assets

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privatisation (511)
- Public Private Partnerships (42)

Nats fail own asset sales tests

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 6:29 am, November 14th, 2011 - 67 comments

Labour’s David Cunliffe put out a press release judging National’s proposed asset sales programme by the 5 tests that Key laid down in an effort to reassure us that sales would only go ahead if they made sense and were good for the country. Cunliffe’s analysis shows asset sales clearly fail the Nats’ own tests. The only reason to go ahead is blind ideology.

Privatisation N Z Style

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 8:03 pm, November 13th, 2011 - 8 comments

Economist Dr Rhema Vaithianathan from Auckland University will discuss Privatisation New Zealand Style, looking at the economic logic and evidence on privatisation of utilities and ask whether it will alleviate New Zealand’s current economic problems. St John’s Church, cnr Willis and Dixon, Wellington, Monday 14th Nov 5:30pm. All welcome. Register at Fabian Society www.fabians.org.nz.

Who really benefits from asset sales

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 4:35 pm, November 12th, 2011 - 25 comments

Brent Sheather assesses the case for asset sales in today’s Herald. He cuts through the crap and concludes “selling the SOEs doesn’t look all that clever, particularly from the perspective of young people and those other sectors of society who won’t be able to participate in the offers in any material way. This is likely to be at least half the population.” He looks at who really benefits, and it’s the fortunate few once again.

Key would sell it all, eventually

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 6:46 am, November 11th, 2011 - 100 comments

John Key’s promising new capital spending projects left, right, and centre that would be funded by asset sales. But, with the European debt crisis spreading, the odds of getting $5-$7 billion for slices of our energy companies and Air NZ are worsening. So what’s the plan when they need more money for Key’s promises? What do you think?

Fears for the future

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:00 am, November 8th, 2011 - 53 comments

Show me the policy

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 12:05 pm, November 7th, 2011 - 51 comments

We’re three weeks out from the election, and there’s something funny going on. National has hardly any policy out. Parties typically go into an election with a pretty comprehensive lineup of policy covering a very wide range of issues. Do the Nats really not have any plans, or are they just keeping them quiet to win a second term?

Nats’ $11b budget hole

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 10:52 am, November 6th, 2011 - 160 comments

Last year and the year before, the portions of the assets National wants to sell paid over $400 million in dividends. Labour estimates lost dividends from those assets would total $11 billion by 2026. That’s an $11 billion hole in National’s budgets they haven’t accounted for. When will National front up and show us the money?

Time for Nats to front up over lost dividends

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 9:58 am, November 5th, 2011 - 69 comments

Labour’s fiscal strategy takes National’s projections and adds or subtracts money for its policies. The clever thing is they alter the Nats’ projections to remove all the dividend revenue from assets they want to sell. How much is taken off National doesn’t affect if Labour gets back to surplus in 2014 – but it makes National’s projections more accurate. The Nats are complaining.

Is Key going where Gove’s gone?

Written By: Mike Smith - Date published: 1:33 pm, October 31st, 2011 - 78 comments

National’s “Future Fund” asset-sale money will be spent on modernising schools we are told. Is the future they have in mind like Conservative Education Minister Michael Gove’s so-called “free schools” now being set up in Britain? It would be no surprise if our public assets were sold down by National to pay for private interests to get a stake in the school system here. We shouldn’t be under any illusions that the agenda is just short-term.

Key: tired & bereft of ideas

Written By: James Henderson - Date published: 9:03 am, October 31st, 2011 - 32 comments

So, that was National’s ‘big announcement’^tm? Allocating money they’ve already banked into a fund which is just an accounting fiction for capital spending that was already budgeted for. A billion of it over five years to ‘transform’ schools? $80,000 a year per school … of already budgeted spending. Talk about tired and bereft of ideas.

Key cooking the books on asset sales

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:47 am, October 30th, 2011 - 37 comments

National has already booked the revenue from asset sales – despite people opposing them 4 to 1. The Budget docs say capital spending will be funded from the ‘balance sheet’: ie. buying new assets like schools and hospitals with revenue from selling the power companies. Key will re-announce this today. But, in the long-run we’ll be able to afford more schools and hospitals if we don’t sell our profit-generating assets.

Update: as expected, Key has re-accounced what is already in the Budget and given it a fancy new name.

Cult of personality deficit

Written By: the sprout - Date published: 11:40 am, October 27th, 2011 - 37 comments

It’s not surprising that National are trying to run a presidential, personality based election campaign – after all, their policies aren’t going to win many votes from those middle and lower income kiwis who understand them. And up till now, presidentialism has worked very well for National. But it’s also starting to become apparent to […]

Returns on investments

Written By: the sprout - Date published: 9:01 am, October 8th, 2011 - 90 comments

When John Key was elected to power in 2008, he was estimated to have a personal wealth of about 40-50 million dollars.

So how much is John Key worth now?

Nats’ policy cupboard bare as crisis strikes

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 10:40 am, October 3rd, 2011 - 37 comments

The Nats have released no substantial policy since the Budget and look unlikely to do so. Their election strategy was clearly to keep attention away from a comparison of their policy vs Labour’s, and keep it on Brand Key. The exploding economic crisis has caught the Nats’ flat-footed. Now, they need economic ideas urgently but have none to offer.

Are PPPs the best we can do?

Written By: Jenny Michie - Date published: 2:47 pm, September 13th, 2011 - 8 comments

A good piece in the Herald by Max Rashbrook on the high costs of PPPs (public private partnerships) with the new Wiri prison costing over $21m before a single sod is turned or brick laid because of the complex contract negotiatons which have to cover every possible continency for the next 30 years. Earlier this […]

Werewolf: Ten Myths about Asset Sales

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 1:26 pm, September 13th, 2011 - 27 comments

Gordon Campbell at Werewolf has an excellent piece pointing out the flaws in Asset Sales. Here’s a quick summary, but it’s worth the read in its entirety.

More Armstrong bullshit

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 5:38 pm, September 10th, 2011 - 67 comments

John Armstrong wants Labour to come out radically different after the Cup. Having refused to cover Labour’s skills package or its mining policy, he’s suddenly interested in policy. He wants Labour to suddenly adopt league tables and forget the 39% tax rate. Armstrong genuinely doesn’t seem to get it. Parties of the Left don’t pick and swap policies on a whim.

Nats clueless on privatisation consequences

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:01 am, September 7th, 2011 - 17 comments

If electricity assets were part privatised, future governments couldn’t make the kind of reforms that National made earlier this year because of the need to consider private investors’ rights. Pretty simple, eh? Tell that to Hekia Parata. Bill English has his head in the sand on the effect of falling markets and can’t guarantee Kiwi ownership.

Farrar: Ironically being political and shallow

Written By: lprent - Date published: 11:00 am, September 4th, 2011 - 66 comments

Reading the political spin from David Farrar (channeling Bill English) over the weekend, I have to keep reminding myself that he really has very little idea about the practicalities of business. Where he is concerned about political costs, I find from a perspective of an exporter that I’m far more concerned about reliability of services.

Lest we forget

Written By: Guest post - Date published: 10:15 am, September 4th, 2011 - 42 comments

Nats plan to sell $2b+ assets overseas

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 9:36 am, August 31st, 2011 - 93 comments

The Nats say their ‘expectation’ is 30% of the assets they want privatise would go straight to foreigners. That’s just their lowside guess. More would be sold offshore by Kiwi buyers. Get $2b cash now from foreigners now. Lose $300m in returns year after year after year forever. And lose control of our future. Doesn’t add up.

Assets going cheap

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:30 am, August 29th, 2011 - 16 comments

With the world’s markets in turmoil (again) how are the Nats going to hock off those assets? Fire-sale time!

Gaynor on vampire neoliberalism

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 3:28 pm, August 28th, 2011 - 14 comments

Brian Gaynor notes vampire economics of neoliberalism means nearly all the largest listed companies are either privatised former public assets and/or monopolies thanks to government regulation. The capitalist elite has failed to generate wealth and stripped previously privatised assets. Now, their party, the Nats, plans to suck out more of our public wealth.

Wanna trade Solid Energy for the Kapiti Expressway?

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 11:56 am, August 24th, 2011 - 41 comments

During his disastrous campaign trip to Kapiti yesterday, John Key said the Kapiti Expressway would be paid for by asset sales. Labour will do neither. National won’t release the Expressway’s benefit-cost ratio but it will cost $500m ($30K per metre). To get it, we would have to sell half of Solid Energy, which has paid us $310m of dividends in the past 5 years.

Darkhorse: Why selling infrastructure is stupid

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 6:51 am, August 23rd, 2011 - 59 comments

Darkhorse on why it’s foolish to sell infrastructure assets: Infrastructures do not, at their optimum service level, usually operate profitably, they create opportunity for profit making activity. It is impossible to run an infrastructure to maximise returns to the owner while also maximising economic value to the economy.

Cunliffe kicks arse on asset sales

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:06 am, August 22nd, 2011 - 95 comments

At the start of the year, John Key said that he wanted to have a mature debate on asset sales. Now, his Finance Minister and SOE Minister are refusing to front up to debate David Cunliffe on the issue. Instead, that was left to old man Brash on Q+A yesterday. Cunliffe made mincemeat of him. The Right still has no justification for flogging off profitable assets.

Just desserts

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 9:26 am, August 16th, 2011 - 68 comments

The private operators of the new Mt Eden remand prison are using desserts as a reward for good behaviour. It seems to work. But the Right doesn’t know quite how to react: on one hand, it’s mollycoddling prisoners, on the other hand it’s a private operator being innovative. Imagine how they would have reacted if the public prisons started doing this.

Nats rebel on privatisation

Written By: Zetetic - Date published: 5:17 pm, August 13th, 2011 - 27 comments

English is under attack at the Nat conference over asset sales. The neolibs vultures treat the state as a carcass to pick clean. But old school conservatives believe in investing the nation. And business types know you don’t get rich by selling profitable assets. English has no good excuses. All he can offer is expensive measures that make selling even more unprofitable.

Only a game, for now

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 8:54 pm, August 11th, 2011 - 5 comments

I’ve just been playing Ben Clark’s asset sale game on his campaign website. (Ben is a fellow author here and Labour’s candidate for North Shore). In the game, you have to try to suck up the shares that John Key throws out before the big foreign buyers suck them up – it’s great fun and a little frustrating when they get the shares before you!

Nats say: if you don’t like it, riot

Written By: notices and features - Date published: 10:19 am, August 11th, 2011 - 82 comments

National has brought out some of the biggest protests in decades. Petitions of tens of thousands have called on the government to raise the minimum wage, support Kiwi manufacturing through Kiwirail, and protect early childhood education. It’s core policy – asset sales – is opposed 2 to 1. The message from National: if you don’t like it, riot.

Don’t sell into a down market

Written By: Eddie - Date published: 7:34 am, August 9th, 2011 - 34 comments

Before the government launched its asset sales policy, the Treasury told it that “significant participation by foreign investors” would be “essential” to provide “pricing tension”. In other words, if they can’t sell to foreigners at a high price, they wouldn’t get the revenue they want. So, the second global financial crisis should scupper the plan, eh?