Maritime workers join national day of action against asset sales

Mari­time work­ers will be among thou­sands of people join­ing ral­lies in cit­ies around New Zea­l­and this Sat­urday 27 April to demand no asset sales.

Mari­time Uni­on of New Zea­l­and nation­al sec­ret­ary Joe Fleet­wood says the uni­on strongly sup­ports keep­ing pub­lic owned assets.

“It’s about look­ing out for the major­ity.”

Mr Fleet­wood says all New Zeal­anders are cur­rently share­hold­ers in pub­lic assets includ­ing state owned power com­pan­ies, and it should stay that way.

“Any privat­isa­tion is simply nar­row­ing the bene­fit to a minor­ity of people, and as we have seen many times before, these assets will even­tu­ally end up in the hands of big glob­al investors.”

He says there has been a strong pos­it­ive reac­tion to the announce­ment this week of the Labour/Green joint power policy which was a move in the right dir­ec­tion.

Mr Fleet­wood says there is also sub­stan­tial con­cern about the privat­isa­tion threat to ports in New Zea­l­and, many of which are owned by loc­al Gov­ern­ment for the bene­fit of loc­al com­munit­ies.

He says this will be a hot issue dur­ing the loc­al body elec­tions later this year.