More on Genesis - it's a dog, a mangy, flea-bitten dog.

"Here’s what responsible economic management – National style – now looks like. You sell down state assets and forego the full flow of returns in perpetuity, when it would have been demonstrably cheaper to borrow the money involved, and pay it back. That’s even before you count the transaction costs of the selldown process, which are now running in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Only a small segment of the wealthiest New Zealanders have benefitted from this process – and even they have got to the point where they need to be gifted with all kinds of inducements to participate. As a consequence, the new investors in our energy sector have been gifted with a lever to extract ever higher returns from ordinary puinters, by jacking up their power prices even faster…As indicated above, this debacle really needs to be remembered and recounted in full, come election time."

Gordon Campbell.