From the web, approx. 2010:
Many Kiwis are wary of asset sales due to their experience with Telecom, which was corporatised in the late 1980s and sold to US-based Bell Atlantic and Ameritech in 1990. Over the next couple of decades, the company was highly criticised for high pricing, monopolistic practises, excessive executive salaries and poor investment in broadband services.
In the last five or six years, the Government has forced Telecom to
unbundle the local loop, (that was Labour of course) lower mobile termination charges and open its network to competitors.
The difference with Telecom is that it was sold off in full – for now, the Government is only proposing partial privatisation.
But regardless, many Kiwis fear that the shares will end up in foreign hands, sending money that would previously been going to the Government or local investors, overseas.
Dr Norman last year said that within six years of being sold,
Telecom's dividend payouts had tripled.
"The taxpayer basically funded the construction of a state-of-the-art telephone network and then foreign-owned companies reaped all the profits from that public investment," said Dr Norman.