“The Corporate Asset Strip Disguised as “Smart” Finance” - 10 October 2025

Kia ora whānau,

Kei te mōhio au te whakatōhea nei. The scent of colonial greed hangs thick in the air as Finance Minister Nicola Willis peddles her latest con job to the business elite at the Bloomberg Address. While hospitals crumble and schools lack teachers, Willis wants to flog off our publicly-built broadband infrastructure to fund her government’s fiscal disasters. Meanwhile, her predecessor’s mate Adrian Orr pockets nearly half a million in hush money for walking away from the Reserve Bank. This is not economic management - this is organised theft from the people of Aotearoa.

Finance Minister Nicola Willis addressing business leaders at Bloomberg Policy Series event

The Heart of This Scam - Selling What We Built to Pay For What They Broke

Let me spell this out plain as day for every hardworking New Zealander watching their power bills soar and their kids’ schools fall apart. Willis and her National government want to sell securities worth potentially $2.47 billion in Chorus - the telecommunications company we the people funded to build our ultra-fast broadband network. They originally invested $1.33 billion of taxpayer money in 2011 to create this essential infrastructure. Now they want to sell it for what could be over $1 billion profit and claim this represents “smart” financial management.^{[1][2][3][4][5][6]}

This is the same government that has overseen government debt exploding from 19.2% of GDP in 2019 to a projected 47% in 2025. Their answer to their fiscal incompetence? Sell the infrastructure we paid for to fund the services they should already be providing.^[7][8]

Breakdown of Crown investment in Chorus telecommunications infrastructure showing original investment versus potential market value

Willis claims most New Zealanders do not know the government owns this investment and “feels no particular benefit from it”. This breathtaking arrogance reveals everything about National’s contempt for public ownership. We funded this network. We own it. And now they want to sell it back to private investors who will extract profits forever while we pay again through higher broadband costs.^[2][3]

The RBNZ Golden Handshake - Paying Elites to Stay Silent

New Zealand currency with sold stamp symbolizing government asset sales and privatization

While Willis lectures us about fiscal responsibility, her government quietly signed off on a $416,120 “restraint of trade” payment to former Reserve Bank Governor Adrian Orr. This is on top of his $766,180 regular remuneration, bringing his total package to $1.18 million for a man who “abruptly quit his job in March” after engineering a recession with aggressive interest rate rises.^{[1][9][10][11]}

Breakdown of Adrian Orr’s total payment package showing regular remuneration versus restraint of trade payment

The restraint payment - worth 6.4 teachers’ salaries or 5.9 nurses’ salaries - is designed to keep Orr quiet about confidential Reserve Bank information. This while schools struggle with teacher shortages and our health system collapses. The working class pays the price while the elite get golden parachutes for their failures.^[9][12]

The Neoliberal Playbook - Privatise Profits, Socialise Losses

Willis’s Chorus sale follows the classic neoliberal script perfected by National since the 1980s. Build essential infrastructure with public money, then sell it to private interests who extract profits while providing worse service. We have seen this movie before with power companies, Telecom, and countless other assets.^{[13][14][15][16]}

New Zealand government debt as percentage of GDP showing dramatic increase from 2019 to 2025

The government debt trajectory reveals the fundamental dishonesty of this approach. After decades of tax cuts for the wealthy and privatisation schemes, government debt has skyrocketed. Their answer is not to tax wealth or corporations properly - it is to sell more public assets to temporarily plug budget holes while creating permanent private monopolies.^[7][17]

Fiber optic telecommunications infrastructure representing New Zealand’s ultra-fast broadband network

This infrastructure was built to serve all New Zealanders, connecting rural communities and providing the digital backbone for our economy. Chorus received $929 million in Crown investment specifically to ensure universal coverage, including priority deployment to schools, medical centres, and businesses. Now Willis wants to hand this strategic asset to private investors focused on profit maximisation, not public service.^[6][18]

The Corporate Christian Connection - Luxon’s Prosperity Gospel Politics

The ideological foundation for this asset-stripping lies in the evangelical Christian nationalism that drives Prime Minister Christopher Luxon and his neoliberal allies. Luxon’s business background and prosperity gospel beliefs perfectly align with National’s worship of markets over people.^{[19][20][21][22]}

This is no coincidence. The fusion of evangelical Christianity and neoliberal economics has powered right-wing politics globally since the 1980s. Luxon’s “separation of church and state” rhetoric cannot disguise how his Christian supremacist worldview underpins National’s assault on collective ownership and indigenous rights.^{[23][24][25][19]}

Willis, positioned as the “moderate” face of this extremist agenda, provides liberal cover for policies that fundamentally transfer wealth from working people to capital owners. Her Bloomberg Address was pitched to international investors and local business elites - the very people who will profit from Chorus privatisation.^[26][24]

The Fiscal Fraud - Borrowing Against Our Children’s Future

The numbers tell the real story of National’s economic “competence”. The operating deficit will hit $12.1 billion in 2025/26 before supposedly returning to surplus in 2028/29. Net core Crown debt will peak at 46% of GDP in 2027/28.^[27][7][28]

This fiscal deterioration stems directly from National’s ideological commitments to tax cuts for the wealthy while underfunding essential services. Rather than address the structural causes - inadequate taxation of capital and corporate welfare - they plan to sell public assets for short-term budget relief.^{[3][29][17][28]}

The Chorus sale proceeds would be redirected to “capital allocations - that’s hospitals, schools, and roads - in Budget 2026”. This reveals the fundamental perversity of neoliberal logic - sell the telecommunications infrastructure that connects schools and hospitals to fund new schools and hospitals that will lack proper connectivity.^[30][2]

The Democratic Deficit - Decisions Made in Corporate Boardrooms

Willis announced this potential privatisation not to Parliament or the public, but to business leaders at a Bloomberg corporate event. This symbolises how National governs - through consultation with capital, not citizens. The National Infrastructure Funding and Financing company (NIFFCo) will “investigate the feasibility” with final decisions made by “shareholding ministers” and corporate boards.^[1][30][3]

No public consultation. No democratic mandate. No consideration of strategic national interests. Just corporate executives deciding how to carve up public assets for private profit.

The timing is also suspicious - announced just as the government faces pressure over its economic record and falling poll numbers. Asset sales become the fallback option when National’s economic incompetence creates fiscal crises.^[29]

The Pattern of Plunder - From Think Big to Asset Stripping

This follows the same pattern that has impoverished New Zealand for four decades. National governments create fiscal crises through corporate welfare and tax cuts, then use these manufactured crises to justify selling public assets.^{[13][14][15][16][31]}

The 1990s asset sales programme under National cost taxpayers over $1 billion in lost dividends from power companies alone. The Chorus sale could dwarf this theft, permanently transferring billions in value from public to private hands.^[16]

Willis’s claim that this does not amount to “asset sales” because “we don’t own Chorus in any way” is pure sophistry. The government owns debt and equity securities worth potentially $2.47 billion. Selling these securities transfers public wealth to private investors, regardless of technical ownership structures.^[1][5][29]

The Māori Dimension - Attacking Indigenous Infrastructure Rights

This asset stripping has particular implications for Māori, who disproportionately rely on public services and infrastructure. The ultra-fast broadband network was designed to address digital inequalities that particularly affected Māori and Pacific communities.^[32][18][33]

Privatising this infrastructure threatens to recreate digital divides that public investment was designed to eliminate. Private operators focus on profitable urban markets while underserving rural and Māori communities that depend on cross-subsidisation from profitable areas.

The broader neoliberal assault on public ownership also undermines Treaty obligations by transferring state assets that should serve tangata whenua interests to private corporations focused solely on profit extraction.^[34]

The Call for Resistance - Defending Public Ownership

Working people must reject this corporate theft disguised as economic management. The Chorus network belongs to all New Zealanders and should remain in public hands to serve public purposes, not private profit.

This means demanding:

· No sale of Chorus securities without explicit democratic mandate

· Full public ownership of essential infrastructure including telecommunications

· Proper taxation of wealth and corporations to fund public services

· An end to golden handshake payments for failed executives

· Democratic control over infrastructure investment decisions

The alternative is clear - continued asset stripping that enriches elites while impoverishing communities, particularly Māori and working-class families who depend most on public services and infrastructure.

Willis and National represent the interests of capital against people. Their Bloomberg Address rhetoric about “smart balance sheet management” cannot disguise the fundamental reality - they want to sell what we built to pay for their failures, while their corporate mates get rich from our essential infrastructure.

Kia kaha, whānau. The fight for public ownership is the fight for our future.

Na te Māori Green Lantern

Readers who find value in this analysis of corporate power and colonial exploitation are invited to consider a koha to support this vital work: HTDM: 03-1546-0415173-000. These are tough economic times for whānau, so please contribute only if you have capacity and wish to support the cause of truth and justice.

The Māori Green Lantern Fighting Misinformation And Disinformation From The Far Right

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