KEY POINTS:
As I've said before, I'm not too fussed, as an Auckland City ratepayer, about my city's 12.75 per cent stake in Auckland International Airport being cashed up and spent on urgent jobs within the city - like repairing the Aotea underground carpark, buying and restoring the St James
Theatre. That sort of thing.
If 83 per cent of New Zealanders - including 84 per cent of Aucklanders - reckon that Auckland and Manukau cities' combined shareholding of 22.8 per cent should not go overseas, then it's up to the Government, not Auckland City ratepayers, to guard the so-called public interest.
This groundswell of opposition, sympathetically remarked upon by Prime Minister Helen Clark and Trade Minister Phil Goff, is a good indication that recent takeover bids are doomed - particularly as they come right in the middle of local government election campaigning.
Even Auckland mayoral hopeful John Banks, who as mayor in 2002 sold half the city's airport share holding to balance the books, is pussy-footing this time round.
He's smart enough to appreciate that campaigning to sell the remaining shares would be almost as suicidal as promising to revive plans for an Eastern Highway through Hobson Bay.
What's amusing is that the resurgent National Opposition is, for once, unable to exploit the populist tide. Looking through recent files, there's a brief fudging from National leader John Key saying that in principle he would like to see the airport remain in New Zealand hands but that it was not an open-and-shut issue.
Other than that, we have had mutterings from finance spokesman Bill English about it being a "strategic asset" and trade spokesman Murray McCully warning against Government ministers making inflammatory statements.
The joke is, they can't exploit the issue because it was Jenny Shipley's National Government in 1998 which sold the Crown's majority 51.6 per cent airport holding to all comers, foreign and local.
And by chance, the multinational merchant bank retained to advise on, and then manage the sale it recommended, was Merrill Lynch, the money-trading alma mater where Mr Key made his multi-million-dollar fortune.
Merrill Lynch masterminded the float, which was promoted as providing "a maximum participation by New Zealand investors".
Such was the interest drummed up by mass advertising fronted by the likes of former All Black captain Sean Fitzpatrick, that perhaps the airport could have remained 100 per cent New Zealand owned after this privatisation.
But the sale was structured in such a way that New Zealand purchasers received only 18 per cent of the shares they applied for because a large swag of shares had been set aside for foreigners.
Even Act's then-leader, Richard Prebble, complained in a letter to the registrar of companies that "the deal has been structured so that Merrill Lynch has an incentive to offer shares to foreigners rather than New Zealanders.
"On page 102 of the prospectus it is stated that Merrill Lynch will receive 2.5 per cent commission on foreign sales and 0.5 per cent commission for sales to the New Zealand public."
In that initial sales process, 22 per cent of the shares ended up overseas.
A year later, North Shore City sold its 7.14 per cent holding to Singapore Government-owned Singapore Changi Airport Enterprise Ltd, raising overseas ownership of the airport to 28.47 per cent.
At last count, foreigners owned 36 per cent of the airport. Under the Dubai Aerospace offer, the company will own 51 to 60 per cent of the airport, and a mix of other foreigners and New Zealanders the rest.
Obviously public sentiment is overwhelmingly against this, and politicians, local and national, are in something of a dither over what to do.
But as I've suggested before, there is a solution which guarantees that at least the minority stake that Auckland and Manukau ratepayers own remains in public hands, and that is for the shares to be bought by Dr Cullen's national superannuation fund.
That way, those pining for "strategic" assets to remain in local hands will be mollified, and Auckland ratepayers like myself will win too because the deal will produce the cash to build new assets - pleasure palaces and the like, which will be rather more fun than owning acres of concrete runways.
