KEY POINTS:
It is hardly surprising that the proposal to sell Auckland International Airport has generated both political heat and public unease. The phrase "asset sales" has assumed the status of a four-letter word in the public imagination since the economic reforms instituted by the fourth Labour Government, which were founded on the principle that Government had a sacred duty to sell everything it could lay its hands off, and then to stand back and watch the magic of the market transform dusty, featherbedded departments full of cardigan-clad bludgers into lean, efficient profit-generating machines.
The reforms dragged this country out of the 1950s and dropped it unceremoniously - not to mention painfully - on to the sharp edge of the future. Along the way, we gained much (who would swap Telecom, even at its most ghastly, for the old P&T?) but we have also lost plenty in everything from healthcare to public television. And the privatisation of transport infrastructure cannot be said to be the greatest of the success stories. The asset-stripping of the rail network will take years to recover from, if it can be reversed at all.
Given that unhappy history, it is not hard to whip up anxiety about the prospect that the country's major airport might pass into foreign control. Dubai Aerospace Enterprise has made a $3.80 per share merger proposal that would see it pay up to $2.6 billion for as much as 60 per cent of the airport. A decision on its bid - and indeed on other bids plainly in the offing - will not be made before November.
Plenty of colours have already been nailed to the mast of the debate, but the matter deserves more sober consideration than it is currently getting from politicians anxious to bolster their positions before this year's local body polls and next year's general election.
New Zealand First leader Winston Peter's raising of "security issues", which sought to associate the idea in the public mind with Arab terrorism, was shameful. Within hours, he conceded it was a non-issue, but he had achieved his headline-grabbing objective and has since contented himself with such immoderate and emotive terms as "economic treachery". But elsewhere, phrases such as "key strategic asset" and "loss of a long-term investment" are being lobbed so thick and fast that it would take an air traffic controller to keep track of them all.
The problem with such terms is that, like "right to life" or "keep politics out of sport" in other highly emotive debates, they are designed not to advance debate but to silence discussion. They are the rhetorical equivalent of "have you stopped beating your wife?". They defy response because to respond to them is to declare yourself against key strategic assets and long-term investments.
But to support the sale of the airport - or at least careful consideration of the idea - is not to make such a declaration. In the first place, the airport is not the only long-term investment to which public or private capital might be committed. Manukau and Auckland Cities, whose 23 per cent gives the two councils almost enough voting power to veto the proposal, would, one imagines, be invested in something else which would generate a generous profit. Equally profitably, it might relieve ratepayers of the crippling debt they will have to shoulder to pay for the many infrastructural developments needed for the region.
Further, it is far from clear that the sale of the airport to DAE or any other cash-rich overseas buyer would be bad news for this country. The vast majority of the direct and indirect economic benefit it delivers will be delivered, no matter who owns it. Meanwhile, if New Zealand became part of an Asia-Pacific transport hub driven by one of the world's most successful airlines, the share dividends councils now enjoy would look like chicken feed.
Aviation is a risky business: ask the Belgians and the Swiss, not notably poor countries who have lost their national airlines in recent years. To dismiss the airport sale by pandering to irrational fear does no one - except, perhaps, campaigning politicians - any good at all.
