Posts by Kyle Matthews
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I guess it's fair enough that Key might not have thought that in these tough times the Government would actually be acquiring new assets. But it'll teach Key not to make open ended promises in future.
I think just before the election, which Labour still looks like losing, the government should buy something that will piss national off and call it a state asset so they can't sell it.
A 10 story high pop art sculpture of quotes that John Key wants to forget in parliament grounds. One million copies of Nicky Hager's Hollow Men to be given to every person in high school (and future voter). A big bubble, supported by fans over the beehive, shaped like Robert Muldoon, with big speakers inside that cackle insanely loud to all the people in the building like Muldoon when he finished pounding some poor young reporter into submission.
If you can't win, be malicious while you're losing I say. Fuck 'em.
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Yes, Kordia is an SOE. Here's wikipedia's list:
# Air New Zealand, privatized in 1989, subsequently rescued by the Crown in 2001
# Auckland International Airport
# Bank of New Zealand - semi-privatized in 1987; rescued by the Crown in 1990; sold off in 1992
# Electricity Corporation of New Zealand (ECNZ) - part of which became privatized as Contact Energy in the period 1995 - 1998
# Government Print
# Ministry of Works and Development
# Natural Gas Corporation (NGC), ultimately absorbed into Vector Limited
# New Zealand Steel, privatized from 1987, now part of BlueScope Steel
# The Post Office Savings Bank (POSB), bought by the ANZ bank in 1989
# Telecom New Zealand, privatized in 1990
# New Zealand Rail Limited, privatized in 1993, became Tranz Rail Limited in 1995 - Government subsequently repurchased the track leaseMost of those aren't exactly the most popular corporates. Govt print is OK I guess - who's know? Auckland Airport certainly is a successful business based on recent news. New Zealand Steel? Ministry of Works?
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Can anyone point to an example of a privatised entity that isn't gouging, under-investing, and generally screwing their customers over? I'm too young to remember everything that was hocked off, I just know about the very worst bits because they've continued to bite us on the arse.
I posted a list of some of the ones you don't hear about because they're not seen as corporate a-holes a few weeks back in another thread. Er, Terralink, Kordia (sp?) were a couple. There were about half a dozen, none were big however.
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Seoul Man...
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So let's get this right. It's okay to destroy things you morally disagree with, provided you are willing to take the consequences of your actions, and don't intend to hurt people? Have I got that right?
Well if you look http://www.publicaddress.net/system/topic,958,onpoint_children_come_first_except_when_walls_come_first.sm?i=0#forum-replies">here, then you'll see a fair few PAS posters arguing that people should be able to grafitti all over public and private property.
But no, that's not what I said. What I said is that you'll get a different reaction to damaging or destroying things that you morally disagree with, depending on what that thing is.
Mike Smith is the obvious example. By taking a chainsaw to an exotic tree at the top of one tree hill, a fair proportion of NZers got really pissed at him. If he'd taken the chainsaw to a native tree at the bottom of the hill, most people wouldn't have given a shit, and just thought he was an idiot with a chainsaw.
I don't think there are always moral absolutes, but there are often moral spectrums, and everyone fits on them somewhere. Not many people would agree with popping the balloon around Waihopai. A few more might agree with disabling a tank that was in Iraq. What if the tank was in Burma and about to go find some monks last year? The tanks in Tiannenman Square killing student protestors? At some point almost everyone agrees that destroying property, particularly government property is OK.
Under law it's not OK to do a lot of things. Destroy property is one, smoke pot is another. That doesn't mean if you do it and get caught you're not going to get some sympathy from people who agree with you.
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Me too. Does anyone else think Richard Prebble made a fool of himself on Morning Report today?
Well c'mon. It's Richard Prebble. I think he often makes a fool of himself when he opens his mouth.
But in an age of a looming liquid fuels crisis to leave such a key piece of strategic infratstructure to a private company happy to let the competition to its trucking arm slowly rust into oblivion would be an act of short sighted and blinkered stupidity by any government charged with assuring and insuring the nation's future.
That competition element is a good point that I hadn't thought of previously Tom. Rail should be competing with road, and presumably if it's set up as an SOE whose long distance capacity is all rail (I presume it'll retain some short distance trucking capacity to get stuff around town) then it'll be directly in competition with the trucking companies. With some capital investment from the government to bring it into the... well 20th century at least... that sounds like a good thing.
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they had a japanese guitarist singing in french and the waiters would occasionally dance together, old school.
Dancing waiters? I'll happily pay an extra $5 for my main to see that. In the small amount of travelling that I've done around the world, it doesn't feel like NZ has enough of restaurants cafes where people have exported their whole culture to a new country and served it up inside a room with food. I like the owner coming out and convincing me that I really should try this, and here's a nice wine which would go with that, and a conversation with the staff which feels genuine rather than hammered into them with a smile.
I was in Rarotonga last week, and the whole family went out to an 'Island Cultural Night' which was very good. The food was pretty westernised however. My son went home complaining that he didn't get to taste coconut or its juice during the night, so we broke open a coconut from the beachfront the next day for him. Fantastic dancing however.
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I know this sounds like it makes sense, but it really doesn't.
I agree with most of what you've said there. The counter-point would be - if the subsidy led to a profit (which it presumably is doing for Toll), that profit should be used to reduce the subsidy and make it profit-neutral for the government. Instead of a $10 million subsidy, maybe it could be $7 million.
The other counter-point is that Toll is, while sucking up those subsidies, probably building up various tangible and intangible assets. If all other things between public and private were equal, it'd make more sense for 'us' if the government built up the assets.
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Kyle:
It might be worth "investigating", but not when you have a whacking great chunk of public money expended on the downlow As Colin Espiner puts it:
Well Colin is talking about the deal that was agreed to today, to buy back what we sold off a couple of decades ago.
I was discussing a hypothetical fast rail network, which I can't imagine is part of the government's plans. And I'd presume 'investigating' it would cost a few hundred thousand for a preliminary analysis at most.
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I think, when push comes to shove, "we" are going to be a little more interested in paying for hospital beds (and competent staff to care for the people in them) than folks having their own Murder on the Orient Express moment.
While there's some truth to the "if you get A, you can't have B", it's not always a binary choice as you've put it. The reality is probably that we can have A, B, C, D, and E, but not P, Q, R and S. And trains aren't just for entertainment, they're a possible (part) solution to various environmental and transport problems. Certainly worth investigating.
The last TGV line built cost EUR4bln for 400km. So maybe NZD12bln for the Auckland/Wellington line.
Presumably it would be cheaper if we rebuilt on top of existing infrastructure. There's already engineering, bridges etc in place, some would be fine for high speed trains, others would need work, and lines would need to be relaid the entire length. So, to pick a figure out of the sky, maybe 9 billion instead of 12.