If you watched Question Time today (see Clare’s post below) you will know Kiwirail have taken out an injunction to stop Radio NZ reporting the contents of a leaked Kiwirail report on the effects of their planned $200 million cuts to network maintenance.
The rail company owned by the people has put a gagging order on the media to stop the public finding out what is going on in the rail company they own. There’s something not right about that.
Gerry Brownlee has accused me and journalists reporting this issue as scaremongering. We’ve simply quoted a Kiwirail report on the impact of the cuts to network maintenance. The cuts have been forced on Kiwirail by the Government’s unrealistic Turn Around Plan for rail.
See the latest communication from Kiwirail to Labour’s team at Parliament. (Click to enlarge) Honestly this an inappropriate way for a State Owned Enterprise to behave and the sooner Gerry Brownlee tells them that the better it will be for everyone.
Again a Labour MP repeats this canard of referring to state-owned assets as owned by the people or the public. Kiwirail is a state-owned asset it belongs to the state not the public. To claim that these assets are “the peoples” is to identify the state and the people as the same which is logically absurd. The state is an organisation within a society it is not that society itself. It is not the public. It is not the people. It is only a group of people. Whatever your arguments may be against this injunction and the turn around plan you do not help your argument by falsely claiming that Kiwirail belongs to the people.
@QTR –
Please, not again. How about you just link the previous thread?
Phil, are you in effect suggesting that everyone should have access to any information from any SOE because they are owned by ‘the public’?
Serious question.
The Government is purposely destroying Kiwirail seeting it up for the next round of privatisation, I wouldn’t be suprised if John Key’s old colleagues Michael Fay and David Richwhite are lining up via third parties to have another bite of the cherry.
QTR the State Assets are owned by the people they are not owned by John Key and Gerry Brownlee even though they act as if they own them, neither of them could organise a p*ss up at a brewery, just look at the circus with the Chinese trains third world technology for a third world country, God Help Us.
A typical Gerry Pies Brownlee reaction to another Gerry Brownlee C*CK UP however he has learn’t how to count to ten in Maori since he has joined Parliament.
Tim – As long Labour MPs keep repeating the same false claim I will keep repeating myself. Here’s the other thread.
Jack, read the other thread if you want to see why this is false (though I am happy to repeat myself). Suffice to say that “the people” are not the state. They are not one in the same. Therefore it is simply illogical to claim that the assets in question can be both owned by the state and owned by the people (and by the people I presume you refer to all New Zealanders).
Jack, you have a great way with words. It’s a shame you have so few of them.
It’s correct that “the people” don’t own anything, except via intermediary, representative entities – for example, the state. “Owned by the people” is merely semantic shorthand for that more complicated description. So, correct but also completely f*cking irrelevant.
Psycho Milt – If it is semantic shorthand than it is illogical and misleading semantic shorthand. If by “the people” you mean all New Zealanders than the state does not represent the people. There is no unanimity. And where unanimity ends collective choice begins. Then there is inevitably the submission of all to the choice of some (not representation of the whole) and those some are backed by a monopolistic coercive agency (the state).
As many would argue that there is no mandate to sell assets, what mandate was there to buy Kiwirail? Where we’re the leaked documents when the sale was taking place to show how much money this asset will continue to cost the “people”
You can probably tell from my gravatar that I’m familiar with arguments for the state being a Bad Thing and have some sympathy for them. However, here in non-theoretical, non-utopian, actually-existing society, the New Zealand people are represented by the New Zealand govt. The fact that we’d rather not be doesn’t alter that situation, which is why your point is irrelevant.
KiwiRail obtained a High Court interim injunction preventing media organisations from publishing the contents of a leaked internal report. Another High Court hearing in Wellington upheld the interim injunction, but said media could “reasonably and fairly” report discussion in Parliament yesterday about the business plan.
Transcript and link to full video of what was said in parliament yesterday by Phil Twyford and Clare Curran:
http://yournz.org/2012/08/24/twyford-and-curran-on-kiwirail/
QTR waffles on about the shares being held by an ‘intermediary’ ( this must be one of the spin lines/ deflection gambits put out by the Keystone government) but that is true of many financial organisations.
But then again hes openly admitting that the Keystone government shareholding ministers DONT represent the people !.
Interesting to see an SOE try to “effectively” gag Parliament, and even more interesting to see Big Jezza defend it.
ghostwhowalkznz – Please read the comments again. It wasn’t I who referred to an ‘intermediary’ it was Psycho Milt.
Here in non-theoretical, non-utopian, actually-existing society I’d call someone you’d rather not want to be represented by non-representative.
Really, this isn’t castle in the air theorizing. It is a matter of straightforward logic. For something to represent the whole of society there would have to be unanimity. Where there is no unanimity there cannot be said to be representation of the whole. The notion that the state is representative of society as a whole is an intensely romantic one.
Meh. What we personally think about the representative or non-representative nature of govt is irrelevant in practical terms. If you doubt this, try throwing away the passport issued by the govt that doesn’t represent you and traveling with one you issued yourself.
Quoth the Raven, should write a book.
No he should write an article, then again….
No, he should keep on recyc…
NO, got it wrong again
How about a good ol’ fashioned fisticuffs,and a back bending of fingers.
Got to shut him up some how.
QTR talks gooblygook language I don’t think there would be much demand for the book as he is on another planet and speaks a different dialect to normal people.
@Jack, just becasue you don’t understand it doesn’t make it less valid.