2013 New Zealand asset sales referendum

Question

The question asked was:

Background

The National government was re-elected at the 2011 election on a platform of "Mixed Ownership Model" for the five state-owned companies Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand, where a minority stake in the companies would be sold off. This policy was opposed by the opposition. A coalition of groups including the Green Party, Grey Power, Council of Trade Unions (CTU), Labour Party, New Zealand Union of Students' Associations (NZUSA), Greenpeace and others started a petition against it in April 2012. The New Zealand Herald argued in an editorial that the Green Party used parliamentary funding to pay people to collect signatures, which while legal broke a long-standing convention about citizen initiated referendums.

By July 2012, it was reported that nearly 200,000 signatures had been collected, of which 100,000 were collected by the Green Party. As a combined initiative, Labour and the Greens issued a protest T-shirt against asset sales in support of the referendum. By early January 2013, the group had collected 340,000 signatures, more than enough to force a referendum; 10% of registered voters or approximately 310,000 signatures are required to force a referendum, although more are generally required to be collected to account for invalid and duplicate signatures. By late February 2013, 391,000 signatures had been collected. On 12 March 2013, the entire 393,000-signature petition was presented to the House.

Holding a referendum separate from an election process is estimated to cost $9 million. Defending this cost, Russel Norman, Greens co-leader, noted that this cost paled in comparison to the (to September 2013) $100 million cost of the asset sales program itself.

Result

The referendum took place by postal ballot, opening on 22 November 2013 and closing on 13 December 2013. 45 cent of eligible voters took part. Of those, approximately two-thirds voted against asset sales.

Despite the result of this referendum being not in favour of partial asset sales, Prime Minister John Key announced these partial asset sales would continue. He said: "Three in four New Zealanders said no we don't agree with Labour and the Greens. I think it will be a dismal failure from their point of view." He had also gone on to call the referendum "an utter waste of money" as he had no intention of honouring its results, claiming the Government had been re-elected at the 2011 general election partially on the basis of the pending shares sell-off.

References

References

1. (17 December 2013). "Citizens Initiated Referendum 2013: Final Result".
2. (2 September 2013). "Referendum to be held on asset sales". [[The New Zealand Herald]].
3. (14 March 2013). "Dame Anne Salmond: Time to defend democratic rights". The New Zealand Herald.
4. Bennett, Adam. (30 September 2013). "Govt sets date for asset sale referendum". [[The New Zealand Herald]].
5. "Asset sales referendum 'waste of money' - Key - Politics News {{!}} TVNZ".
6. Wannan, Olivia. (4 January 2013). "Asset sales petition gets its numbers". [[Fairfax NZ]].
7. (21 June 2012). "Editorial: Greens' use of public cash for petition wrong".
8. Shuttleworth, Kate. (27 July 2012). "200,000 sign asset sale petition". [[The New Zealand Herald]].
9. Field, Michael. (31 August 2012). "Push for asset sale referendum". Fairfax NZ.
10. Small, Vernon. (28 February 2013). "It's hug-a-judge time for Key over asset sales ruling". [[The Press]].
11. "Asset sales programme to continue: Key". stuff.co.nz.