Corporate Slop for our kids is the privatisation the NZ Right want to feed us all

Wake up Kiwis.

This hard right Government with their anti-Māori, anti-Treaty, anti-worker, anti-renter, anti-beneficiary, anti-disabled, anti-environment agenda intends to ram privatisation down our collective throats and we need to be honest about what that means.

As they push for a 4 year term, the Right are preparing the way for an extreme privatisation agenda in all our public services, infrastructure and environment.

Real Kiwis despise privatisation…

Poll: Do Kiwis support greater privatisation?

Over half of New Zealanders oppose greater privatisation, according to a new 1News Verian poll, while just under a third support it.

For the poll, people were asked: “There has been talk of whether or not the Government should sell some assets to the private sector so that the private sector can deliver some services currently delivered by the government. In principle, do you support or oppose greater privatisation?”

The responses found 56% opposed greater privatisation, 32% supported it and the rest didn’t know or didn’t want to say.

The poll of 1002 eligible voters was conducted from February 3 to 7.

Those more likely than average to oppose greater privatisation were Labour supporters (77%), Greens supporters (77%), Pacific peoples (76%), people living in Wellington (69%), women aged 35 to 54 (68%) and Māori (67%).

Those more likely than average to support it were ACT supporters (62%), National supporters (54%), Asian peoples (50%) and people living in Auckland (39%).

On why the majority opposed greater privatisation, political researcher Max Rashbrooke told 1News often — outside of a few success stories — the apparent benefits of privatisation “don’t actually stack up”.

…the true demarcation of power in. liberal capitalist society is the 1% + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us – once you understand the economic common ground between us as opposed to alienating woke identity politics, you can’t lose another election!

The Privatisation Agenda The Daily Blog has been warning you that was coming, which is linked to removing Treaty Rights, advancing donors interests and the far right International Think Tank Atlas Network has been a 40 year economic experiment that has robbed the country of economic sovereignty and locked entire generations out of home ownership and into User Pays debt.

They have privatised to exploit public anger and then sell it to Political mates.

We cut back tax revenue so there isn’t any to redistribute in the first place.

The tax yoke is locked onto the poor while the mega wealthy rot the rigged game of capitalism that we have.

As loath as I am to link to Dr Incremental, Max Rashbrooke, he makes the crystal clear point that the 40 year neoliberal Privatisation Experiment is what has led to our infrastructure gridlock and inequality at the expense of the common good for corporate profit…

How a failure of the imagination opens the door to privatisation

It was, as the economist Bill Rosenberg observed, “a conflict of interest fit for a post-Soviet state”. In 1993, financiers Fay Richwhite were allowed to advise the government on the sale of the state-owned New Zealand Rail – and then be one of main shareholders in the winning bid.

After that things really went downhill. Privatised TranzRail had an appalling safety record, its staff dying at work at eight times the national average. And while cutting maintenance to a level Rosenberg labelled “abysmal”, Fay Richwhite and their fellow owners took out at least $370m in profits from a firm for which they had paid just $328m. Helen Clark’s Labour government was then forced to repurchase the railways, creating KiwiRail as we now know it. The whole episode cost the state around $4bn, according to then business commentator Brian Gaynor. 

Rampant conflicts of interest, asset-stripping, disastrous outcomes, profits flowing offshore to wealthy interests rather than ordinary New Zealanders: this might be why, as David Seymour observed last week, New Zealanders are “squeamish” about privatisation. Not that the soon-to-be deputy PM has learned anything from those debacles: indeed he thinks we should plunge ourselves right back into them.

Of course the contours of the state – the services and assets it provides and owns – will change over time. But a regularity of the last forty years, following the worldwide deluge of privatisation in the 1980s and 90s, is that handing over core public functions to the private sector generally ends in failure.

The maddest examples have come when monopolies – water, rail – have been sold to private firms, even though competition is the only thing that makes markets work. A private monopoly is the worst of both worlds: no competition-based incentives to improve, and no public-good ethos pushing the organisation to look out for citizens’ interests. 

Hence, in the UK, privatised railways have been such a disaster – massively increasing costs with no corresponding rise in quality – that, 30 years later, Keir Starmer’s Labour government is finally bringing them back into public ownership. Even worse has been the privatisation of British water services, whereby firms have extracted tens of billions of pounds in shareholder dividends, hiked water fees and discharged large amounts of effluent into local waterways. (Unsurprisingly, a global meta-review by Spanish and American researchers found no “genuine empirical effect of cost savings” from privatisation.) Across the border, publicly owned Scottish water has achieved better performance while reducing operating costs 40% and at times cutting water charges. 

The story repeats: privatised bus companies, the OECD concluded, are cheaper than public ones only because they cut wages. Ditto private prisons.

…look what part Privatisation has done to our electricity market…

Electricity sector privatisation is destroying manufacturing industry

In 2022 and 2023, First Union, the NZ Council of Trade Unions, and 350 Aotearoa released a series of reports entitled Generating Scarcity, about the impact of the partial privatisation of Meridian, Mighty River Power (now Mercury) and Genesis under the previous National government.

They argued that in the decade since those privatisations, the gentailers – Meridian, Mercury, Genesis and Contact (fully privatised in 1999) – paid out $10.8 billion in dividends to shareholders, while total generating capacity increased by one measly percent.

For every dollar invested in new capacity over that period, the gentailers paid out $2.41 in dividends. From 2016 to 2020, gentailer dividends were around four times the scale of new investment, while consented capacity simply wasn’t built.

Gentailer debt levels remain strikingly low, especially in light of last year’s gentailer-funded “The Future is Electric” report, whose own preferred investment pathway would see annual generating capacity increase by 163 percent in the coming 25 or so years.

Our grid leans heavily on hydro, and therefore needs an engineered solution to the so-called “dry year problem”. Hedging the network with wind, solar and battery storage is the cheapest fix, but it still costs money.

We all pay the price for underinvestment. With high mortgage rates and rising rents, low-income households can’t always afford to keep their homes warm and dry, lumping costs onto the struggling health system.

…when even John Key admits that there isn’t much left to privatise…

Sir John Key doubts asset sales will boost New Zealand economy, says ‘nothing to sell’

• • Former Prime Minister Sir John Key doubts selling state-owned assets will benefit the economy, saying there’s “nothing to sell”.

…you know shit is desperate because that’s what this is, desperation.

National’s Austerity Budget where they borrowed $14billion for tax cuts and $3billion for Rich Landlords has hollowed out Public Service spending so much so tat they have crashed the economy without anyone realising it yet…

RBNZ chief economist downbeat on economic outlook

• • Weak productivity, low investment, skill lack key factors in weak growth performance
  • New Zealand hasn’t been “rock star” economy for decades
  • Further rate cuts possible but won’t hit early pandemic lows

The Reserve Bank’s chief economist has painted a dim picture of the country’s economic outlook because of weak productivity, investment and trade.

In an online presentation about economic growth and interest rates Paul Conway said New Zealand has been tumbling down the international economic rankings for many years to the point that it now lagged well behind major trading partners and even emerging economies.

He said the level of productivity, private sector and government decisions, central bank interest rates and other factors would all determine the economy’s growth potential.

“Over the next three years, we currently expect potential output growth to range between 1.5 percent and 2 percent per year. This is a lower economic ‘speed limit’ than in the recent past. This subdued outlook stems from expected ongoing weakness in productivity growth and lower net immigration.”

…that’s just the beginning, throw in the effect of Trump’s Tariffs on an inflated American Dollar and petrol prices, and we could see $4.50 a litre petrol by the end of the month.

Look folks, how do I say this as simply as a I can to ya’ll.

Climate Change is going to force a level of adaptation you are not ready for, and if you allow these rich prick right wing free market acolytes to shrivel and sell off what remains of the State when you will desperately need that State more and more with each passing year, well, it’s a self mutilation to your own existence FFS.

Real Kiwis hate privatisation because they know their history.

Real Kiwis hate privatisation because they know corporate power can never be trusted.

Real Kiwis hate privatization because they know a democratic state based on community, solidarity and justice must be the solution to climate change adaptation, not profit margins and toxic growth.

The Daily Blog warned you the NZ Right would eventually unleash their Atlas Network Privatisation agenda, now is the time to pick sides.

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