Mighty River con revealed

The Mighty River sale has been shown to be a con on New Zealanders with less than 3 percent of Kiwis buying in and most of the shares going to corporates, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

 “The charade is over: ‘mum and dad’ New Zealanders haven’t bought the shares; the big finance institutions and foreign corporates have,” said Dr Norman.

 “John Key’s talk of ‘mum and dad’ investors was a con – less than 3 percent of Kiwis have bought shares in Mighty River Power.

 “The fact that Kiwi retail investors are having their allotments scaled back so National can sell shares to foreign corporates shows what a farce this has been.

 “The multi-million dollar ad campaign has failed to con Kiwis into buying Mighty River, they want lower power prices instead.

 “The supposed 440,000 pre-registered investors turned out to be a figment of John Key’s imagination. The number of retail investors is only half the number who bought into Contact and less than half of what Treasury forecast. 

“Over two and a half times as many Kiwis have signed the petition calling for a referendum on asset sales as bought Mighty River shares – that tells you what Kiwis think of John Key’s asset sales. 

 “John Key has wasted as much as $100m on the sale of Mighty River. That’s nearly $1,000 per retail investor. It’s been a disaster. He should cancel the rest of the asset sales and focus on creating jobs for Kiwis, not payouts for financiers,” said Dr Norman.