Here we go again. Another taskforce serving as a stalking horse for the ‘free market’ policies the government would love to implement but knows the public is nervous about. The latest government-appointed Trojan horse to issue a report is the Capital Market Development Taskforce.
It’s recommending opening up state assets to the market. In other words partial privatisation. Or as the taskforce puts it: “broadening the range of high-quality equity offerings for retail investors by encouraging partial listings of central and local government-owned companies…”
Taskforce chair Rob Cameron says there needs to be large scale sales of state assets. And Commerce Minister Simon Power says the government will look at this – though not in its first term.
But I think we can all see where this is heading. Partial privatisation in the first term. The full monty in term two.
The government is already actively pursuing its privatisation agenda. We’ve got private management of public prisons, possible private ownership and management of schools, possible sell-off of water from local councils. All the signs point to full-scale privatisations in a second term.
The question is why? If these state assets are such high quality, why would the current owners- the public who’ve paid for them through their taxes – want to sell them? Who benefits? ‘Free marketers’ hungry for productive assets to feed on after bringing the world’s financial markets to the brink of collapse.
December 22, 2009 at 9:30 am |
Privatisation
The publicity on this is interesting as it speaks exclusively about “the health of the Capital Equity Market” i.e. what is good for investors and the investment sector.
Not one word about what benefits should flow to the current owners, or about how well the public will be served by the new structure.
Every single instance of privatisation has resulted in mined-out services or collapse-and-bailout. So it is unsurprising there isn’t any comment about benefits to the public.
Talk about retaining government control is specious and disingenuous given the demonstrated history of these “initiatives”. Where are the principles of good Governance, of Stewardship in this? It is simply criminal for governments to behave this way and there is ample proof of that.
The only way they can possibly still be committed to this, is if they have absolutely no better ideas, or no ideas at all. This, I strongly suspect, is the Key government’s true position.
The public are very keen to put up more money for good works, but are absolutely not going to allow their funds to pass through the financial kidneys of the current crop of corporate porkers. Yet that is the only route to participation being made available.
I regret as I am a public servant I can’t sign my name publicly, since protection of the structure is apparently endangered by that, however the PSA can contact me should the need arise.
“Signed” “Halon Archipelago”