Since everyone else has taken leave of their senses to go have a cry, I’ll take up the debate. Seriously its rotten bad luck and all that, and terribly sad for 29 families but really to suspend discussions and daily life is really just sooky behaviour.
Now, let there be no more carping, mewling and whining from Labour about privatisation anymore. They have now embraced it. I think they announced this during the Pike River disaster in the hope it would fly under the radar. But for other sooky media, bloggers and politicians it just may well have. Rumour has it that Cunliffe had two speeches… one when the news was buried by other events, and another that didn’t signal any economic changes.
Labour will make bold changes to the economy including allowing public-private partnership for transport, considering an “inbound transactions tax” and allow private shareholders to own shares in subsidiaries of state owned enterprises, finance spokesman David Cunllffe said today.
In a speech to the Institute of Policy Studies in Wellington Mr Cunliffe said Labour would not go on a spending spree, but would reduce net debt and build a stronger capital base.
He said private equity in SOEs’ subsidiaries would not dilute taxpayer equity or lead to wholly or partially privatising the SOE.
In some respects this is a little strange because they pulled out of endorsing PPPs and now they are back in.
Predictably there are some upset pinkos which means this policy is actually a good one from Silent T.
It is good in the sense that it finally removes the scales from the eyes of Labour with regards to privatisation. No Right Turn points out the details behind the policy on privatisation.
Which is technically correct – instead we have a partially privatised subsidiary. But by permitting that, he effectively gives away the farm. To point out the obvious, Kiwibank is not an SOE, but a subsidiary of one (NZ Post). And this policy means he has no objection to selling it to rapacious Aussies. More generally, by allowing part-privatisation of SOE subsidiaries, he removes any grounds to prohibit it in the SOEs themselves. The result is to open up space for National to do exactly that.
Yep, good idea. Move ACC to be a subsidiary of an SOE. Kiwibank is already primed under Labour’s policy….I’m sure there are even more. Time to get cracking.
In fact make one big SOE…call it…oh I don’t know…something like…NZ Government Limited…then make all other departments subsidiaries of the new Super SOE….presto…and all under Labour’s cool new privatisation policy.
Then the government can post out share certificates in the all the new SOE subsidiaries and let people decide for themselves whether they want to maintain “their” investment in those SOE’s or sell them down.
