"Hands off our assets"

The Sunday Star-Times has an interesting article in their business section today (sadly not online) on public attitudes to asset sales. According to a poll they commissioned last month, 79% of all New Zealanders opose further sales of state-owned assets. But what's interesting is that while there's a wide split between Labour and National supporters, sales are still opposed by an overwhelming 71% of National Party voters. That's a fairly broad cross-party consensus, and one which the current National leadership should be paying attention to. Unfortunately, though, they still seem wedded to asset sales, with John Key promising partial privatisations of Solid Energy, Genesis, Mighty River and Meridian to ensure that those profit streams currently enjoyed by the public are diverted to private pockets. I guess loyalty to business interests trumps loyalty to their own supporters...

Also interesting are Chris Trotter's comments. He declares that asset sales have joined the nuclear free policy as a "third rail" issue where attempting to move away from the status quo is politically fatal. He also suggests that many New Zealanders would back a political party with a credible plan to buy back core infrastructure assets in transportation (TranzRail - now Toll), electricity (Contact Energy and Trustpower), and communications (Telecom). The problem with this unfortunately is that the promise of a buy-back will simply result in a boost in price; such buy-backs probably need to be opportunistic (as with Air New Zealand), and then the opportunities may not arise. But its still perhaps something left-wing parties could be making a lot more noise about...