HANMER BRIDGE PRIVATISED & TOLLBOOTH SET UP THIS MORNING Part Of Keep Our Assets Protest At National Party Conference

Keep Our Assets Christchurch members and supporters are this morning picketing the Prime Minister's keynote speech to the National Party Mainland Conference, in Hanmer.

As part of that protest activity, the one way Wairau River bridge which provides the only access to Hanmer has been declared privatised, signs have been erected to that effect, and a tollbooth has been put in place.

This action is to demonstrate the negative direction that the Government's policy of privatising public assets is taking the country. This is what the future holds.

Please note that it is a symbolic action and there is no attempt to obstruct traffic (which, anyway, has to slow right down or stop in order to cross this one way bridge on an S bend). Leaflets will be available for drivers to explain why the action is being taken.

How fitting that National should be holding its conference in Hanmer, a village surounded by formerly State-owned forests which were privatised in the first great outbreak of the disease, back in the 1990s.

The arguments against selling public assets are well known and irrefutable.

The New Zealand people already own Mighty River Power, Meridian and Genesis and have paid for them through taxes, so why should they be conned into having to pay for them twice by buying shares? It's equivalent to asking us to buy back our own stolen property.

Asset sales don't make economic sense. Those three SOEs return a healthy dividend to the State, so why would the Government reduce that by half by selling 49% of them?

Any proceeds from asset sales will make only  a minuscule contribution to clearing NZ's foreign debt.

Inevitably, they will end up being owned by foreign-owned transnational corporations, which is what happened with previous privatisations.

The Prime Minister keeps saying that the Government has a mandate to sell them. Not if the latest polls are anything to go by!

And he needs to respect the nearly 400,000 people who have signed the Keep Our Assets petition calling for a referendum on this issue.

Our message is simple:

KEEP OUR ASSETS!