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The Same Mistake

Entry 368, on 2006-07-24 at 15:38:32 (Rating 3, Politics)

The Business Round Table is a group which supports the business community here in New Zealand. Their ideas tend to be business-friendly: for example they support low business tax rates, minimum intervention in business by government, privatisation of all services, etc. Because we live in a time where many people believe business needs greater freedom, and this will somehow benefit everyone, the BRT's ideas tend to be taken seriously.

There's nothing wrong with taking ideas their seriously, but it is important to understand that these ideas are very biased - just as much as a union's would be, for example. The problem is that there is not enough skepticism of this group's ideas.

The background of this particular rant is the BRT's idea that the government should immediately sell its share in our national airline. Well, we have already been down this route and it was a disaster. Private enterprise almost destroyed the company and it was only the government rescuing it that kept it going. Now the BRT want us to repeat the errors of the past, apparently.

The fact is, that in practically every major case, privatisation has not worked very well. Air New Zealand had to be rescued, the government had to buy back our rail network because it was incompetently managed, the monopolistic control Telecom had over communications had to be broken because it exploited its position and gave us terrible service. The list goes on.

I don't think we will quickly return to an extreme "new right monetarist" position of 20 years ago, but we do have to be careful or these incompetent, self-centered exploitative foreign companies will be back to drag our valuable infrastructure back down again! It didn't work the first, time. Let's not make the same mistake again.

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