Prime Minister, David Seymour laugh off NZ First policy to nationalise BNZ

The leaders of National and Act parties have thrown cold water over NZ First’s proposed policy of buying back Bank of New Zealand.

NZ First leader Winston Peters announced on Sunday the party would campaign on buying back BNZ and making KiwiSaver enrolment compulsory from birth.

Christopher Luxon laughed off the idea this morning, saying it would require borrowing $30 billion to fund the purchase.

The idea sounded like a Labour Party policy, Luxon told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Breakfast

“It’s completely fanciful ... To go borrow $30b to buy a private company doesn’t make any sense whatsoever.

“It’s just not feasible, I don’t know why you’d want to do it.”

Outlining the Act Party’s stance on the policy, Deputy Prime Minister David Seymour said he understood Peters’ emotive appeal after six years of economic disruption and uncertainty, but believed its long-term proposition hadn’t been thought through.

He said a merger would go against current efforts to stimulate the market, noting that BNZ also wasn’t for sale, and pointed to Venezuela as an example of nationalising assets.

“I’m sure that they will sell it to the government for the right price, but I’m not sure the taxpayer would be very happy about that price,” Seymour told Ryan Bridge TODAY.

“Or maybe the government could just force them to sell it, but I don’t know if having a country where the government comes along and says, ‘Hey, nice business you got there, shame if anything were to happen to it’, is actually going to be good for success.”

Seymour also said there’d be underlying risks in the inevitable switch from a right-leaning government to a left-leaning one, whose members he believed would hijack such an asset for their own agenda.