30 May 2001 Media Statement

Qantas purchase of Air NZ

Alliance leader and deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton today said the Alliance will examine any proposal for the sale of Air New Zealand on the facts, but none have been presented to the government yet.

"On the face of it, the sale of Air New Zealand to Qantas will mean the end of a national flag carrier for New Zealand. Its international operations would be absorbed into the Australian airline and we would end up with only a domestic carrier.

“The Alliance will be very cautious about any proposal that saw the koru disappear from global skies or which turned Air New Zealand into a regional carrier."

Jim Anderton said the prospect of Air New Zealand being absorbed into Qantas highlighted the ruin of privatisation.

“When strategic assets like Air New Zealand were privatised by Richard Prebble, New Zealanders lost control of our economic destiny.

"The Alliance long campaigned against the sale of strategic assets, but while we watched helplessly from the sidelines successive governments went ahead and sold them anyway. Now we have to find a way to sort out the problems that privatisation created," Jim Anderton said.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>