The Prime Minister has hinted National will campaign on asset sales next year, saying an election win in 2026 would be the mandate he needed to push ahead with asset sales next term.
Christopher Luxon has ruled out selling off state houses but says he is open to having a wider conversation with voters at the next election and pursuing other asset sales next term.
He told reporters on Tuesday morning an election result would be an acceptable mandate, and he does not see a referendum on the issue being required.
Asked if he planned to campaign on it next year, Luxon said “we’d take it to the election and it would be part of our programme that we’d want to talk about and be upfront with New Zealanders about”.
Act leader David Seymour put asset sales firmly on the table in his State of the Nation speech on Friday, saying privatisation needs to be talked about more openly and posed whether the healthcare system could be a good starting point.
Newly-minted health minister Simeon Brown said the country had a “publicly funded healthcare model” and that would not change.
Where privatisation could be an option in health, he said, was “areas such as infrastructure in the healthcare system where public private partnerships are something we could be looking more at”.
Brown, who is also the new state owned enterprises minister, told reporters he was receiving briefings in coming days on the government’s full breadth of assets and his focus was “making sure they’ve got high quality performing boards”.
“We’ve said very carefully we’re not open to sales in this term, there’s questions to be asked about the purpose of these entities, the ownership the government has, and are we getting good value for money.
“As the Prime Minister said, you could be building a hospital or you could be owning QV (Quotable Value), those are the questions that we’ll look at.”
Economic Growth and Finance Minister Nicola Willis also put the spotlight on QV.
“Overall the question is with the billions of dollars of assets that the government owns, are those billions in the right place, because when I travel around the country people say to me, we’d love to see more investment in hospitals and schools and transport infrastructure, but I haven’t had many people say to me recently, I’d like to see a lot more investment in QV.”
She said the work reviewing state owned enterprises was still progressing and nothing had gone to cabinet yet.
On whether asset sales will be a feature of next term, Willis said that was an issue for the National Party to discuss ahead of the next election campaign.
Luxon said he was very open to the idea of asset recycling and “the best use of capital and that’s something we should always be attune to, but as I’ve committed to, we’re not going to have any asset sales this term”.
Luxon said there would always be ongoing sales of state houses, as has happened in successive governments, but he’s not interested in wholesale sell-offs.
“A wholesale sale of state houses isn’t on the cards.”
With Brown having taken over the state owned enterprises portfolio Luxon said he expected him to assess whether each one was performing.
“So I expect him to go through and do an audit of that and make sure each of these assets are in tip-top shape, they’re well governed, they’re being well lead, they’re delivering on their goals, which the government expects them to do, which is generating a return.”
rnz.co.nz
