Two weeks ago, National Party finance spokesperson Bill English opened his mouth on Agenda and revealed National's secret plan to sell off state assets so as to funnel their revenue into private pockets. But this morning on Breakfast, John key was denying that there was any such policy - or even that there was a policy at all:
PRESENTER: Alright, very quickly, there was a lot of talk over the previous week about SOEs...So, which is it? Do they plan to sell state assets or not? One thing's for certain - we won't get a straight answer out of National.KEY: Yeah and I think look, that was portrayed the wrong way and taken completely out of proportion. When I was the, the [sic] Finance spokesman, and I hold the same view now, New Zealand does not need to rush in and sell assets. We... firstly, ah we don't have a debt crisis as we had in the 80s and 90s, and in fact net debt's positive in New Zealand, ah those things make a lot of money now. They didn't make money in the old days, SOEs lost money.
PRESENTER: So, so [sic] what is your policy. KEY: Well our point is simply this ah, last time we had a very, very timid policy of saying we might sell a quarter of ah, Solid Energy and some farms on Landcorp. Now, we're listening to the public, we're happy to have that debate, we know they don't want to ah sell assets and we understand that, in fact...
PRESENTER: So what is your policy.
KEY: Well we'll declare that in 2008, going into the election.
PRESENTER: So you don't have a policy.
KEY: No, we, we [sic] are in the process of putting together policy.
