Labour is right on the airport

Recently, the Labour-led Government introduced a move to make it harder for strategic assets to be sold to foreign owners. Predictably, the Opposition was beside itself—only this time, it was because it had split personalities unable to convey a coherent version of whether or not it would sell-off Auckland International Airport.

The National Party has long been an advocate of selling off state assets, or, as some put it, selling off everything that’s not nailed down. Already, as I wrote last October, they’ve announced plans to have private landlords own school buildings and lease them back to schools at market rates. They haven’t yet promised to keep Kiwibank, so we can assume they’ll sell that, too.

But there are compelling reasons to keep Auckland International Airport in New Zealand ownership. It is the main point of entry to New Zealand for people and air freight alike, something of huge importance to an island nation far from world markets.

The owners of the airport decide the costs for using the airport and so what airlines and freight companies land there. They decide whether to invest in the physical infrastructure of the airport, like passenger terminals. Get this wrong, and overseas visits to New Zealand will decine—and so will revenue from tourists. If the foreign owner goes bankrupt, it could make things even worse.

Foreign ownership of Auckland International Airport would be like buying a house, but giving the keys to the (foreign-owned) bank. The bank would tell you when you could enter or leave your house, and with whom, it could charge whatever it wanted for the service and give you no say in any of it.

The supreme irony is that the right has been backing the sale of the airport to foreigners only since Canadians have emerged as the potential buyer. When Dubai wanted to buy the airport, they were practically run out of town. Apparently, to the right some foreigners—like brown ones—aren’t welcome.

Some state-owned assets are too important to be left to the whims of foreign corporations. Labour was right to make selling such strategic assets to foreigners harder. State-owned assets are the property of all New Zealanders, and National has an obligation to tell them which of their assets it will sell off if the party ever becomes government.