I do wonder what Helen has got on Winston that he gives her such a free pass?

Maybe he’s got George Hawkins’ files?

Its about the hypocrisy of stopping the AIA deal on the grounds it is a stretegic asset, yet allowing the Vector deal on the grounds it is not. Also its nice to see Labour doesn’t object to selling the countries silver after their leader has stated that Asset sales will be a defining issue this election…

Don’t you see the irony?

“Sensitive land is defined in the Act, it borders reserves, or foreshore and seabed, or whatever it may be.

So,
It is now decreed that anybody owning waterfront property is now not able to sell it to an immigrant

But evil Multinational Corporations can buy Hamilton, Christchurch or Dunedin airports amongst others

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10506900

Well, Mickey, if its that sensitive, then why aren’t we moving it? Or regulating development to protect that ‘senstive’ land? And why wouldn’t these protections of the ‘sensitivity’ be applicable to foreign owners.

He should come clean and clarify that when he says “sensitive”, he means that its the internal Labour polling that is “sensitive”, not the asset!

Its needs the cash in the tin and the Gumint cant afford to let it get into financial strive.

Alas it is a Chinese company that has the necessary readies to complete the deal.

Quite simple really. Wish Id bought shares in Vector a swell as AIA thouIm still awaiting a replky to my letter to Cosgrove Cullen and Parker asking them which shares I should sell and which I should buy given they now control the NZX

It makes you wonder if Wellington Airport is a strategic asset…..

Not to China we wouldn’t.

I think you would struggle to give it away.

Gooner (7:19am) nailed it – $750million windfall to the Auckland voters… so fuck Wellington.

Plus with Helen’s new “baby” (FTA with Communist China) barely drawing it’s first breath, she will not want to be seen as rocking the boat with our new best friends.

Anyway it is all quite simple, Wellington is not “sensitive land” as liarbour thinks they have it in the electoral bag due to all the public servants that owe them an easy living round here (probably right) whereas Auckland has been showing signs of throwing off the yolk of Stalinism recently and therefore has become “sensitive land”.

Selling off an electricity lines network seems to me like a farmer selling off a paddock. If Li Ka-Shing wanted to finance a big power station that might be beneficial though you have to have reservations about the old Hong Kong capitalist’s close and long-standing ties with big Reds in Beijing.

Selling a minority stake to a Canadian pension fund would have been far more justifiable. It would not have affected ownership control and management control. It would have provided a secure long-term, sleeping partner. There is a huge difference between selling a minority stake in the country’s biggest airport to a similar country — Western, democratic, English-speaking, with very similar legal and accounting regimes — and selling complete control to a mogul from an authoritarian, at times brutal, Communist nation. We’re not talking about race, but about the struggle between democracy and communism, which continues while the world’s biggest country is communist.

Would Stiassny have sold the Wellington network to Nazi Germany or imperialist Japan in the 1930s? If the price was right, yes.

Canada is a soft-liberal country that ought to appeal to Helen Clark, but obviously it is too centrist for her. Clark would prefer to deal with Beijing Reds.

Also, the DominionPost raises the possibility of Stiassny buying power networks from local trusts. It mentioned Christchurch’s. In Stiassny’s dreams! Orion Networks is such a money spinner for Christchurch that there might well be an armed revolt if the Christchurch City Council under Bob the Light tried to sell Orion or its network to quick-buck Aucklanders.

Of course Auckland Airport is a politically strategic asset. Vector is not so much.