5 years. Sounds like a lot, eh? It turns out the Crown spent $42 billion on new assets* over the last 5 years without selling our SOEs and even with that $33 billion of new capital spending the deficit will be gone in 4 years … I wonder what Key’s next line will be.
The same old formula has played out again: National appoints an expensive, hand-picked working group (the Savings Working Group). The working group comes up with predictable recommendations. The Nats extreme recommendations out of hand, to appear moderate, and do what they were planning to do. Here are the real savings solutions.
We face a stark choice this year: a Labour-led government, which will create fairer tax and invest in jobs and innovation, or National-led government, which will govern for the kleptocracy, giving them tax cuts, then selling our assets and slashing our public services to pay for them. So why is the Goffice doing such a bad job making the case?
