State of the Nation 2 - Why privatising public assets will hurt most NZers

So we've heard John Key's "vision" for New Zealand. Unsurprisingly it is one where the state is further stripped of the vital resources it needs to support a just and healthy society, and selling off public good assets we will need forever is seen somehow as a good business decision. It is, inevitably, a transfer of shared public wealth into a few private pockets.
Tumeke pretty much nails this point.

It's true. The idea of New Zealanders investing in their own infrastructure is not a bad idea; the problem is, in the current laissez faire deregulated environment, the inevitable result is a disaster for the vast majority of New Zealanders - ie, anyone who has to keep an eye on their bank account and actively save for a house retirement, etc...

An example. You know how you have your favourite brand of biscuits? And they're good and they're cheap, and not too unhealthy either. But then the company that makes those biscuits lists on the stockmarket. The biscuits are quite popular, so it's a good buy for investors. They buy shares which earn them more money.
However, these investors can afford MUCH better biscuits, so they don't care about the product. So they get demanding of their biscuit company. The new CEO of BiscuitCo. promises to the market even greater growth in profits next year. To do that, he shrinks the size of the packet.
The next CEO makes the same promise. To achieve it, he raises the price up a bit.
The next CEO has huge boots to fill, but he's up to the challenge. He decides to change the recipe, using cheaper ingredients, and is so popular with the shareholders of the now mammoth BiscuitCorporation that he even sends production offshore to save more.

The real problem with shareholders in a deregulated - that is, there are very few laws limiting what corporations can and can not do - is that companies quickly lose sight of who their customer is. They can get huge injections of wealth on the stock market, by cutting the quality of their actual services they're supposed to be providing to the community.

Now, that's okay (kind of) with biscuits. Sad as it is, you can stop buying them, change brand. Phew. But food in general - well you need that. Another safe investment on the sharemarket. Who doesn't feel like a victim when you go to the supermarket and see bread/cheese/meat has gone up again?

And so Mr John Key's brilliant idea is to hand our power companies - again, something we all need - over to shareholders. The shining model is supposed to be Air New Zealand and how prices have fallen for their flights. But excuse me? It may have gotten cheaper Wellington-Christchurch-Auckland, but regional we get repeated engine failures, cancelled flights, less flights. Hamilton to Wellington costs 3-4 times the price from Auckland! We're treated like cattle.
And don't mention the new credit card charges they've introduced just because they are a monopoly and they can. They are not legally bound, not regulated, to treat the consumer with anything like a sense of justice and conscience.

That's why public goods - things everyone needs, like power, food, housing, clothing, communications, transport - need to be regulated, if not in government hands. The law is supposed to codify those morals, for all of us, that's what it's there for: including corporations.

So. We have power companies, who are farcically supposed to be in competition with each other even now. Be warned. At the moment they send people door to door, hoping to sign us up, promise a $50 credit or something. That's their main pitch, trying to get more customers - more "market share".
Well. If the power companies are privatised, even to only 49% as promised, the real issue is not foreign ownership; the companies will forget about you, the customer, and primarily be interested in wooing shareholders. And the best way of doing that is raising prices in every tricky way they can. Just like BiscuitCorp.

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It's like I was saying yesterday about the tax system. The government takes far too much tax from the VAST majority of us, and nowhere near enough from a very wealthy few. Because off this, we scrape and gripe and struggle, and learn to distrust, even hate government. But in a democracy, the state is the one institution that is supposed to be there standing up for all of us. We need it well-funded - yes, slow and clunky sometimes, that's what democracy is - but it needs money to make sure we all have a fair go. If you are struggling to save, or get out of debt, or buy a house, or dream of keeping a parent at home with the kids like your parents had, shrinking the wealth and health of our state is actually against your interests:

Think about where most of your money goes. Is it to the government? Or is it to a few food giants? A bank maybe? An oil company. A telco. A power company. Privatisation takes power from the state - from all of us - and gives it to companies who already control where most our daily dollar goes.

Overall, I think the difference between the two party's was well-represented by images we saw of their audiences for Goff and Key's speeches. Goff spoke in a community hall to an audience of all ages, ethnicity, classes. Key spoke to a conference room of black suits; and no, they do not represent the entire business community. Just that very elite end of businesses, that like to pretend that what is good for corporations is good for businesses of all sizes in our country, and everyone.

That is not democracy.

As far as the state of the nation goes, we don't need politicians to tell us. We each need to look at hard at our own lives, and think about where our money goes, how much we've saved, how many hours we're working, how many hours we see our children, whether we can afford children, whether we can afford a house - whether we can ever really see ourselves getting a decent job. And start to question. What is fair? What is just? Things have been like this for more than 25 years. Why hasn't some government done something?

Then, it's fair to start getting mad.