Perspective with Heather du Plessis-Allan: Expect this asset sales debate to get heated

Well, entirely predictably, the debate about selling state assets has already kicked off ahead of election year - with Winston calling the idea a 'tawdry, silly argument'.

And Chris Luxon then shooting back that Winston's view is not surprising, because he's been there for 50 years, for goodness' sake, he's got a lot of entrenched views.

I'm actually surprised that Luxon and National are prepared to take this to the election, because you can already see it, right? You know how it's gone in the past, this is going to get heated.

And National is not really known at the moment for having the stomach for potentially unpopular ideas, so good on them for doing it - cause this has got to be done, if only to inject some private sector work ethic into these places.

I don't even know if I need to lay this argument out for you, but I will:

We know that the public sector is slower to get things done than the private sector, we know it's more likely to waste money, we know it's less likely to make money.

We got the figures last week, just on sick leave. Public sector workers take more sick days than private sector workers.

The partial sale of the power companies that happened under John Key's watch has already proved what can happen if you get some private discipline in there. 

I mean those four power companies are now worth twice what they were when we sold half of them, so we haven't lost any value. And they pay more dividends, and we got to put money in our pockets.

And they've proven that we can do things differently to the way that it was done in the 80s and 90s, which freaked out Winston with the 100 percent sale of things like BNZ, 100 percent of BNZ, 100 percent of New Zealand Rail, 100 percent of Petrocorp.

We can sell 49%, less than half and we can still control the business. We get the money out of it though, we get some discipline into it and we make even more money from it.

Now, of course, I think the power company sales are an example of it going well. Others will blame those same sales for a drop-off in investment in renewable energy generation or an increase in power prices - which is exactly why this will be a contentious debate, because we all see it differently.

So good on the Nats for having the courage, by the looks of things, to go there next election.

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