Dom Post on asset sales referendum

The Dom Post editorial:

The Government now has the authority to sell a 49 per cent share in the power company. To those who say the public are opposed to the process, Prime Minister John Key and his ministers can offer a simple rejoinder: “We said we were going to do it before the last election; if you really didn’t like it you shouldn’t have elected us.”

It’s a difficult argument to counter and the referendum the Green Party and Labour are promoting will change nothing. Nor should it. Whatever the pros and cons of selling state assets, governments are elected to govern. If governments were only able to do things that had popular support at the time they were done, New Zealand might never have given women the vote, decriminalised homosexuality or made the wearing of seatbelts compulsory.

The referendum is an abuse of what is meant to be a law to allow citizens to petition Parliament to get a referendum. It has been hijacked by the parties that lost an election to try and over-turn the election result.