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(Toby Morris / The Spinoff)
(Toby Morris / The Spinoff)

The BulletinJanuary 29, 2025

Privatisation fear sees opposition go on the attack

(Toby Morris / The Spinoff)
(Toby Morris / The Spinoff)

The PM didn’t want to talk about it, but he had little choice, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund for The Bulletin.

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Fuel on the privatisation fire

We touched briefly yesterday on the issue of privatisation or asset sales, but with parliament’s return yesterday there has been added attention and scrutiny on the idea. So, this morning we’re going to take a look at what’s actually been said, and what history tells us. While in opposition, Christopher Luxon pledged not to sell off any state owned assets as prime minister – in his first term, anyway. That promise remains, though there have been some signals the government could be exploring possible options for the future. Kiwibank, for example, is set to be bolstered via private investments ahead of a possible part sale, though the finance minister Nicola Willis classed this an “asset capitalisation”. Duncan Greive for The Spinoff looked at the case for selling some of the bank here.

The Herald has done substantial reporting on the seemingly softening stance on privatisation, with Thomas Coughlan reporting last July that “purpose statements” had been drawn up for each state owned enterprises, potentially to determine whether there was a valid reason for owning each asset.

Through all of this, the consistent line from the prime minister has been that nothing will happen before the 2026 election and National would campaign on any changes it wanted to make. Things have been inflamed, however, after Act’s David Seymour said in his state of the nation address last week that the government was “hopeless at owning things”. It’s only an Act-backed position at this stage, but in a coalition, everything gets pulled into the PM’s orbit regardless (Luxon told RNZ’s Morning Report yesterday he hadn’t actually watched or read Seymour’s speech in full).

Word of the day

The opposition has quickly pounced on all of this, arguing the government is softening us up for asset sales. Labour leader Chris Hipkins dedicated a significant chunk of his speech in the House yesterday to privatisation, as did Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick. Some variation on the word “privatisation” cropped up more than 40 times across the speeches responding to Christopher Luxon’s first speech in the house for 2025 (Luxon, unsurprisingly, did not mention the word once – though he did say “growth” 18 times). “That is what they’ve done for the last 40 years and that is exactly the playbook that we are seeing now: underfund public services, run them into the ground, cut them and hock them off – that is what this government wants to do,” said Hipkins. Speaking to reporters, he raised the possibility of the government privatising hospitals and bringing in a user-pays model, something National has said won’t happen.

Labour MP Willie Jackson said he wouldn’t be surprised if Māori took legal action against the sale of state assets, reported Maioha Panapa for Te Ao Māori News. “You’ve heard the angst, and we’ve had the terrible experience of what happens in terms of privatisation,” he said.

Coalition fautlines

Despite the political mud-flinging, widespread asset sales are unlikely to be on the agenda come 2026. However, Stuff’s Glenn McConnell has looked at what could be sold off. The most likely contender, and one raised by David Seymour in his speech last week, was QV – the state-owned property valuation entity. “It’s pretty hard to see why the government would want to be in the property valuation business,” Seymour said yesterday. State house numbers could also be adjusted, while the Taxpayers’ Union, in an email yesterday, reiterated its view that TVNZ should be sold.

When Seymour said that New Zealanders were “squeamish” about discussing asset sales, he could very easily have been referring to his coalition partner, National. As the Herald’s Jamie Ensor analysed (paywalled), Seymour has put the subject squarely on the agenda whether the prime minister wants to talk about it or not. “You’re having a conversation that is not happening this term. I don’t know how to be any clearer with you about it,” Luxon told reporters yesterday. It also pits Seymour against Winston Peters, who remains staunchly opposed to asset sales. “I spent my whole career ensuring that our assets stay in our possession,” the NZ First leader told reporters.

Do we know whether it’s popular?

Luxon told reporters yesterday that his party was open to having that conversation in the longer term and, should it decide it wanted to sell any assets, it would campaign on it next year. That has echoes of the last National-led government, wrote The Post’s Thomas Manch, when John Key took asset sales to the 2011 election. Despite a citizens-initiated referendum revealing a resoundingly negative view of the idea, Key argued the election victory had given him a mandate and went about partially privatise the government energy firms, and selling more of Air New Zealand.

It’s hard to know how popular the idea is in 2025. Writing for The Conversation, Massey University politics professor Richard Shaw said that the 2020 New Zealand Election Study showed just under 50% of those surveyed “somewhat” or “strongly” agreed with the proposition that “privatisation has gone too far”. In other words, he wrote, “those who oppose state asset sales comfortably outnumber those who support them”. Whether Luxon, Seymour or Peters can win the debate will be a question for further down the track.

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The BulletinJanuary 28, 2025

Treaty bill hearings will cast a long shadow

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More than eight hours of submissions were heard yesterday. That’s just the beginning, writes Stewart Sowman-Lund for The Bulletin.

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A long day at parliament

Welcome back, it’s a short week for me – I hope those in Auckland enjoyed the extra (blustery) day off. While us in Tāmaki Makaurau got a day off, it was business as usual in the capital as parliament prepared to resume. The Spinoff’s Lyric Waiwiri-Smith and Joel MacManus spent eight hours sitting in on the first day of oral submissions on the controversial Treaty principles bill – “the most anticipated select committee hearing parliament has ever seen”.

Though the proposed law, put forward by Act’s David Seymour, is destined to fail, the government has opted to give it the full select committee process before it heads back to parliament later this year. The Act leader was given the first speaking slot on the bill, reported The Post’s Kelly Dennett, comparing his bill to other controversial issues through history that have ultimately become law, including homosexual law reform and end of life choice. “Once you have an idea that relates to emancipating people and freeing them from systems that oppress them, by giving some privilege to one group at the expense of another, which the partnership principle most certainly does, then eventually the tide for human freedom, the tide that people will want to join… that idea will eventually succeed.”

As Waiwiri-Smith and MacManus reported, the first day of hearings included appearances from former ministers, lawyers, Treaty experts and iwi representatives. Among them former Treaty negotiations minister Chris Finlayson, who criticised the proposed bill as a case of “much ado about nothing”, and former National MP Marilyn Waring, who said the bill was “based on the old approach that pretends that everybody’s born equal and that people can have the same treatment regardless of differences”. Those in support of the bill included a Conservative influencer and two members of “The Listener seven”.

‘Largely procedural’

In her report for ThreeNews last night, Jenna Lynch described the day’s events as “largely procedural” and going off “without a hitch”. For a bill that triggered the largest protest in the country’s history, the first day of oral hearings didn’t generate the fireworks some may have expected – though Lynch noted there were a few additional security guards in place at parliament just in case. Many of yesterday’s speakers were opposed to the bill, but that won’t be the case across the entire select committee process. There is a long road ahead. More than 80 hours of oral submissions have been scheduled over the next month, alongside scrutiny of over 300,000 written submissions. Newsroom Pro’s Laura Walters reported (paywalled) that external consultants have been contracted to analyse those written submissions, at an undisclosed cost expected to be in the “hundreds of thousands”. Walters said this isn’t unheard of when there is a high number of submissions, though the use of additional resources for a bill that has no chance of becoming law has raised eyebrows.

National tries to hold the narrative

Though the prime minister has repeatedly assured that the Treaty bill will not become law, it has nevertheless become an unwelcome thorn in the side of Christopher Luxon. The bill’s select committee hearing is likely to dominate discourse this week and, with Waitangi Day, the next. The Herald’s Claire Trevett wrote (paywalled) over the weekend that Luxon’s challenge is now to draw attention back to himself and his party, especially given the first polls of the year have brought bad news for National. That’s going to be particularly challenging given the amount of public interest in issues the prime minister doesn’t want to talk about, the Treaty bill included. “The problem with coalition partners is that every time they say something or set out a position, it results in a never-ending stream of questions for the prime minister on where he sits,” wrote Trevett.

The reshuffle and state of the nation last week were a first attempt by the prime minister at controlling the narrative and picking up as much airtime as possible. An announcement yesterday aimed at enticing overseas “digital nomads” to boost the economy was significant, but it was still overshadowed by the Treaty bill on both 6pm news bulletins.

What the year holds

I don’t know about you, but it feels like a lot has happened in the two weeks since The Bulletin has returned. Given this is the middle year of the coalition’s term, the government will be expecting to make significant headway on a range of issues in order to be in a good place to seek reelection in 18 months. The Herald’s Derek Cheng (paywalled) had an excellent look ahead at what’s on the agenda, and where tensions may be found between the three coalition parties. As we’ve talked about previously, much it will focus on building the economy, whether it be through luring more foreign investment, a long-planned overhaul of the Resource Management Act or pushing ahead with “fast-track” projects. Writing for The Spinoff this morning, former Green MP Gareth Hughes argued that we should be focused as a country on the “quality of economic growth”, rather than the quantity. “We’ve chased economic growth for decades and the way we’ve gone about it has come at great cost,” he wrote. “New Zealand’s unswimmable rivers, toxic mine sites, migrant exploitation and precarious, unsatisfying, low-paid jobs are testament to this fact.”

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