KiwiRail on track
In an age of privatisation, renationalisation isn’t something that happens all that often. In fact, I can’t recall it happening at all since the mid 1980s in my own particular political landscape (a hybrid of UK and New Zealand).
Nationalised.
It has a poetic ring to it. For some, it will feel like a vile gagging in the back of the throat just before the day’s meals reappear. Notions of national good that extend beyond the ‘bottom line’ and the bank account just don’t sit well for those die hard believers in ‘free’ markets and ‘trickle up economics’.
For others, it will feel like nourishment for the soul – coupled with a potential clue that this government, despite the increasingly difficult economic climate which engulfs New Zealand at this time (and perhaps because of it, given its cause can be traced pretty well to oil and globalised interests), is willing to put its money where its mouth is.
Well done them.
Renationalising isn’t usually done because it costs so much (because governments sell assets cheap to stimulate belief in ‘the market’ and ‘encourage’ business interests to buy them etc., but those same business interests don’t suffer from the same lack of confidence when a willing buyer is hanging on the end of the negotiation). It costs the tax payer, we’re told.
But I think that’s rubbish. What really costs the tax payer are politicians wedded to ideologies over truth. What we have in this action is a government wedded to truth over ideology – owning rail is strategically important for us all when the truth is climate change, peak oil and the need to live sustainably need to be driving and determining factors to political decision making, and not subjugated to sound bite rhetoric by people desperate for power.
The real cost to the tax payer would be in NOT owning it. One day, that would cost us dear.
The government aren’t glowing in all their actions, so on this occasion it’s great to see the government acting boldly with our future in mind. I hope it’s an inspiration – to them as much as us. After all, this decision comes in the shadow of the recommendation by the Finance and Expenditure Committee to parliament on the proposed Emissions Trading and Renewable Preferences Bill!
http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff/4602708a13.html
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