Time to Take Back Our Power: Alliance Launches “Reverse Privatisation” Plan

Decades after the fire sale of New Zealand’s national assets in the 1980s and 1990s, the Alliance has announced a comprehensive plan to restore and protect public ownership of essential services and strategic infrastructure.

The Alliance today launched its Public Ownership and Economic Democracy Policy, a “reverse privatisation” programme to progressively buy back strategic assets that were sold and protect those that remain publicly owned. The programme would be prioritised by strategic importance, with the Crown purchasing assets at fair value where appropriate.

Alliance Party leader Victor Billot says the goal is to build a resilient New Zealand where people control their own destiny.

“Households are cutting back on heating, infrastructure is creaking, and too many essential services are treated as cash machines for private interests. This is the legacy of the failed neoliberal sell-off of New Zealand.”

Mr Billot says it is unacceptable that many New Zealanders are struggling to stay afloat from week to week.

He says a key policy is to bring the electricity system as a whole under public ownership and control, covering generation, transmission, distribution and retail, with the goal of affordable, sustainable energy for households and local industry.

Mr Billot says the Alliance would invest in publicly owned KiwiRail, move Air New Zealand from majority Crown ownership to full public ownership, and progressively restore public ownership of strategically important ports where privatisation or corporatisation has undermined public control.

“The Alliance Party identifies the State Owned Enterprises Act as an unmitigated failure. Turning public goods and services into commercial entities for privatised profit was absurd in 1986 and it’s absurd today. We will repeal and replace this legislation so that the people of this country have the infrastructure they built and paid for work for them – not corporate shareholders.”

The Alliance would keep public water services and infrastructure in public ownership and bring monopoly telecommunications infrastructure into public ownership, including the “last mile” connections to homes and businesses.

The Alliance would create KiwiWorks, a Ministry of Works for the 21st Century, to build state housing and infrastructure, develop construction capacity and create jobs. It would also establish a Ministry of Development and a publicly owned Development Bank, and keep Kiwibank in public ownership.

Works councils would be introduced in larger enterprises, and workers would be represented on the boards of major public enterprises. The Official Information Act would be extended to Crown-controlled listed companies.

Mr Billot says the Alliance is committed to giving workers a voice in the enterprises their labour builds.

To protect economic resilience, the Crown would have a right of first refusal, depending on fiscal viability, to acquire businesses in identified critical industries facing sale or liquidation. Where necessary, it could operate them publicly or work with employees to support cooperative buyouts.

Download the full Public Ownership and Economic Democracy Policy (PDF, 9 pages)