No wonder Adelaide turned down a casino deal to build a convention centre for them.Shonkey numbers.!

Yes arandar (re #10903) - to get everyone participate in long term personal wealth creation and ownership is indeed the basic answer to all the fundamental (socio-)economic failures in the world, and the eternal need of exposing and fighting outbreaks of corruption etc. should not distract us from the fundamental amendments needed for moving towards that crucial goal.

Don't forget, that the NZSF can also finance (=create) new assets, and repurchase assets sold.

Well, Dr Livingstone (re #10903) - How could even a Labour Govt. provide more "can do" leadership, when most Kiwis apparently prefer to demand more benefits to be delivered by Govt. (tax reductions and poverty alleviance), rather than demand and offer support to raising the country's savings and investment rates?
(Which - if done successfully, i.e. profitably - can actually deliver both!)

You see, without any demand and support from the public for that, the prospective "can do" leadership just does not get the chance to lead when losing an election - or is moved to mislead the public by hiding the sums that need to be borrowed (from overseas!) to finance the popular (but unwise) election promises. (Like National's tax reductions at that time?)

Articulate people like arandar and Dr Livingstone are likely to have substantial influence over what many Kiwis think is right and sound to demand from "can do" leadership action, so they have a more than average responsibility on their shoulders.

People are saving more now than ever before, reducing debt and spending less.

After what we have been through and are still going through, given the state of the world's finances and the end of cheap oil and food, I don't imagine that's a pattern that's going to change any time soon, if ever.

I do not want to buy back what I and all of you already own especially once it's been asset stripped as per Fay Richwhite's purchase of Railways *spits!!*

Look at what's happened there of late. KiwiRail's Hill Street Workshops tendered for the build of new locos and rolling stock. Their tender was not shortlisted even, citing it was far too expensive. Now we find the winning tender was for $37mil, Hill Street's was for $31mil (A mere $6mil difference) and because they lost and have insufficient work to go on with, 40 skilled workers have already been laid off and KiwiRail is planning to sell off the Workshops altogether.

Another State owned asset to go on the block. That is deliberate policy not necessity. People's lives and talents and futures scrapped for $6mil. Unbelievable.

What is the cost of the layoffs, the unemployment, the loss of skills to other countries, the loss of families to schools and businesses and communities? What of our future - NZ as a great place to live and work and raise a family?

This government may know the price of everything but it knows nothing at all of the value!

c&p from "Stuff.co.nz" article 19/04
In 2010, KiwiRail declined to tender on Hillside's behalf for its own $500m contract to build new trains for the Auckland commuter rail system, and later that year also decided to award a contract for 500 flat top wagons overseas rather than utilise Hillside or its sister workshop in Wellington, Woburn.

Dunedin South Labour MP Clare Curran, whose electorate office is directly opposite Hillside, said KiwiRail had deliberately run down the workshops.

"It has refused to allow them to tender for work they should have been tendering for. It has been their long-term strategy to run the workshops down... and what gives them the right to sell it without public discussion? It is a public asset."

Makes a man want to cry doesn't it. We spent our energies growing up, working for and building these assets and the next generation come along in their collars and ties and "flick them off" as though there was no tomorrow And while that happens, about all we "once were's" can do now is sit around in forums letting off steam like the old K engines, fireing up and sounding the whistle

Wingspanner, yep, enough to bring a man to tears alright! although rage might be more therapeutic!

But tooting and hooting here isn't all we can do. We can talk to other people, we can get out and protest, march, picket, write to our MPs and our Editors, and we can remember and use our votes accordingly.

All those things. Not just some of them. All.

Something else. You said ^^ 'flick them off as if there were no tomorrow'.

I wonder about that. What do 'they' know? About our tomorrow? If indeed things are going to be so much worse than even we suspect and 'they' know that, then selling off the assets that benefit us all, to themselves and the wealthy few they associate with, makes perfect sense. They are protecting themselves from a depleted and dangerous future they think inevitable and by so doing they are making us even more vulnerable.

Otherwise, well, this is just ideology - there is no good financial/economic reason to sell off profitable strategic assets, in a global downturn, when the realized and potential value of them to the country going forward is so much greater, fiscally and socially, than the one off prices gained.

Arandar
Thanks for the update on the Brisbane convention centre and the MED report. Seems John has a pet project like his cycle ways and won't stop until it is built.

I tried looking at the Brisbane convention centre schedule but most of the conventions there seemed to come from within Australia. if this is the trend then all an Auckl;and convention centre will do is attract people from around NZ to Auckland which won't increase the wealth of NZ at all, although Auckland and the airlines will profit from the extra bodies.

So all this to redistribute NZ wealth and no extra overseas earnings. Not really worth the cost to the country. Bit like the plastic waka we had for the last two weeks of the world cup.

Cheers

Wingspanner #10912 you are spot on about making man (& woman) want to cry.
Why do successive governments not see that unemployment steals peoples sense of self worth & gradually erodes their confidence to compete in working world. Surely it is better to keep folk gainfully employed while looking for ways to make the workshops more productive than to keep selling assets & throwing more on to benefit.
Maybe I am thick but I just cannot understand the long term benefits of destroying our countries hard earned assets & work ethic for no apparent long term gain

Gaby One I think Arandar make a good point ("What do 'they' know? About our tomorrow? )
Maybe I am a suspicious old bugger, but I have always felt that politicians are only mouth pieces anyway. The true pilots of our destinies are the "back room boys", the number crunchers and the predicters that spend all their days feeding information into computers and working out the outcomes of certain actions, days, months and even years into the future.
Like that wise old chinese philosofer Confuseus say - "For every action there is a reaction.

Hey WP,

And those mouth pieces you speak of don't come from within either as most dictation originates from overseas.

Yes sir no sir 3 bags full sir.

Cheers.

Hey Hero,

""if this is the trend then all an Auckl;and convention centre will do is attract people from around NZ to Auckland which won't increase the wealth ""

I would not be too sure about that ole horse as it may surprise you how many Lear and BA 111 jets also line up, directly over our whare Ardmore Aerodrome....and not only here either but also Rotorua.

I have a personal friend, who, up to retirement very recently travelled the world for his Transport Company (nameless) and was in Auckland twice per month every month for business conferences.

Cheers.

Questions-
Do you know how many advisors JK alone has employed within parliament
Do you know how many advisors are employed overall within parliament
Let alone outside of parliament
I was once informed how many Helen Clarke had and was astounded.

Gaby One, you're not thick - what you say is simple honest to God common sense.

People are better off with work to do, a place to go and be valued, able to contribute, be a nett giver than a taker and so families benefit, communities and countries are stronger.

Wingspanner, that's right, those are the 'invisible hands' of the market so called. Squirter, you're right, most but not all originate overseas. But we have our home grown invisible hands, too, John Key is one I believe. After all, he's worked most of his life, overseas more than in NZ, a currency speculator, in the very industry that has brought us to this point.

We have got to where we are today, down a long long road. I remember the years of constant carping that NZ was a backwater, we were little, 'closed', and of no account while the US, Europe, UK, everywhere else but here was what we had to emulate. Then it changed to Australia - Australia was everything we weren't; life was wonderful there and our lives here were not up to it.

Any wonder then that we began to believe in our own inadequacies? So, we laid ourselves wide open to the take-over. And this is a Take Over, as hostile as the attack on our currency led by a man (sorry, I forget his name but John Key said he admired him) and facilitated by the company John Key worked for - you'll all remember that. We came close to financial collapse. One wealthy man using his own private funds was able to bring us to our knees?

And it hasn't stopped since. Everything that we were and were proud of is gone now. And who owns us? Not us or not really us... it's the foreign owned banks. The foreign corporates. Even foreign families.

For the last 30 years, we've been selling our souls. Every government, yes, including, in fact beginning with, the fourth Labour government to my eternal fury and shame, bought into the prevailing neo-lib nonsense that the market would provide.

Well, it didn't. It hasn't. It won't. At least not to us - ordinary people living ordinary lives.

But the time has come when we can reclaim what is ours I reckon. The very people who have most benefitted from the last 30 years are now in real trouble. The system they created and milked is falling to pieces. The financial world is in turmoil - countries trying to prop each other up - companies and banks collapsing.

We have, in this country, the means to take it back, to protect ourselves from the worst of what is coming. We produce enough food, we have plentiful clean water and cheap sustainable sources of power. We have land. We have a skilled workforce. We even have a large under-utilised and under-valued number of young people - unlike many other countries who've got falling birthrates - we did the right things once and there are people like us, older New Zealanders, who remember how that was and how to do it again.