Professor Richard Shaw: David Seymour says Kiwis are too squeamish about privatisation.....

David Seymour says Kiwis are too squeamish about privatisation – history shows why they lost the appetite

State asset sales have been a political dividing line in New Zealand for decades now, and it seems voters are again being asked to decide which side they’re on.

In his state-of-the-nation speech last week, ACT Party leader David Seymour advised New Zealanders to “get past their squeamishness about privatisation” and ask themselves:

Professor Richard Shaw: 40 years on from its 1984 victory, the Fourth Labour Government still defines NZ

A nation reinvented: 40 years on from its 1984 victory, the Fourth Labour Government still defines NZ

It’s easy to look back at the bad haircuts, beige clothes and brown Beehive carpets and chuckle. But whatever one’s views on its aesthetics, the Fourth Labour Government – elected 40 years ago on July 14 – was no laughing matter.

After nine years of economic nationalism and social conservatism under National prime minister Robert Muldoon, David Lange’s new broom left no corner unswept. In the space of a few short years, fuelled by a high-octane blend of neoliberal theory and neoclassical state minimalism, it reinvented the nation.

Chris Trotter: Parliament’s Collective Failure To Defend The Constitution.

While we may be reasonably confident that the attack on New Zealand’s constitution will be repelled, it should never have happened. That it was legal scholars who sounded the alarm over the entrenchment of a section of the Three Waters legislation, should cause all 120 of our parliamentarians to hang their heads in shame. Their collective failure to grasp what Green MP Eugenie Sage was doing points to a woeful lack of political and constitutional awareness among those whose first and most important duty is to protect the integrity of our democratic system.

Russell Palmer: Three waters 35-year contracts 'de facto' privatisation, academic warns

New Zealand's water services could be contracted out for up to 35 years under the Three Waters reforms, which academic Dr Jeff McNeill says amounts to "de facto" privatisation.

He says the government should put its legislation on hold until more is known about an economic regulator, but the government argues its bill will protect against asset sales - and the contracts are nothing new.

Steve Lafleur from Canada: “Privatization is Not Inherently Good or Bad”

“Privatization is not inherently good or bad – the performance or effectiveness depends on implementation.” That isn’t the type of rhetoric one might expect to hear when describing something as polarizing as privatization, but it is one of the conclusions from the Urban Institute. 

Variants of that same phrase have been written by Leonard Gilroy of the Reason Foundation and Harvard privatization expert John Donahue. Despite the divide among politicians and activists, scholars who investigate the nuts and bolts of privatization recognize that, like any tool, privatization can make a mess if used for the wrong job. It can also help provide better and more efficient services when used for the right job. 

As we further our understanding of when and how privatization and public-private partnerships are succeed, we will see less and less failure if we have the right institutions.

Roger Kerr: Lessons for Government from Household's Investments Management

At any point in time a household has a collection of assets that it owns – a house, a car, an interest in Kiwisaver, or maybe a some shares or a rental property.  Few people think of their portfolios as fixed forever.

Central government has a range of assets which is much more arbitrary.  Leaving aside those that it would not contemplate selling, like roads, the government has a jumbled collection of assets that reflect history rather than an assessment of the government’s needs in today’s economy.  The same is true of local government.

Luke Malpass: Why bother?

Privatisation in New Zealand is a political swear-word. Its very mention is meant to invoke some scary image of marauding foreign merchant bankers, here to rip off hard working New Zealanders.

It is therefore surprising and a bit gutsy for the Key government to go to the election on 26 November with a promise of partial privatisations of five state owned companies. This has unleashed the usual hysterical fear mongering about ‘it makes no economic sense’ to sell off assets the government is profiting from, and that ‘prices will inevitably rise’ under private ownership. There has even been conspiratorial commentary that treasury is setting the agenda. How 1980s.