assets

Categories under assets

Kiwis love their rail

Written By: - Date published: 7:46 pm, July 21st, 2008 - 57 comments

A poll on TV1 shows that Kiwis overwhelmingly support the Government move to bring rail back into public ownership. Despite a question that explicitly states the cost of Kiwirail but none of the benefits, respondents still voiced very strong support for the purchase- 68% in favour vs 24% against. The Government has acted in a […]

Buying trains gets noticed in Britain

Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, July 4th, 2008 - 16 comments

The buy back of rail has been put in a British context in this article from the Guardian. Here are some excerpts: “New Zealand has long had a record of being ahead of the political game. It was the first country in the world to accept women’s right to vote, in 1893. In the 1930s, […]

Taumarunui no longer on Main-trunk line, had Key had his way

Written By: - Date published: 9:04 am, July 3rd, 2008 - 78 comments

A day into the renewed public ownership of our railway system and it has emerged that not only did John Key help sell it in the first time and make a profit off the asset-stripping that followed. Further, his party’s policy of keeping the rail in private hands would have seen nearly all the network […]

Merrill Lynch: Nats will privatise ACC

Written By: - Date published: 12:18 pm, July 2nd, 2008 - 93 comments

It’s refreshing to see some proper investigative journalism in this morning’s Dominion Post, with a revelation from Vernon Small that while National continues to try and downplay ACC and talk about “no privatisation in the first term,” a report from John Key’s old firm Merrill Lynch suggests National’s privatisation plans are an open secret among […]

What’s National’s real assets policy?

Written By: - Date published: 10:23 am, June 3rd, 2008 - 18 comments

Isn’t this the one issue where we truly know what National will do? Didn’t John Key say ‘there will be no asset sales in the first term of a National Government (we’ll save that or the second term)’? Yes, he did. But that goes against the deepest of National principles and caused real disquiet about […]

Mythbusting: ‘Book value’ & ‘over the odds’

Written By: - Date published: 10:14 am, May 12th, 2008 - 32 comments

In an attempt to find a non-ideological ground to justify opposing the Government’s buyback of the rail system, John Key and others have been claiming that the $665 million price-tag is ‘over the odds’ and $200 million in excess of Toll’s ‘book value’ for the assets bought. What do these two terms mean and what […]

It’s alright when he does it

Written By: - Date published: 2:12 pm, May 7th, 2008 - 64 comments

A reader sent us this letter to the Herald’s editor, which the Herald has refused to print. When the government moved to block the sale of Auckland Airport to the Canadian Pension Fund, the Herald’s editorial proclaimed that anyone who didn’t want foreign ownership of our strategic assets was xenophobic. Yesterday, John Key played the […]

Prebble out of step with Mainfreight board

Written By: - Date published: 3:39 pm, May 6th, 2008 - 23 comments

This morning on Breakfast Prebble called the government buy-back of trains and ferries “loony”. What’s alarming is that Prebble is on Mainfreight’s board of directors. His comments appear to put him seriously out of step with Mainfreight’s chief executive Don Braid, who commented: Provided the Government manages it [the rail operations] in a commercial way […]

The 40 cent tax cut

Written By: - Date published: 1:37 pm, May 6th, 2008 - 17 comments

National and some of the more wacky commentators are complaining that the $655 million used by the Government to buy back the rail stock should have been used, instead, to fund tax cuts. Now, there’s a crucial difference between a tax cut and a one-off capital purchase. And it’s that you only pay once for […]

For whom the Toll bells

Written By: - Date published: 10:26 am, May 5th, 2008 - 62 comments

The Government has bought back the rail stock and ferries from Toll for $655 million. The privatisation of these vital assets, which are also natural monopolies, by National was a disaster from Day 1. National flogged the railways and the ferries off dirt cheap to their mates who asset-stripped them by slashing maintenance and taking […]

Buy it back

Written By: - Date published: 1:07 pm, April 28th, 2008 - 21 comments

I see that the Wellington lines network has been sold. Given the network has been in in the hands of foreign investors before I can’t see a sustainable argument for blocking the sale as the Auckland Airport bid was blocked. I do think the government should have bought it back. Electricity is too important to […]

Flip-flopping at warp speed

Written By: - Date published: 3:13 pm, April 17th, 2008 - 31 comments

On Monday, I wrote ‘Stay tuned for National’s next assets policy, due out sometime next week.’ It seems I miscalculated. Here’s what Key had to say on asset sales today on newstalkzb: ‘I’m going to go into an election with a group of policies and those policies we will implement or not implement as the […]

Running scared

Written By: - Date published: 4:18 pm, April 16th, 2008 - 32 comments

Why did National block Parliament from debating the Auckland Airport sale? Only last Friday, Key was ‘fuming‘ over the Government’s decision to prevent the sale, claiming it would be the end of foreign investment in New Zealand and cause a plague of boils to descend on our land. Yesterday, when New Zealand First offered them a […]

From slippery to send up

Written By: - Date published: 7:47 pm, April 15th, 2008 - 23 comments

 Mike Moreu provides insight into the art of turning news events into images  – using as one example his latest piece on asset sales: “National continues to play it safe as John Key announces that his party has ruled out state asset sales at least for the first term. This may appear to be a […]

John Key on asset sales

Written By: - Date published: 8:03 am, April 15th, 2008 - 8 comments

National’s ‘whack-a-mole’ game

Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, April 14th, 2008 - 22 comments

   Trying to follow National policy is like playing that ‘whack-a-mole’ game. Up pops John Key or Bill English or a spokesperson, and they make a clear statement of policy but just as you turn your attention to it, that position disappears and they pop up somewhere else with a contradictory statement on the same policy. […]

National to sell TVNZ

Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, April 14th, 2008 - 33 comments

Despite Key’s best efforts to inoculate against the “hidden agenda on asset sales” perception – he’s now peddling the story that National won’t start selling assets until 2011 – the truth seems to have slipped out. A reliable source close to the party has leaked National’s broadcasting policy for the upcoming election. According to the […]

To sell or not to sell

Written By: - Date published: 11:00 pm, April 12th, 2008 - 11 comments

At the Labour Party congress today, Helen Clark predicted that asset sales would be a key election issue and says the Government was right to veto the Auckland Airport share bid. “The National Party and ACT have made it plain where they stand – ‘sell it off’, they cry. This is a defining issue. In […]

Poor Poor John

Written By: - Date published: 8:15 pm, April 2nd, 2008 - 43 comments

Tracy Watkins tells us in today’s Dom-Post that John Key may have taken a beating in the stock market lately. He wouldn’t say how much he lost, but did admit, ‘I’m worth less than I was.’ And, I’ll bet some in his Caucus would agree. Anyway, Tracy tells us that Poor John came to New […]

Nationalise Air New Zealand

Written By: - Date published: 8:59 am, March 18th, 2008 - 65 comments

The recent scandal over Air New Zealand underpaying its Chinese workers to the tune of four times less than their New Zealand counterparts comes as no surprise given the sick management culture at our national carrier, and highlights some serious contradictions in the airline’s ownership structure. Here we have a company that’s 80% owned by […]

National confirms Landcorp would be sold (?)

Written By: - Date published: 4:46 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 22 comments

We have an interesting mixed message (once again) from National on asset sales. David Carter is quoted in the NZ Farmers Weekly as saying: David Carter: “As Minister of Agriculture I would sell Landcorp. I don’t see taxpayer money best invested in farms” (10 March, 2008). However after the example was raised in Parliament today […]

Canadian Pension Fund’s asset-strip plan

Written By: - Date published: 1:15 pm, March 12th, 2008 - 36 comments

The Canadian Pension Fund is planning to asset-strip Auckland Airport. Once they have control they would demand ‘hyper-dividends’ three times the size of the Airports’ normal dividends. Where would the money have come from? From funds the airport would otherwise have spent on maintaining and upgrading its assets. The Fund would walk away with a […]

Once bitten

Written By: - Date published: 1:48 pm, March 7th, 2008 - 33 comments

No surprise to see English fronting the Toll debate given Slippery John’s abysmal performance this week. Check out Bill in the background of this shot, are those daggers coming out his eyes? To his credit English gave much straighter answers about Toll than we would have got from Key and left little doubt about where […]

First planes, now trains

Written By: - Date published: 2:09 pm, March 6th, 2008 - 43 comments

It is looking more likely that the Government will buy back New Zealand’s rolling rail stock from Australian-based Toll. Toll has been a classic asset-stripper: buy a key piece of infrastructure that should never have been sold, take as much profit as possible with minimal investment, and force the Government to buy the infrastructure back […]

National: is there anything they won’t privatise?

Written By: - Date published: 4:03 pm, March 4th, 2008 - 17 comments

Burqa Bob wants to buy heartland rugby. In other news, Bill English plans to sell our sunshine hours to a Finnish consortium and Key has mooted flogging off our children’s laughter to the highest bidder. [Update: Kiwiblogblog doesn’t think it’s so funny]

Key backs the underdog

Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, March 4th, 2008 - 25 comments

The latest Newsroom story [subscription only] about the Government’s move to protect Auckland International Airport from sale to the Canadian Pension Fund reports Labour is taking National to task on the issue of their support. Prime Minister Helen Clark is challenging National to state its position on strategic assets sales after the Government stepped in […]

Protecting New Zealand’s assets

Written By: - Date published: 11:10 am, March 4th, 2008 - 90 comments

The government has made a series of moves to prevent strategic New Zealand assets being exploited by foreign companies. Last week tax law was changed to prevent the Canadian Pension Fund avoiding tax in its bid for Auckland Airport. Yesterday, the government changed the Overseas Investment Act to give Ministers veto power when strategic land […]