According to the transnational corporate media and the political spin doctors, the big issue (indeed, the only issue as far as they’re concerned) this election is tax cuts – with a deafening silence as to what will happen to vital public services such as health and education as a result. This is an important ideological battle about the size of the role of the State in the economy and society. A related and equally important issue, one which is not being trumpeted from the rooftops by the corporate boosters, is that of privatisation, with its ever present companion of public assets being sold overseas.

This first surfaced as a likely election issue back in 2007. One major manifestation of it was the saga of the proposed sale of Auckland Airport, first to Dubai (which fell through) and then to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board. CAFCA was very pleased that the Government vetoed the latter sale in April 2008, having previously announced new Regulations to toughen up its 2005 Overseas Investment Act with the specific object of blocking that sale. Watchdog has followed this story all the way through, running a series of detailed analyses by Quentin Findlay (the latest is in this issue). So I won’t go over that again, except to say that it was a major (and rare) victory in the long battle for New Zealanders to actually have some economic sovereignty in our own country.

The second thing that happened in mid 07, during the early stages of the airport sale saga, was that Bill English, National’s Deputy Leader and Finance spokesperson, prematurely ejaculated that if National becomes Government this year it would proceed with further part-privatisation of State Owned Assets – there are actually still a few left that haven’t been flogged off, such as the big power generators, Solid Energy, etc, etc.

This revelation by English, closely followed by another policy “slip” that a National government will give more priority to private education than that of the State sector, caused even more uproar. John Key, who is trying to smile his way to victory on the PR magic carpet of being the boy who went from State house to White House, told English to shut up and the Party backtracked from what Bill had said (a case of broken English, perhaps?). For the record, National’s policy is for at least 51% NZ ownership of “strategic assets”, which, in Tory terms, is probably quite “Leftwing”. Whether they’d actually adhere to that in office is quite another thing, and 51% NZ ownership would still leave those assets firmly foreign controlled (by law anything more than 24.9% foreign-owned is  a foreign company)

These two events, which logically followed on from CAFCA’s very active and successful involvement in the 2006 campaign to stop the Christchurch City Council selling the Lyttelton Port Company to a huge Hong Kong transnational (see Watchdog 115, August 2007, “Pigheaded Christchurch Council Unrepentant On Thwarted Lyttelton Port Sale”, by Murray Horton, which is online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/15/03.htm) made us realise that privatisation – in all its full or “partial” guises – would be an issue this year.

But then everything went quiet again. The Dubai bid for Auckland Airport fell through, and the succeeding Canadian one seemed to be going nowhere. National dropped the subject of privatisation, knowing full well that the visceral public reaction to what happened during the gold rush of public asset sales in the 1980s and 90s means that the whole subject is political poison. For its part Labour reaffirmed its opposition to asset sales (and during its nine years in power it has, however reluctantly, renationalised ACC, Air New Zealand and, most recently, the railways and done other good things such as stopping the number of private prisons at one and creating Kiwibank – for which Jim Anderton deserves the credit, Cullen and Clark having damned it with faint praise). In 2007, Labour also reiterated its opposition to public private partnerships.

Public Private Partnerships Are The New Fashion

So it looked like we may have backed the wrong horse for this year’s election campaign, a non-issue, and that there is nothing to worry about. But it didn’t take long for our finely honed political/economic instincts to be proven right and to reassure us that there is plenty to be worried about. In early 2008 the Government announced the most expensive roading project in NZ’s history (naturally it’s in Auckland) and, in a complete flipflop from its position of only a few months earlier, announced that it will be built and financed by way of a public private partnership (PPP). This was almost immediately followed by another big election year announcement that the Government will launch a major affordable housing project, once again by means of a PPP.

National under Key has been blithely signing up to great chunks of Labour’s policies in order to remove contentious issues, anything that stands in the way of its getting back into power (it last did this before its 1990 landslide defeat of Labour, by swallowing the biggest dead rat of them all – acceptance of the nuclear free policy, one on which National fought and lost a particularly bitter election in 1987, the last one to be fought on foreign policy). So now Labour has repaid the compliment and pinched National’s policy on PPPs. Suddenly, privatisation is front and centre on the political agenda.

The sheer electoral expediency driving Labour is obvious from its total inconsistency in this field. Only weeks after signing up to multi-billion dollar PPPs, it, very commendably, rushed through regulatory changes to the very same 2005 Overseas Investment Act of which it is so proud. The aim was purely and simply to keep Auckland Airport out of Canadian hands. The screaming from the business sector and its mouthpieces in the transnational corporate media was predictably ear shattering. They were quick to realise that these new restrictions on foreign ownership of strategic assets on sensitive land will have major implications throughout the country – for example, in Christchurch, if the City Council and its holding company try to revive plans to flog off the Lyttelton Port Company, as seems quite likely.

The spotlight fell squarely on National and, in the Americanised, personalised way that our politics have become, it fell on Key. He squirmed and flipflopped all over the place by way of reaction to Labour’s new policy, before saying that he would reverse it and allow the sale to proceed. He dug himself into a bigger hole when he said that if the Government bought back the rest of the railways (trains and ferries) from Toll Holdings of Australia, which was being widely predicted at that time, a National government would sell it again.

To quote Colin Espiner, Political Editor of the Press: “…National can go into an election campaign promising to sell our biggest airport and our railways back into foreign hands. Now there’s an election winner. In talking of buying back rail and halting the sale of Auckland Airport, Labour has finally captured something of the zeitgeist it has lost for so long… Asset sales are National’s Achilles heel. The very phrase is enough to send even conservative swinging voters running for the hills. Asset sales are a reminder of a painful period in New Zealand’s recent history, when both Labour and National governments hocked off the family silver for a song… Labour will need to be very careful it does not go too far, however…But the ideologically driven downtrou that New Zealand performed so earnestly in the 1980s and 1990s was never copied by most of our friends. The Americans, Australians, British and Canadians have much stricter rules on foreign ownership of land and key strategic assets. Approached with care, however, Labour could mine a very fertile seam of public sentiment” (Press, 10/3/08, “Labour back on track”?). Labour, of course, did a very similar thing in the 05 election campaign when it cynically turned on a high profile US land owner in NZ, Julian Robertson, the very kind of foreign investor welcomed by this Government, and accused him of financing National under its then Leader, Don Brash.

Guess Who Benefits From National’s Education Policy

The Government’s veto on the airport sale presented Key with a fait accompli and he flip flopped again, announcing a new policy which promises not to sell any State assets but that only applies during the first term of any National government. So, unless he’s saying that National will be a single term Government - and there never has been such a beast -then, obviously, all bets are off in any subsequent term (and this was reinforced when Bill English was recorded at National’s Conference, in August 2008, saying that National will sell Kiwibank “not now but eventually”). This latest flip flop (there have been so many that he could have been an Olympic gymnast) is driven by the same motivation as everything else Key has said and done since becoming National’s Leader – the all consuming desire to win the 2008 election, no matter what it takes. It certainly doesn’t represent any change of political or philosophical direction for Key – in the same TVNZ Agenda interview (13/4/08), he committed National to more public private partnerships in education sector infrastructure and to more help for private schools.

And who stands to benefit from such a policy in education? The Press answered that in an article headed “Corporate plan for classrooms” (2/10/07, Colin Espiner): “A multinational company specialising in public private partnerships (PPPs) could become a school landlord under National’s education plans…The use of PPPs would provide a boost for the private sector. Among those understood to be interested is Australian bank Macquarie, which has invested in PPPs around the world. Macquarie is one of the largest non-governmental owners of assets in the world, with about $A150 billion worth of infrastructure under management. The bank’s New Zealand Executive Director is former National Deputy Prime Minister, Jim McLay….Macquarie already owns rest homes, commercial property and early childhood education centres in New Zealand.

“National Education spokeswoman Katherine Rich said under PPPs ‘independent State schools’ could be built by private companies and leased back to the State. The company would buy land and build schools, saving the Government millions in capital expenditure. The company would then rent the school back to the Government. Teachers’ salaries, operations and other funding would be provided by the State under the same formula as for other schools. Rich said PPPs allowed the private sector to reduce costs and share the risks, allowing teachers to concentrate on teaching rather than buildings and facilities. She gave as an example of a PPP Christchurch’s Discovery One School, founded by former Mayor, Vicki Buck. The school…has a commercial landlord, National Party MP David Carter’s brother, Philip Carter. Discovery One is a not for profit school and Rich was unclear how such private State schools would generate sufficient income for investors….

“In New South Wales, nine primary and secondary schools have opened using PPPs in a joint venture with another multinational bank, ABN Amro. The New Zealand Council for Infrastructural Development (NZCID) welcomed National’s plans, saying it would help with urgently needed projects such as the 40 new schools required in Auckland. It pointed to a report by the New South Wales Treasury that found PPPs were cost effective and efficient and ‘an improvement on traditional public sector delivery’. Macquarie and ABN Amro are members of the infrastructure council. Its patron is Jim McLay…”  (for a very detailed analysis of who is behind the drive to privatisation, putting Macquarie, McLay and the NZCID into their local and global contexts, see Bill Rosenberg’s “International Pressures To Privatise” in Watchdog 117, April 2008, which is online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/17/03.htm).

Same Beneficiaries From National’s ACC Policy

Nor is education the only sector in National’s privatising sights. In July 2008 John Key was forced to prematurely disclose his policy to “partly privatise” workplace accident compensation by opening ACC up to competition from transnational insurance companies. He was forced into this disclosure by a report from the Australian branch of Merrill Lynch (for whom Key was a top currency trader; it was a very lucrative pre-politics career for Key, who features on the National Business Review’s 2008 Rich List as being worth $50 million). “Merrill Lynch’s report said Australian insurers were poised for a $200 million windfall if National won power and privatised the ACC” (Press, 3/7/08, “National to let in ACC competitors”, Dan Eaton). He denied that this would be privatisation but simply opening up a monopoly to competition. In 1999, during the dying stages of the last National government, accident compensation was opened up to competition from the insurance transnationals (and as a self-employed worker, I well remember the glossy bumf bearing blandishments from those who wanted my business. I stayed with ACC and was pleased when the new Labour government promptly renationalised it). Extensive recent research (which can be accessed online at http://www.acc.co.nz/about-acc/news-information/PRD_CTRB076598) has established that ACC provides a comprehensive world class service, so why would National want to buggerise around with it? The only answer is that it wants its fat cat mates to get their snouts into the trough. And note that National is only talking about workplace accident compensation. What about the vast array of non-workplace accidents currently covered by ACC? Who will provide cover for those? The insurance transnationals won’t be interested in picking up the unprofitable crumbs. I had a conversation very recently with my own doctor, who told me that “it will be a nightmare” to administer and that “we” (doctors) have told National that “but they won’t listen”.

PPPs Will Leap Frog The Resource Management Act

The other State asset that National has (thus far) publicly targeted is TVNZ, with its announcement that it will scrap the Charter. Once that is gone, with its commitment to, at least, token public interest New Zealand programmes, there will be a logical progression through to full privatisation of the State TV network.  And see Tim Howard’s detailed article elsewhere in this issue for the likely impact of privatisation in National’s still to be announced social policy on the community voluntary sector.

At National’s Conference, in August 2008, Key made a major commitment to spend $3 billion on infrastructure, in addition to the $1.5 billion he had already pledged to spend on improving broadband, in partnership with the telecommunications industry (which may just turn out to be a giant example of corporate welfare for our old mate, Telecom). What was highlighted is that National would revert to increased borrowing to fund this. What wasn’t highlighted is that National will change the law to allow PPPs so that private companies can tender to build and run the projects on the Government’s behalf. Ominously, National will introduce priority consenting for infrastructure projects of “critical importance” which will be able to leap frog the usual consents process under the Resource Management Act. That Act has been a much attacked bugbear of the transnationals and local Big Business ever since it came into law back in the early 1990s, so guess who is pulling Key’s strings on this one.

It was at National’s Conference that Bill English was recorded saying that he will sell Kiwibank “eventually, not now”. This was only one of a number of covertly recorded conversations with National frontbenchers – the others being the two Smiths, Lockwood and Nick – that gravely embarrassed the Party, whipping up a media and public storm and led to well founded fears of National having a secret agenda to be revealed once in power (following in the glorious tradition of National’s secret agenda under Don Brash going into the 2005 election, which they just lost by a whisker. See Jeremy Agar’s review of “The Hollow Men” elsewhere in this issue). English was forced, with Key standing next to him, to apologise (claiming he had used ill chosen words) and withdraw his remark, saying that National has no policy on selling Kiwibank. Journalists confronted him with the fact that he had simply been caught out telling the truth.

For its part, Labour has been entirely consistent in its inconsistency. In March 2008, it rushed through new Regulations to toughen up its 2005 Overseas Investment Act, specifically to stop the sale of Auckland Airport to the Canadians. But it made clear that those new Regulations only applied to the very narrow category of strategic infrastructure assets on sensitive land. And they are certainly not retrospective. Michael Cullen was adamant, for example, that they do not apply to the highly controversial 2003 effective sale by State-owned Transpower of the South Island’s high voltage transmission grid to US bank Wachovia in a $701 million deal. Wachovia then leased the grid back to Transpower, which received a one-off cash injection of $34.6m (for details, see Watchdog 115, August 2007, “Who Owns The South Island Grid? Trying To Find Out Is Like Peeling The Proverbial Onion”, by Sue Newberry, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/15/04.htm). Wachovia has been in the news lately for the same reason as many other US banks and financial institutions, namely the credit crisis which is playing merry hell with that country’s financial system. Watch this space.

And Labour had no qualms, in July 2008, in allowing the $785 million purchase of power company Vector’s Wellington electricity grid by Hong Kong’s Cheung Kong Infrastructure (owned by Li Ka-shing, one of the richest men in Asia, if not the world, and the owner of the ports transnational corporation which unsuccessfully tried to buy Lyttelton Port Company in 2006). Helen Clark said: “I don’t propose to define a strategic asset here. The point I’ve made is that it is not considered to be on sensitive land in terms of the Overseas Investment Act, so it doesn’t trigger the same issues and criteria for consideration as does Auckland International Airport” (Press, 29/4/08, “Govt relaxed about sale of grid”, Dan Eaton). We can only feel sorry for Wellington electricity users. The first transnational corporation to own their city’s grid, TransAlta of Canada, remains the only power transnational to win the Roger Award (in 1999) and quit electricity retail in this country having made such a hash of it (it also owned Christchurch’s retail network for a time). Wellington’s grid has also been owned by US power transnational Utilicorp.

Railways Renationalised: Government Congratulated, But Price Too High

Of course, Labour renationalised the railways this year, buying back the trains and ferries from Toll Holdings of Australia, and for that CAFCA offers the Government our heartiest congratulations. This restores to public ownership a vital piece of the national infrastructure that should never have been sold in the first place. Ever since the Bolger National government sold the railways to Wisconsin Central of the US in 1993, we (and many others) campaigned for it to be renationalised. It took 15 years but finally our pleas were heeded – and what irony it is that the same Jim Bolger is now Chair of the Board of the new KiwiRail (in addition to his being Chairman of Kiwibank; Kiwi Jim is obviously Labour’s favourite Tory).

The Roger Award for the Worst Transnational Corporation Operating in Aotearoa/New Zealand dates back to 1997. In its first six years it was won three times by the former American-owned TranzRail and there is no better (or, rather, worse) example of the dangers of privatisation than Tranz Rail. The only reason that TranzRail didn’t keep on winning every year is because we shunted it (pun intended) into a newly created Hall of Shame, where it remains the only occupant thus far, in order to let some of the other transnational corporate bastards have a fair go And TranzRail’s successor, Toll, maintained the proud tradition of the foreign owners of NZ’s formerly public railways being complete arseholes. Toll never actually won the Roger but was always nominated every year and was several times among the runners up.

“But we think that the $665 million price paid is scandalously high. It is double what the woeful Wisconsin Central and its local collaborators paid to buy the whole lot (including the track network) from the National government in 1993. It is two thirds higher than what this Government could have bought the whole lot back for, in 2003, except that Labour got cold feet and let Toll buy the trains and ferries, while the Government simply renationalised the track network*. Now the whole railways has been belatedly, and very expensively, repossessed from its foreign owners  - who no longer want it and who couldn’t make a go of it, because that would mean spending money, rather than simply asset stripping and profit skimming.

“CAFCA notes that the Government paid $1 to buy back the entire track network in 2003. Allowing a very generous 100% for inflation, we say that the Government should pay Toll $2 to buy back the trains and ferries. Why should the New Zealand taxpayers fork out hundreds of millions of dollars for something that should never have been taken from us in the first place? Rather than lining the pockets of an Australian transnational corporation, that $665 million would do a lot more good alleviating the poverty in which more than 180,000 New Zealand kids have to live, to give just one example.

“We’ve regularly said that the bipartisan sell off policy pursued by both Labour and National governments has turned New Zealand into the $2 Shop of the South Pacific. Therefore, we can’t think of a more appropriate price than $2 to pay to buy back one of the key parts of the national infrastructure. We’re even prepared to put up the money” (CAFCA press release, 5/5/08; “CAFCA Congratulates Government For Renationalising Railways: But Says $2 Would Have Been Fair Price”). *For details of what happened in 2003/04 see Watchdog 106, August 2004; “Toll: Secret Deals Close To The Witching Hour Revealed”, by Joe Hendren, which can be read online at http://www.converge.org.nz/watchdog/06/06.htm.

CAFCA wasn’t called upon to stump up with our $2. But the price that taxpayers will pay to buy back what is rightfully ours keeps on climbing. By the time the sale went through, in July 2008, the purchase price had climbed closer to $700 million; the Government had also taken on $140 million of Toll’s rail debts; and the Government had committed to an additional expenditure of several hundred millions more in order to upgrade trains, ferries and the track infrastructure, bringing the initial total to around $1.7 billion over the next five years. To give the Government credit, it has gone the whole hog on the KiwiRail renationalisation and, for example, has floated the idea of once again assembling new locomotives at the Woburn railway workshops (Lower Hutt) rather than importing them from overseas (too late for Christchurch’s former Addington workshops. They were closed and demolished in 1988 with job losses in the high hundreds. The site is now occupied with a shopping centre, of which Christchurch can never have too many).

Toll’s Blackmail

What led Toll to finally decide to sell to the Government (for a very handsome $271 million profit) were the deadlocked negotiations over the Track Access Charges. These were established when Toll bought the trains and ferries and had to be paid to the State-owned Ontrack in return for Toll being given monopoly rights to use the track network. The Government had also put in $200 million for urgent track infrastructure upgrades. “It is these Track Access Charges that derailed continued private ownership of Toll’s rail operations. With Toll paying $48m a year since 2004 but Ontrack demanding $58m as fair rent. This was picked to worsen – rising perhaps to $100m a year – for Toll once the initial $200m Government investment finished” (Workers Charter, May 2008, “’Corporate welfare’ in Labour buy back of Toll rail”).

Toll was only marginally better than TranzRail at actually improving NZ’s railways. “However, Rail and Maritime Union General Secretary, Wayne Butson, said Toll ‘promised new locomotives since they arrived. Years later, not one order for a new locomotive has been placed. It has been paint them up in Aussie colours and send it back out into service’” (Workers Charter, ibid.). And after the sale had gone through the Government revealed that Toll had threatened to close 11 branch and main trunk services, both passenger and goods ones, throughout the whole country if it didn’t get its way in the negotiations. Helen Clark said that this was a major incentive for the Government to renationalise, rather than simply drag on the stalled negotiations about Track Access Charges. And National was hoist with its own petard. John Key opposed the renationalisation but had already committed to no public asset sales in the first term of any National government – which means that KiwiRail will remain publicly owned for at least three years, even if there is a change of government.

Our Humble Little Postcards Have Their Moment Of Glory

CAFCA is not simply taking an academic interest in this issue in election year. We organised the March 2008 Privatisation By Stealth Conference, featuring Bill Rosenberg, Laila Harre, Sue Newberry and myself as speakers (you can read some of the papers online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/index.html#Privatisation). We aimed to alert people that privatisation can be brought about by many covert or apparently innocuous means. “Privatisation is like dismantling a bomb — it must be done very carefully, for wrong decisions can have nasty consequences. There are obstacles to be overcome, arguments to be rebutted, proponents to be mobilised, and opponents to be thwarted” (Emanuel Savas, an adviser to Reagan and Thatcher, quoted in his 2000 book “Privatisation And Public-Private Partnerships”).

The other thing that CAFCA did on privatisation was to produce a modest little postcard (or, rather, two versions of the same postcard) for members and supporters to send to MPs and non-MP candidates (contact cafca@chch.planet.org.nz if you’d like to order these cards; minimum order is ten of both; include your name and postal address; we expect a donation to cover costs). The wording reads:

I don’t want my school run by a private equity corporation.
I don’t want my airport owned by a foreign pension fund.
I don’t want my hospital managed by an insurance company.
I don’t want my port or railways owned by a transnational corporation.
I don’t want my roads operated by an investment bank.
I believe that continued full public New Zealand ownership and control of New Zealand public assets and infrastructure is extremely important.
I will not be voting for any candidate or party who supports full or partial privatisation of our public assets and infrastructure.

We publicised them by e-mail only and received an immediate surge of orders (ranging from the minimum of ten of each right up to several thousand of each). For a while there my CAFCA work consisted solely of processing orders for those postcards. But we had no great expectations that they would have any discernible public impact – after all, politicians in election year get flooded with cards and letters from any number of lobby groups. We were a bit disappointed that we hadn’t thought of anything more original than postcards and we didn’t even bother to mention them on our Website.

But we hadn’t counted on CAFCA’s secret weapon – namely the stupidity of the National Party. On one day in July I started getting e-mails from members in widely scattered parts of the country saying that they had been approached by National MPs who had received the cards from those members and who were demanding to know “who is behind these cards?”. Then I got a whole flurry of media calls and ended up doing a dizzying array of interviews because, suddenly, CAFCA was that day’s story in Parliament. The Tories, led once again by Bill English, the Dipstick from Dipton, had alleged that these “anonymous’ cards constituted an “orchestrated, covert third party campaign” a la that run by the Exclusive Brethren in support of National in the 2005 election (how’s that for irony), run by Labour and the Greens “in breach of the Electoral Finance Act”. I was happy to put the record straight in the media that CAFCA “was behind” the cards (I was referred to in one report as “the culprit”, as if we’d committed some crime); there was nothing covert about them; and they are in no way in breach of that Act. I was repeatedly asked why our name and contact details don’t appear on them. The answer is simple – CAFCA is not the sender; that role is performed by the individual who actually sends them to the MP and/or candidate. The person doing the sending puts his or her name and address on the card – that is the whole point. After all every reference in it is to “I”, not we (or CAFCA). Covert campaign my arse! It was great to watch Michael Cullen on the TV news solemnly examine the card and say that he’d never seen it before – likewise Jeanette Fitzsimons of the Greens.

Bill English made a complete and utter fool of himself, and we received a second surge of orders (and a few new members) from people who’d learned about it in the media. Thanks, Bill, we owe you a favour (although perhaps we should have sued you for smearing us by association with Labour). It was a complete storm in a teacup, which had disappeared from the media and political debate by the next day (but we did make sure that we put the cards on our Website this time). All we can say is – what a dag! And it was certainly not coincidental that this all happened on the very same day that National was forced to prematurely announce its policy to “partly privatise” ACC, with attendant uproar in Parliament and the media. Obviously the Tories were feeling both hypersensitive and guilty that day – and so they should be.

Past Damage, Present Danger, Future Uncertain

It’s worth remembering just why the NZ public is so wary of privatisation. The damage done here in the 1980s and 90s was immense. Read the 2007 Roger Award Judges’ Report (online at http://canterbury.cyberplace.co.nz/community/CAFCA/publications/Roger/Roger2007.pdf to learn about some of those who did so well out of it – the likes of Telecom, for example, the only transnational to have been a finalist in every Roger Award since it was founded in 1997 (Telecom, of course, won the 2007 Roger Award). In fact, read any of the annual Roger Award’s Judges’ Reports. Using any criteria – economic, political, social, environmental, public safety, service, profiteering, monopoly, etc, etc – that previous wave of privatisation proved disastrous.

So this very issue of privatisation, in all its permutations (full, part, PPPs, and a whole alphabet soup of other acronyms) may very well constitute a key (pun intended) point of policy difference between Labour and National this election. But both of these two major parties apply their policies, any policies, so inconsistently in the interests of gaining or holding power as the sole reason for their political existence, that there will be fascinating contradictions and crossovers between them both. Both know that an ideologically driven government, such as was inflicted on us under Douglas, Richardson, and Shipley (and very nearly was under Brash, who only narrowly lost the 2005 election) is anathema to the NZ voting public. As for the smaller parties: New Zealand First has the reactionary nationalist perspective on this whole subject (CAFCA describes itself as progressive nationalist) and accordingly opposes public assets sales – although never forget that the original, 1998, part-privatisation of Auckland Airport was when Winston Peters was Treasurer in coalition with National; the Greens have the most progressive policy on asset sales of any Parliamentary party (a legacy of the late Rod Donald, with whom CAFCA had a particularly close working relationship); and I frankly don’t know what the Maori Party’s policy is but, as they may very well hold the balance of power in the next Parliament, it’s crucial that voters demand to know.

And when you know where to look, the issue is all around us. There are the obvious examples such as Auckland Airport and, more recently, the Government’s highly commendable renationalisation of the railways. But now there is the same Government reversing itself on PPPs and using them for huge roading and housing projects. There is a toll road being built in Auckland which sets an alarming precedent for private roads (very common overseas, a major earner for their transnational owners).

Local Government: That’s Where The Action Is

The Christchurch City Council, through its holding company, has quietly built up its stake in the Lyttelton Port Company to reach the significant figure of 75% - a figure which can be used to set in place legal processes by which the company can be sold, usually by way of a merger, without requiring the consent of the other 25% of the shareholders. That same Council has recently awarded a 15 year contract to an Australian waste management transnational which says that it is worth more than $450 million to it (ironically the present owners of this company used exactly the same 75% ownership legal processes to take over the firm from the previous owners). Christchurch contracted out rubbish collection to a French transnational more than a decade ago and has, once again, passed up the opportunity to bring such a core service back into Council ownership. And the highly controversial Central Plains Water scheme in Canterbury represents a privatisation of a critical public resource, backed by City Council money.

Local government provides a very fruitful field for the would be privatisers – at the same time as the Christchurch City Council tried to sell the Lyttelton Port Company, in 2006, it also started the process of lining up for sale its bus company, city maintenance company and Council housing (the Christchurch City Council is the second biggest landlord in NZ, after the State). Fortunately those moves were stopped and reversed. But rubbish, water, waste, parks, roads, housing, even libraries and civic venues – these are all local government services that affect our daily lives and any or all could be flogged off (plenty of them already have been by councils throughout the country). To give two other examples from opposite ends of the life cycle – there has been relentless corporatisation and privatisation of pre-school centres and chains of retirement homes, very few of which are now in any form of community or not for profit ownership. Attention has been focused on the pre-school sector by the recent Australian financial meltdown of the biggest single owner in Australasia, ABC Learning Centres, which forced it to sell off its American empire (thus far its NZ chain of pre-schools has not been affected).

What was stolen here in NZ in the 1980s and 90s was done bloodlessly. In other countries it has been done by extreme violence – we have now passed the fifth anniversary of the American invasion and destruction of Iraq, which is the most extreme example of forcibly imposed privatisation currently on display. The Iraqis are fighting back hard against the wholesale theft of their nation and its resources, and New Zealanders need to be equally determined to resist and expose the same forces at work in our country. It needs to be one of the major issues in this election campaign.