New Zealand Herald political commentator John Armstrong was dispensing advice to the Labour Party on privatisation issues in his column last Saturday (June 11).
First, he wrote:
Labour needs to make merry hell with the foreign ownership bogie – perhaps to a point bordering on xenophobia.
What sort of responsible economic journalism is that? I dealt with the foreign ownership ‘bogie’ in TAP # 7. First, selling shares in SOEs to foreigners does not increase net claims on the New Zealand economy. Second, for a given current account balance, restricting foreign ownership of SOEs is likely to mean higher foreign ownership of other companies. Does that make any sense? Third, FDI in SOEs may bring the same benefits as FDI generally: why, on economic grounds, would you want to apply different rules to SOEs?
Mr Armstrong goes on to write:
Labour knows it must also win the pivotal argument surrounding the permanent loss to…
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Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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