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Keep Left

Entry 138, on 2005-03-04 at 15:04:25 (Rating 3, Politics)

Up until 1984 New Zealand had a relatively socialist form of government. Then came just about the biggest change imaginable. The 1984 Labour government - a party normally assumed to be left leaning - adopted an extreme version of new right monetarist policy that changed the country forever. After that we had a perhaps even more extreme National government, and it was only the election of the current Labour government in the late 90s that a more moderate direction has been taken again.

One of the big changes started in 1984 was the sale of government assets, mostly to big overseas corporations. The ideology of the time dictated that private control was always a better way to manage a service, and that the government should have minimal input into even core infrastructure.

At best this has been a qualified success. At worst it has been a disaster. Some key assets are now back in part or full government control. For example, our national airline, which was badly mismanaged, is now over half owned by the government; and deals have been done to rescue the foreign owned railways, after they were allowed to decline. Even the (so called) great success story, our telecommunications company offers over-priced mediocre services and survives because it is a monopoly.

Despite this there is still an element in New Zealand politics which supports this ideology. The strongest proponents are ACT, and our big center-left party National are usually not far behind in their pro private control rhetoric. So it was interesting to see them backing off from this point of view today. They now say that when (if?) they get back into power they will not sell key assets such as electricity supply (most of which is run by state owned competing companies - another disaster of the last government), the shares in Air New Zealand, or our national TV broadcaster, TVNZ.

This is certainly a welcome change and no doubt indicates that the voters have caught on to the fact that the only people who benefit from private ownership of our major assets are the overseas shareholders who are there to specifically exploit foreign countries, and the grossly overpaid and incompetent CEAs who have conned everybody into thinking they are modern heros of some sort.

Now that both major parties can see that the ideology of privatisation is dead maybe we can get on with a more common sense direction without sacrificing other important institutions like our universities at the altar of the free market!

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