Government ownership of key infrastructure ensures the greatest benefit for a country?

On average, everyone agrees with nonconsensus between 362 voters.

Reasons To Disagree

Yeah - right! Remember the railways in public hands? Gummint ownership of anything creates the worst monopoly possible - a self-serving, voracious monster.

in practice a gov't wrecks gr8 theory! govt cld invest on our behalf, thn giv us t shares bt instead it pockets t cshflw 4 votes

And how many of these plonkers have every run a profitable business?. Their history of selling key assets to money hungry foreign companes to strip back to bare basics and resell back to Govt or bail out is not a great business model.

What is 'key infrastructure'? And how elastic is that definition? When would stop housing or banking or building etc., from becoming 'key infrastructure'? A company succeeds or fails based on its performance and its service delivery - bad companies are stopped by their own failures and good companies remain because of their successes. Governments, on the other hand, don't have the same the checks and balances - what stops a government from providing a minimal service for maximal price? What incentive do they have to make things cheap and efficient? What makes them go away if they fail? [A ballot box comes too late and doesn't guarantee that things will be fixed with a 'new' government] It's pretty clear that anything in the government's hands are mere political tools.

Funny how that never worked in any country that has done so now and throughout history. Just take a look at America and the lobbyist movement there, it only exists because of the kind of power given to government by this sort of lunacy.

Reasons To Agree

OUR TRANSPORT IS CRAP.ATLEAST WE COULD FORCE THE GOVERNMENT TO MAKE IT BETTER BY VOTING ON IT!!! it would also add vital income thus lowering our taxes sensibly instead of short term politics that is currently played

I dont know if it ensures the greatest benefit, but I do think that at least it would focus the companies efforts towards dealing with NZ's needs rather than an international corporates pockets. It might also help the government to focus on its key responsibilities rather than getting sidetracked by so many non issues. I do worry that successive governments will use them as a labour sink hole as they have done historically.

Strategic infrastructure should remain in government ownership. Security is one reason. Government?s role is not to run businesses; it does not have the right skills. A good compromise for the benefit of the country is for government to delegate the operation of business while retaining ownership. This should be done without interference other that the normal regulatory process.

A government owned enterprize that is for the benifit of the people IE transport, can effectively run at a loss, employ a lot of people and provide a great service that can be subsidised by the Tax payer.The Tax payer has ownership in the country as apposed to, selling off assets that initially the tax payer built, Receive short term gain that is totally subjective as it is never seen and the services to the people suffer.

Some industries just shouldn't function with a profit motive in mind. Simple examples are things like Roads, Fibre optic cables/phoneline, Police, Armed forces, Hospitals, Schools, ACC, Welfare, Search and Rescue and Prisons to name a few. Conversely there should be an oversight committee that looks carefully into each state owned company and ensures that it is performing at an adequate level.