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Asset Sales- “Political Ploy”

August 31st, 2011

Interesting developments in the National Party’s attempt to dress up their asset sales policies. Bill English must be concerned, when even Don Brash can see through today’s announcement about a cap on private shareholdings and call it a “political ploy”.

National is obviously worried about the public reaction to the sales. There is a real sense of desperation to appear as if something can be done to the policy to magically see assets stay in New Zealand hands, The truth is that today’s announcement does nothing to actually stop assets ending up outside of New Zealand control, raises the prospect that the price of shares will be beyond so-called Mum and Dad investors and really just puts five companies in a strong position when the inevitable further sell downs take place.

There is one way to ensure that New Zealanders stay at the front of the queue of ownership of state assets that earned us all $900 million last year. Keep them in public ownership as they are now, so we all are at the front of the queue.

Posted in Asset sales and Bill English. | 0 Comments

Meanwhile at the National Party Conference

August 15th, 2011

While there has been a lot of coverage of the cynical welfare policy announcement from the National Party Conference, there has been a bit less attention on the fact that even National Party members have major concerns about the selling of our public assets.

On the Saturday of the conference, which by the sounds of things Captain Panic Pants and friends wanted to be a total non event, Bill English was taken on about whether assets would actually stay in Kiwi hands. Just how he would ensure this has been the subject of numerous questions in Parliament, but Bill revealed his hand to the delegates.

His answers are incredibly waffly and weak, and the second questioner in the video even says he is not convinced by English’s answer to the first question. Basically he said he could not guarantee that assets will stay in New Zealand hands, does not know how so-called Mums and Dads will be at the front of the queue and even said that they will not finalise how this will happen until after the election.

The problem with that is the “keeping assets in NZ” pledge is a critical part of the policy. The reality is it will not happen, and English has now acknowledged this. New Zealanders don’t like asset sales because they know just how much value has been lost from them over the years, and we want to keep key infrastructure in New Zealand hands. The Nats sale plans are bad economics and bad politics, and even their members know it!

With Labour, we will own our future, and keep public assets in the ownership of all New Zealanders.

Posted in Own Our Future, Asset sales and Bill English. | 0 Comments

Not news

July 5th, 2011

The National Party did a bit of prep work on their great infrastructure announcement yesterday. The morning papers had the preview story, so the press secretaries must have been doing their jobs well in the weekend. The big announcement came last night, and well, it was not really an announcement at all as summed up by the NBR story

Bill English has admitted the government infrastructure plan released today does not contain detail on any infrastructure project that had not already been announced over the past 2-3 years.

That’s right this is actually a non-news story. The article goes on to say how there was little in the way of specifics or detail in the announcement. I am getting more and more feedback from all parts of the political spectrum of real concern that the National Party has no plan to lift the NZ economy out of its current state. This non-news announcement just adds to that.

Posted in Plan, Bill English, Media and Economy. | 0 Comments

Policy Advice Review-Perpetuating the Myths

April 29th, 2011

Forgive me for this I told you so moment, but it infuriates me. To recap. Last year the government announced a review of policy advice. This was the one where Bill English claimed an alternative was to look on websites for policy, the “government by google” approach.

The announcement of the review came complete with the usual hyping up of Labour’s record on public services.

Between 2003 and 2009, total Government spending on policy advice across all ministries, departments and agencies is estimated to have jumped by more than 70 per cent from about $510 million to $880 million. “This is faster than the already rapid general increase in total Government spending during this period,” Finance Minister Bill English says. “The amount spent on policy advice is now nearly three quarters of the Government’s total annual police budget and it almost matches our annual spending on social housing.

At the time I raised concerns about the “estimate” of spending on policy advice being based, according to the Terms of Reference for the review, on

appropriation data from Budget data files gained by searching on the terms ‘policy’ and ‘policies’ in the title field

Terrific attention to detail there. And now that the report has been produced the Dominion Post reports

At the time the review was announced, the Government claimed policy spending had risen from $510 million in 2003 to $880m in 2009. However, the review – led by former Treasury secretary Graham Scott – found that most of the increase was spent on non-policy-related activities. Excluding the Foreign Affairs and Trade Ministry, overall spending actually declined slightly in real terms over the period.

That’s right, with one exception, spending on policy advice went down in real terms. National has spent a lot of time going on about how Labour increased the back office at the expense of so-called frontline services. But their own report, by the former ACT candidate Graham Scott, finds this is not true.

Will we hear a retraction or apology from Bill English? No, he glosses over it as an estimate, despite making such a big deal of it at the time.

I welcome finding ways of improving policy advice to government, but it is not ok just to make things up that suit the myths you want to spread.

Posted in Bill English and Public Service. | 0 Comments

Obfuscation on the BMWs

February 16th, 2011

In the comments on Trevor’s post there are a few things being discussed re the purchase of a new fleet of BMWs that need to be cleared up.

First that National was “locked into” upgrading the fleet after three years. The PM said this yesterday and various cheerleaders have carried it on today. It is simply not true. Listen to the interview on Checkpoint (starts at 17.50) where a DIA spokesperson confirms that the contract had an option to renew and there was no financial penalty for not doing so.

Second, the spin about this being an “Internal Affairs” matter. That is an important choice of words from Nats to distance John Key from what is becoming a major issue for them. The part of Internal Affairs that deals with the VIP cars is Ministerial Services. The Minister responsible for Ministerial Services is John Key. This is his patch.

I agree with Trevor that it is an absurd notion that no-one in the Beehive knew that this was going on. When I worked in the PMs office we had very regular contact with Ministerial Services on all manner of things, and a major purchase like this would have been one of those things. I know that the level of coordination in the Prime Minister’s office these days is pretty sloppy, so I guess its possible they are simply not thinking about these kinds of issues, but still find it incredible if it did slip through.

Posted in BMWs, John Key and Bill English. | 0 Comments