Originally Posted by
Blue Skies
Personally, I would have liked to see the semi entrenchment clause put into the Water reforms with a 60% threshold required before any govt was able to privatise them.
1) Conventions are all very well, but have often got in the way of progress. Breaking with convention is not necessarily a reason in itself to prevent change or ways of doing things better.
2) Our Water Resources fall into that rare category in my view of being 'too important to be allowed to fail'.
So if sold off & privatised, shareholders know that governments will always be forced to bail the company out if it fails.
Look at the case of AIR where shareholders knew the company was going bust, the shares should have been worth nothing, but shareholders delighted in the fact the govt would be forced to bail the airline out.
Now we have the Power companies returning bigger dividends to their shareholders than their profits allow, instead of investing in much needed infrastructure for NZ's future demands.