The Labour Party wants to change the law to tighten procedures for selling state owned assets, saying a sale should only be given the go-ahead if 75% of Parliament agrees to it, or if a majority of the public allowed a sale via a referendum.
Labour leader Phil Goff made the announcement to media this morning, with the party's SOE spokesman Clayton Cosgrove to draft a members bill for Parliament.
The National Party has said it would look to sell up to 49% of state owned power companies Genesis Energy, Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy, as well as Solid Energy, if it won a second term in government after the November 26 election. In its May Budget documents Treasury included up to NZ$7 billion in gains from the pending sales.
Goff said New Zealand's SOEs were not National's to sell.
"John Key is arrogantly ignoring the fact that at least two-thirds of New Zealanders strongly oppose the sale of our community-owned assets. He should have to seek a specific mandate before flogging off those assets to corporate and foreign buyers,” Goff said.
However Goff dismissed Key's claim that the November 26 election would be National's mandate to sell the assets.
The private members bill would require any future proposal to partly or wholly privatise an SOE or Crown entity to gain support from 75% of Parliament or from a majority of voters in a referendum, Goff said.
The bill, to be called the State-Owned Enterprises and Crown Entities (Protecting New Zealand’s Strategic Assets) Amendment bill would entrench enterprises listed in Schedules 1 and 2 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act 1986.
"Those assets include our state electricity generation and transmission companies, NZ Post (including KiwiBank), Landcorp (including its extensive holding of farmland) and Solid Energy. It also includes other strategic assets like Radio New Zealand, Television New Zealand and the Crown research institutes," Goff said.
28 Comments
So is Labour saying it doesn't think it can stop asset sales by winning the election? Instead it feels it needs to write a members bill to try stop them?
Otherwise it's just a publicity stunt.
If that's the case, how much time is Cosgrove wasting on this when he could be focussing on his committments in Christchurch?
Plus Labour is currently fillibustering the VSM bill, so what chances does this one have of being picked and put through?...none.
Would you not be buying shares in your own tax money or are SOE's entities that have been created by the NZ Government by borrowing money from private institutions to create a company in the Governments name and not by the NZ Government owning the SOE in question outright by using tax payer money to create an SOE?
I suppose having a 75% majority would be cheaper than having a referendum but either would certainly provide stability instead of the stop go policies we have now. Most of the people do not want the family silver sold and then have to rent that silver back in order to have dinner (as I read somewhere). It does nothing for New Zealand. It didn't work in the 1980s why should anyone think it can work now. Shareholders have no interests other than bettering their own pockets.
Alex:So is Labour saying it doesn't think it can stop asset sales by winning the election? Instead it feels it needs to write a members bill to try stop them?
Otherwise it's just a publicity stunt.
Yes certainly has a piont....on the other hand I think Labour has a piont to
Patrica:" Most of the people do not want the family silver sold and then have to rent that silver back in order to have dinner
It is a matter of defining "what is the family silver"
Justice? education? water? essentual transport (railways/roads,? Auckland Harbour Bridge? ACC? power supply? poer transimission? retail power?coal mines? DoC? Wins? Housing corp? land/farms.
And it is also a balance as to selling and having the asset stripped, into a worthless pile junk, or sold and not upgraded for future expansion , devalopement..like the railways were
It is not and should not be a debate abiout selling assets of, but also what, in the long term can and cant be sold off and as to who.
Labour's policy is what should already be in place. I object to asset sales without recourse to voters on several grounds. One is that I already own it, so why should I have to pay for it again? The other is the lies told around the selling. In this case, we're told "Mums and Dads" will be offered shares. Does that mean only Kiws can buy them? No, it doesn't. It means a few wealthy people in NZ will be able to capture for themselves pieces of state assets currently owned by all of us. I can't imagine many "Mums and Dads" earning the average wage, or even double it, will have any spare cash to buy shares in assets they already own.
No...these assets are being peddled to foreign buyers. There are strong indications the Chinese government's investment arm will end up owning a big wack of shares.
The third part of this that annoys the hell out of me is the claimed need to pay down debt. Even if we get $7billion....that won't pay for National's tax cuts for even 18 months.....and then what?
I'm more than satisfied this is one the least competent governments New Zealand has had in living memory.
That said, an election should not boil down to a referendum on one issue. When it does, a whole creche full of babies go out with the swimming pool water for the sake of a single issue.
Way to go Floaty Meme...just give the IRD a call and tell them to put you on the top paye tax rate for every dollar you earn..that way JK and BE will not have to sell any assets to raise the loot to pay down the borrowing done in the past...you pay Meme.
If that gets right up your nose Meme...no worries because JK and BE will just hike the power charges to suck the required loot from you on your accounts instead of the tax....come to think of it this would be a better way to go...everyone gets to pay then.
Should only take about twenty years Meme...happy with that?
Wolly: It wasn't me who chose to implement tax cuts that not only removed the safety margin from the public acounts in bad times (earthquakes, floods, global financial crashes), but they aren't even sustainable if we had good times. To me, such an unsustainable approach to the public accounts your rightly point out we all must for spells out incompetence in big red flashing letters. I'm frankly surprised you appear to defend it.
National clearly wanted the deficit to use as an excuse to what they wanted to do. That's why all the promises to not sell assets in the first term. They needed to bed in their sabotage of the public accounts they oversee on behalf of all of us. I know that looks more like fraud, but I'm happy to call it mere incometence for now.
It's a new dance craze..."the socialist twist"....instead of accepting Labour buggered the economy, blame National for the recession and claim they did it to enable a sale of assets ......Don't change anything Meme whether you do the socialist twist or not...the debt remains and one way or other it has to be paid...so fork out Meme!
Just what they deserve Anon...go ask Goofy why he didn't tell Cullen and Clark that changing the law to prevent the sale of AIA... would amount to legalised theft of private property....
Think about it Anon...if he was happy to see that done...what else would he be happy to grab...
Sell off all the SOE's , including Landcorp , and biff in the gaols and hospitals too . The sooner they begin operating for the benefit of customers , instead of for their own internal bureaucracies , the better .
...... Labour are dog tucker ! ..... Bereft of fresh ideas , same old codgers in the key positions . Goofy has had 29 years in parliament , his expiry date is well over-due .
75 % , pah ! .... Goofy is admitting that he and his cronies the Greens will only muster just over 25 % control of the new parliament ........ aha de haaaaaaaa !
If it's profitable your question answers itself. A profitable public assets funds its own operating and investment like any private company would...and may well have better access to cheap capital than most - perhaps all - private operators.
If it's not profitable in and of itself it may well be that the benefit derived from the activity produces savings elsewhere in the public accounts. An example might to subsidise public transport for some amount ($500M?) on the basis it means you do not have to spend $2Billion building and maintaining a new road. Along it would look like a huge loss. But overall it represents win.
If you divide these up into separate private enterprises you lose the opportunity for this sort of economic benefit. That's how "efficient" private enterprise wastes vast sums of money and resources every day.
I'm a pragmatist. The market does some things very well. Others are best done in an open and transparent way by a publicly-owned entity. I have no religion on this. The bottom line for me is i see no sense at all in selling a profitable public enterprise. At the end of the day it doesn't come down to who owns it - but more how well (or not) it is being run. We have many examples of both well run and poorly run entities in both the public and private sector. The benefit of a public entity is that a wider, longer view can be taken where the private operator is concerned only with profit...and then too often short term only. . That narrow view has been demonstrated repeatedly to be inadequate overall. A balanced, functional economy appears to need a good mix of solid long stayers and mercurial fast (and too often loose) players. The market - today - defines itself as the latter.
Thank you for the oportunity to provide serious answers to your trivial trolling. At least one side of the case is being made.
"...I see no sense at all in selling a profitable public enterprise..."
If the axe were about to swing down on your head Meme...ie rates about to shoot higher because the liar agencies finally decided the NZ debt position was little different to the piigs...leading to you paying out a bloody sight more in interest on your mortgage...and everyone else...thereby driving the recession deeper for longer...blah blah blah..............got that Meme.....we all know dam well you would instantly see sense in selling a profitable asset ...if it prevented you forking out the loot......right Meme.
Now do you see sense Meme?
Labour should be careful with what it wishes for with referenda. They are usually sought by the rabid right, who know very well that voters can be swayed if you throw enough $$$ into promotions.
That is why the BRT etc are stroking their hands and salivating over the MMP referenda.
If you want to see where enthusiasm with referenda takes you, take a line thru California, which has become ungovernable as a result of a referendum-happy environment.
Happy Monday to all
Selling state assets is bad for the country so the harder to sell them the better.
That siad, I'd also like a definition of Natural Monopolies and a policy that such monopolies will be state owned. Telecommunications and electricity come to mind as natural monopolies as it's just inefficient having multiple networks and the regulations that are needed to get them working effectively.
So at least we find out that Wolly really is a woolly wolly after all. Like a lamb to the slaughter.
With lines like:
If you sell it off then yes...but not if you keep control....
Maybe he really know maybe he doesn't. So we should tell him anyway.
The 51% is not really the point. As soon as they float the Hydro dams . The market will then be in control not the Government.
The market will demand and get:
'Market' pay for the executives
'Marke't returns for Weldon
'Market' profits for the bankers
'Market' prices for us
Of course for the rest of us who have to actually pay for it all there will not be a market at all. But of course Woolly Wolly knows that.
If Wooly Wolly wants to understand what a real market looks like he could go and get the wool out of his ears with via a trip to the hairdressers. Now that is a real market, plenty of suppliers, lots of different services, bundled or not bundled, vast range of prices etc ie a real functional operating market.
With current technologies electricity supply does not exist in a real market anywhere on the planet.
Providing electricity for New Zealand is a dumb boring job best left to engineers- the really clever people who can actually build and maintain things. Instead the idiot financial engineers want to get there hands on the Hydro dams so they can "manage them- load them up with even more debt. Trade in them and generally add not an once of value.
Take a look at what Singapore is doing in the energy sector and compare and contrast with us. We are playing the wrong game in the wrong park, and the light is fading fast.
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