National adopts Copeland’s policy on SOEs almost!

The Kiwi Party Press Release 26 January 2011

Former MP Gordon Copeland, now the President of the Kiwi Party, today welcomed John Key’s announcement concerning the partial sale of the energy SOEs and Air New Zealand.

“I’ve been banging on about this since 2005 and I am pleased that National have belatedly come to see the sense of it,” said Mr Copeland, “because it is in the best interests of New Zealand.

“I have argued all along that limiting the sale to up to 40% - thus ensuring ongoing majority ownership and control by the Crown – should be welcomed. However John Key is not quite there yet. He needs to limit the sale of shares in the SOEs to New Zealand residents only and forever.

“That way Kiwis continue 100% ownership and the Labour Party’s scaremongering about ‘flogging off the family silver’ - something which they did extensively in the late 1980’s – is shown to be trite and out of touch.

“Under my proposal, all that happens is that the 100% kiwi ownership becomes a mix of public and private, allowing mum and dad investors and KiwiSaver funds to invest in NZ instead of in dubious finance companies or overseas. That has got to be good for everyone.

“If we are elected, National can rely on Kiwi Party support if they make that all important change to what is an otherwise sound policy.”

PS: Treasury did some work on this for me around 2004. They concluded that the positives outweighed the negatives. I think they will come to the same conclusion this time as well – but even more so if the 100% kiwi ownership model is adopted. – Gordon Copeland

ENDS

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