Air NZ Renationalisation Welcomed

5 October 2001

Chief Reporter

AIR NZ RENATIONALISATION WELCOMED

Now Get Rid Of The Rest Of The Hijackers

The Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa (CAFCA) welcomes the Government’s decision to renationalise Air New Zealand. They recognised that this was the only way to protect the national interest with regards to aviation. The Air New Zealand fiasco is an indictment of the whole woebegotten privatisation practised by the previous National and Labour governments. It should never have been sold. And the disgraceful collapse of Qantas New Zealand shows that our “captains of industry” couldn’t run a chook raffle, let alone an airline.

The publicly owned national airline must stick to its knitting, aiming to put service to the people of New Zealand before the grandiose empire building that was its downfall in Australia. Neither Air New Zealand’s workers nor provincial New Zealand should have to pay the price of the mindboggling incompetence demonstrated by its former owners. This episode should hopefully see the back of Brierley’s. They’ve moved to Singapore, and Singapore is welcome to them.

CAFCA urges the Government to not regard this renationalisation as a one-off forced on them by a crisis. The other basket case is Tranz Rail, which was sold the entire national track structure for an annual rental of $1. The Government has just bought back the Auckland metro rail corridor for $80+ million. We say that the entire railway system needs to be renationalised, as an essential service. The “market” has demonstrated its rapacity and incompetence in running any form of public transport.

And why stop there? All the present Government has done is to stop some (and certainly not all) of the legacy of the Rogernauts – the New Zealand equivalent of the Taleban. We urge the Government to actually start rolling back Rogernomics and to embark on a renationalisation of the whole treasure chest of public assets that were sold off to foreign and local Big Business.

Start with rectifying the utter shambles that is the privatised electricity system. Take back the huge forests that were sold for a song to a handful of transnational corporations. Reclaim the national telecommunications system that was gifted to Telecom’s American owners to use as a licence to print and export money. We shouldn’t be too fussy about compensation either – the owners of these privatised assets should be compensating us for the damage they have inflicted. Our national airline is back where it always belonged – in public ownership. Now let’s get rid of the rest of the hijackers of our country.

Murray Horton Secretary/Organiser

CAFCA Campaign Against Foreign Control of Aotearoa PO Box 2258, Christchurch email: cafca@chch.planet.org.nz

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