Friday Morning Musings

New Auckland Public Transport discussion forums!

In the wake of MAXX dumping the discussion forum they used to host on the MAXX website, Cam Pitches of the Campaign for Better Public Transport tells me they now have an alternative discussion forum up and running on their site.

Go for it people.

MAXX has previously said they would link to this new forum, so I hope we will soon see this link prominently visible on the MAXX site.

"Media 7"

This morning I took some time out early and watched the second edition of TVNZ 7's "Media 7" programme, ably hosted by long time media scrutineer, Russell Brown. I won't go into detail on the content other than to say Brown and his panel offered up an interesting, amusing and informative assessment of the media coverage of recent economic and financial events. Simon Pound looked at how Michelle Boag and Merv Bennett's "Waiheke Week" has stirred things up on the island. I very much enjoyed the show start to finish and recommend it to anyone interested in media in New Zealand. There wasn't a boring minute to be found.

"Media 7" has a YouTube Channel. Each edition has been broken up into pieces less than 10 minutes long. Here's the property segment from the second edition:



Auckland Airport

The government has blocked the sale of a major share of Auckland Airport to the Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB). I'm sure shareholders who supported the sale won't be happy with that. I have to confess that I'm happy with the government's decision. The recent debacle surrounding the opening of Heathrow's new Terminal 5 and the previous announcement, by the Spanish-owned airport authority, of huge hikes in airport fees for travelers and carriers suggest the government's caution may be well founded. Although the deal as finally composed may have prevented the CPPIB of having control for now, there is no guarantee that some future government would not have changed that. Previous experience of foreign ownership in airlines, electrical utilities and rail is more than enough reason to be very cautious about Auckland Airport.

UPDATE: Bernard Hickey of interest.co.nz argues against blocking the sale of a 40% share in the airport to CPPIB on the grounds that it will negatively impact interest rates.



I think investors in most countries will have no issues with the government preserving local control of important infrastructure. American investors will be very familiar with such a concept and the reasons for it. Non-Americans aren't allowed to own television networks, for example. Also consider the uproar if military contractors attempt to use foreign sourced components in their weaponry, as General Dynamics recently announced, sourcing components from part of the European Airbus consortium. They would never consider actually selling off control of such a company. In my view, interest rate concerns a few points one way or the other don't trump strategic long term interests or sovereignty. Those are the rules followed in the countries we trade with. None of them that I know of have open slather on strategic assets. We are already more liberal than most. Few would tolerate almost all of their print media being foreign owned as is the case today in New Zealand.