assets
Categories under assets
- privatisation (511)
It’s all in the “game”
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, May 4th, 2013 - 192 comments
Supporters of the sale of the powercos, portray the Labour-Green NZ Power policy in terms of political strategy and game-play. They focus on the “market”, risk, profits & “fat cat hatred”. They avoid dealing with the guts of the issue: fuel poverty, income inequality & damaged lives.
Why Phil O’Reilly wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 7:12 am, May 3rd, 2013 - 80 comments
Yesterday, Phil O’Reilly’s Business New Zealand basically declared war on Labour and the Greens. Their ‘open letter’ demanded opposition parties to withdraw the NZ Power policy or risk a capital strike. Unprecedented in modern NZ history. It was a boots and all attempt by the capitalist elite to try to monster the Left. It proves that they think NZ Power is both practical and popular.
Why Brian Gaynor wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 7:45 am, May 2nd, 2013 - 34 comments
To say Brian Gaynor is excited about the Mighty River sale is an understatement. Of his last five Herald columns, two have been about how great it will be, and two have been about how awful NZ Power is. His other media appearances have been in a similar vein: Mighty River = good, NZ Power = bad. It’s in his financial interests that investors aren’t scared off Mighty River.
Why First NZ Capital wants you to keep paying too much for power
Written By: - Date published: 6:48 am, May 1st, 2013 - 35 comments
A couple of people have questioned this series of posts outing the financial interests of supposedly ‘independent’ commentators who are coming out against the Green/Labour plan to lower power prices. ‘Everyone has links to everyone in New Zealand’. Maybe so, but not everyone is paid by the people whose interests they’re protecting while pretending to be independent in the msm.
Networks of influence: (dis)Advantage NZ
Written By: - Date published: 9:33 am, April 30th, 2013 - 21 comments
An Advantage New Zealand conference at SkyCity is the centre of major PR for John Key-backed, big oil exploration in NZ. While promoting and backing each others’ destructive profiteering, and endangering NZ’s environment, they are nurturing their networks of influence over expensive dinners and on the golf course.
Reminder: Day of Action Sat 27 April
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, April 27th, 2013 - 123 comments
Aotearoa is Not for Sale is counting down to the National Day of Action this Saturday 27 April. Now is the time to support NZ (People) Power & say there are alternatives. Get your banners & placards ready, polish up your chants and slogans, and get ready to make some noise. [Update: added poster][Updated posting time to move it to the top today] Update – AKL photos]
Meanwhile, in the real world…
Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, April 23rd, 2013 - 27 comments
So, John Key, Bill English, and Steven Joyce are now devoting all their energy into trying to stop the asset sales programme collapsing after the Greens and Labour gave notice the excessive profits are going to end, and National confirmed they’re for real by suspending the sale. While the government’s wasting its effort on that, real families are suffering.
MRP share offer suspended til tomorrow
Written By: - Date published: 5:19 pm, April 22nd, 2013 - 36 comments
The government announced about an hour ago, that it has suspended the share offer for Mighty River Power until tomorrow, while it devises a supplementary disclosure in the light of the Labour-Green NZ Power policy.
When they’re laughing at you…
Written By: - Date published: 4:15 pm, April 22nd, 2013 - 160 comments
You know it’s getting near time to go.
In Saturday’s DomPost, Chelsie Preston Crayford shows what she thinks of John Key and asset sales.
National Day of Action vs Asset Sales: Sat 27 April
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, April 22nd, 2013 - 18 comments
Aotearoa is Not for Sale is counting down to the National Day of Action this Saturday 27 April. Some people have explained why they will be joining the Day of Action on Saturday. Why do you support action against asset sales? What are the alternatives? [Updated: details of actions around NZ]
Nats trying hide Mighty River risks?
Written By: - Date published: 1:49 pm, April 21st, 2013 - 21 comments
It is absolutely essential for National that lots of ordinary Kiwis buy Mighty River shares. Is that why, as Rod Oram found, there’s no independent advice available to ‘mum and dad’ on the size of the risks? National must have such advice, but it’s keeping it from the public and beating the ‘buy, buy, buy’ drum instead.
The “socialist” vs capitalist PR war: NZ Power
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 am, April 21st, 2013 - 123 comments
The Key government and its allies are playing the “red scare” gambit, the Greens get to the heart of the reason for NZ Power, Parker goes Third Way, while Bernard Hickey and Matt McCarten weigh in to support the (alleged) “socialist” NZ Power policy. Bomber Bradbury adds some words of caution. [updated title]
Do the lights ever go out on Planet Key?
Written By: - Date published: 8:19 pm, April 19th, 2013 - 33 comments
John Key says that the Labour-Green Power policy is “barking mad” and will take people back to the power cuts of the 1970s. Another John Key brainfade, or just being “clueless”? I look at power cuts and fuel poverty since the 1990s.
Key’s power price record
Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, April 17th, 2013 - 78 comments
Spooked by tomorrow’s joint announcement by Labour and the Greens on policy to cut power prices, National is trying to claim they have solved the problem. Get real. In the past year, household electricity prices rose an average of 5%, that’s over six times the rate of general inflation. By my reckoning, the average power bill has risen 16%, or about $300 a year under Key.
The Greens, electricity & sustainability
Written By: - Date published: 2:15 pm, April 16th, 2013 - 48 comments
The Greens and Labour are planning a joint announcement on their policies on power prices. Both parties want to bring down costs of electricity. The policies of the two parties will also have some differences. How will it mesh with Green Party policies on sustainability?
Caveat emptor 2
Written By: - Date published: 6:46 am, April 15th, 2013 - 104 comments
Labour’s put out a release saying power prices are too high and “signalling that the future Labour Government will make changes to the sector so that New Zealanders considering purchasing shares in Mighty River Power, which go on sale tomorrow, are aware of that before investing”. In other words, ‘we’re gonna cut power prices, and the electricity companies’ profits will be hit’.
Sums it up, really
Written By: - Date published: 7:56 am, April 12th, 2013 - 134 comments
National’s 3 quarters of the way through its time at the crease now. And what has it achieved? A record debt pile. 300,000 jobless. 100,000 underemployed. Rising poverty. 1,000 a week fleeing to Australia. A new housing bubble. A record high dollar that’s killing our businesses. And falling household incomes. A list of articles on Stuff sums it up.
I thank Margaret Thatcher …
Written By: - Date published: 9:03 am, April 9th, 2013 - 314 comments
… for her major contribution to my political education: of the need to combat the extensive, destructive power of the “neoliberal” elites. I lived in London during the entire time Thatcher was prime minister. It was a time of major change; of political activism; of hope; of disillusionment.
Looters’ bonus to cost $40 million
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, April 8th, 2013 - 26 comments
Bill English has just admitted to Breakfast (good questioning by Nadine Chalmers-Ross) that the looters’ bonus on Mighty River Power will cost around $40m. You and I can think of many valuable things this government could be doing with $40m, rather than giving it to people who already have thousands in the bank. But that number also tells us something.
Caveat emptor
Written By: - Date published: 10:32 am, April 3rd, 2013 - 15 comments
Analysts are apparently ‘not worried’ about the impact of the increasingly likely-looking closure of Tiwai Point on the price of electricity and, hence, on the value of the assets National is trying to hock. A 12% reduction is all one analyst sees in Mighty River’s price is Meridian floods the market with some of the cheapest power going. The analysts have missed the politics.
Rio Tinto ups the ante
Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, April 2nd, 2013 - 166 comments
Our “let’s make a deal” PM is outclassed on this one. I actually have some sympathy this time, the government is between a rock and a hard place. But while most of us worry about Southland, I suspect the Nats’ concerns will be a little closer to home…
On the accuracy of online polls
Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, March 25th, 2013 - 30 comments
Key sends more Kiwi jobs to Aussie
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 pm, March 18th, 2013 - 52 comments
So much for all this propaganda about the asset sales being all about deepening markets here and giving Kiwis a chance to invest. When it came to building the website for the pre-registration, where did the Nats go? To Aussie. They got an Aussie company to build the site, saying Kiwi companies weren’t up to it. Cause, you know, the site is soooo secure and all.
English drained Solid
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, March 14th, 2013 - 57 comments
Some great work from Labour yesterday as they got the documents showing Bill English being advised about Solid Energy’s predicted lower profits from a lower coal price – and asking for a bigger dividend anyway.
Keep Our Assets petition submission
Written By: - Date published: 7:25 am, March 12th, 2013 - 51 comments
The Keep Our Assets petition will be submitted today at 12.30 at Parliament with approximately 400,000 signatures. It is the largest petition in New Zealand history. The referendum that will follow will test National’s mandate for asset sales – clearly and unequivocally. Well done to the thousands of collectors and all the signatories. National – stop the sales and listen.
You pays your money & you takes your chances
Written By: - Date published: 10:53 am, March 9th, 2013 - 97 comments
Analysts are talking about risks of investing in Mighty River Power in the media today. Weather, electricity demand, overseas expansion. I’ll tell you what would make me think twice: everyone acknowledges the power companies over charge. Right now, the government has 400m reasons a year not to do anything about it. But that’s about to change.
Two Things
Written By: - Date published: 5:45 pm, March 6th, 2013 - 5 comments
Parata was told it was too early to make Christchurch school decisions by her ministry and why aren’t we allowed to know how much the state paid off Don Elder when he resigned over Solid Energy’s rapid decline?
ImperatorFish: Poor, sick, and unemployed looking forward to MRP share offer
Written By: - Date published: 11:42 am, March 6th, 2013 - 19 comments
John Armstrong may think that “the question now – as far as most people are concerned – is whether Mighty River Power shares will be a good investment,” but Scott’s been out there to find out what ‘most’ people really think…
This reeks of kickbacks
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, March 6th, 2013 - 41 comments
It appears that someone in the government is leaking private information from the asset stripping of SOE value. Serious questions are being asked about how a sharebroking firm managed to obtain the details of a woman who’d just registered her interest in buying Mighty River Power shares. Is there a kickback system in operation? Perhaps to help fund the exorbitant upfront costs of sale?
Throw another mil on the barbie
Written By: - Date published: 7:00 am, March 5th, 2013 - 104 comments
National’s going to spend a million taxpayer dollars just on advertising trying to convince Kiwis to sign up to buy something we already own and just in the ‘pre-registration’ phase of the Mighty River sale. God knows what the full cost of the sale will be. They’ve wasted $26m already and seem determined to keep throwing good money after bad while ignoring Kiwis’ howls of protest.
Mighty River is go!
Written By: - Date published: 5:24 pm, March 4th, 2013 - 41 comments
Prepare for the government’s million dollar asset sales ad blitz…
- Book of the Week: Day of the lizard
When I first spotted the new illustrated book Geckos & Skinks: The remarkable lizards of Aotearoa in the window of a Wellington bookstore in October (I was visiting with my wife Fi who was going to WOW with her cousins and niece. I wasn’t. I went once in 2002 and ...4 days ago - Daily crossword, Thursday 14 November
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- Survivors say torture widespread, Govt says that’s unlikely
Survivors and lawyers are calling on the Govt to release legal advice that says other abuse at psychiatric institutions doesn’t meet the definition of torture The post Survivors say torture widespread, Govt says that’s unlikely appeared first on Newsroom. ...4 days ago
- An often-toxic artificial lake receives a collective shrug
A man-made lake north of Christchurch is a ‘filthy drain’ but few seem interested in fixing it The post An often-toxic artificial lake receives a collective shrug appeared first on Newsroom. ...4 days ago
- Trump appealed to left-behind people in left-behind places
Opinion: Many commentators are trying to make sense of the re-election of Donald Trump and as a geography teacher, I always think geography is a valuable discipline to make sense of momentous and world-changing events.Let’s start with some simple stories, ones that I have heard in the last few days. ...4 days ago
- Global carbon budget will be used up in six years
The annual carbon budget report from the Global Carbon Project dropped on Wednesday morning, reminding diplomats at the COP29 climate summit in Baku exactly what they were there for.Contrary to some hopes that carbon dioxide emissions have now peaked, the report estimates 2024 will set a new record for fossil ...4 days ago
- West Papuan leader makes ‘raise our banned flag’ plea over new threat
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The Albanese government will develop and legislate a “Digital Duty of Care” to place the onus on platforms to keep people safe and better prevent online harms, Communications Minister Michelle Rowland has announced. In a ...4 days ago
- Senior NZ lawyers call for Treaty Principles Bill to be abandoned
By Lillian Hanly, RNZ political reporter Members of the King’s Counsel, some of New Zealand’s most senior legal minds, say the controversial Treaty Principles Bill “seeks to rewrite the Treaty itself” and are calling on the prime minister and the coalition government to “act responsibly now and abandon” it. More ...4 days ago
- COP29: Does NZ have the credibility to lead carbon trading talks?
By Eloise Gibson, RNZ climate change correspondent New Zealand’s Climate Change Minister Simon Watts is going to the global climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan next week, where he will be co-leading talks on international carbon trading. But the government has been unable to commit to using the trading mechanism he ...4 days ago
- Abuse survivors petition Parliament to accept all Royal Commission recommendations
The day after the government apologised to abuse survivors, some presented a petition calling on it to implement all recommendations from the Royal Commission's report. ...5 days ago - Jim Chalmers has provided an extra $900 million to boost productivity. But this ‘high priority’ ...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Roy Green, Emeritus Professor of Innovation, University of Technology Sydney Productivity is the greatest structural problem in our economy, according to Treasurer Jim Chalmers. He says there is “no higher priority for reform”. Announcing a A$900 million productivity fund to be shared ...5 days ago
- Shortsightedness is on the rise in children. There’s more we can do than limit screen time
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Flora Hui, Honorary Fellow, Department of Optometry and Vision Sciences, Melbourne School of Health Sciences, The University of Melbourne Asada Nami/Shutterstock Myopia in children is on the rise. The condition – also known as shortsightedness – already affects up to 35% ...5 days ago
- The House: This week in Parliament
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- ASB defends profit, warns of ‘big tech’ takeover of banking
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- Senior lawyers call for Treaty Principles Bill to be abandoned
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- Watch: Hīkoi of thousands crosses Auckland Harbour Bridge, which sways under their feet
The Auckland Harbour Bridge rocked and swayed as thousands crossed over, in a hīkoi protesting the Treaty Principles Bill. ...5 days ago
- A hīkoi dispatch from Ōtautahi
A thousand-strong crowd gathered in Ōtautahi today to show support for the Toitū te Tiriti hīkoi. Alex Casey was there. One of the most charming aspects of attending demonstrations in Ōtautahi’s city centre is that they happen right in the orbit of our many tourist trams, periodically forcing the crowd ...5 days ago - How should Australian media cover the next federal election? Lessons from the US presidential race
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Denis Muller, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne Media coverage in Australia of the US presidential election and of the Voice referendum in October 2023 offer some pointers to what we might expect during next year’s federal ...5 days ago
- Our research reveals women suppress their femininity to fit into military culture – and struggle t...
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- Labour claims ‘cover-up’ as weekly reporting on benefit numbers cancelled
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- Live: Hīkoi of thousands arrives at Auckland’s Ihumātao
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- Former US ambassador accuses Sky News of creating a ‘self-licking ice cream’ to attack Kevin Rud...
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The furore over Australia’s ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd, is a “self-licking icecream” created by some at Sky News, former defence chief and former ambassador to the United States, Dennis Richardson says. Richardson told ...5 days ago
- Dennis Richardson accuses Sky News of creating a ‘self-licking ice cream’ to attack Kevin Rudd
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of Canberra The furore over Australia’s ambassador to Washington, Kevin Rudd, is a “self-licking icecream” created by some at Sky News, former defence chief and former ambassador to the United States, Dennis Richardson says. Richardson told ...5 days ago
- Want to slash social housing waitlists? We should allow tenants to swap homes
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Andrea Sharam, Senior Lecturer, School of Property, Construction and Project Management, RMIT University Shutterstock There are 184,100 people on social housing waiting lists around the country, reflecting the impact of declining homeownership and escalating private rents. However, building new social ...5 days ago
- The Treaty Principles Bill is already straining social cohesion – a referendum could be worse
Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Alexander Gillespie, Professor of Law, University of Waikato Getty Images With the protest hikoi from the far north moving through Auckland on its way to Wellington, it might be said ACT leader David Seymour has been granted his wish of generating ...5 days ago
- Live: Day three and the hīkoi makes its way to Ihumātao, where hundreds of supporters wait
Crowds are swelling in Ōkahu Bay and Takaparawhau (Bastion Point) as well as in Christchurch for the South Island hīkoi. ...5 days ago
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- Fair news bargaining bill in limbo as minister says it is not ready
The government has pushed out the second reading of the Fair News Digital Bargaining Bill, because the minister responsible says it is not ready. ...5 days ago
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Source: The Conversation (Au and NZ) – By Marcus Carter, Professor in Human-Computer Interaction, ARC Future Fellow, University of Sydney The Australian government has announced a plan to ban children under the age of 16 from social media. With bipartisan support, it’s likely to be passed by the end of ...5 days ago
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