Greens to keep tabs on asset sales spend up

New Zealanders deserve to know just how much is being spent on selling off their assets, Green Party Co-leader Dr Russel Norman said today.

From today the Green Party website will keep a running tally of information gained from using parliamentary questions and Official Information Act requests - Cost Watch - where the public can keep track of how much is being spent on selling our assets.

"The sale of Contact Energy in the late 1990s cost the New Zealand taxpayer nearly $40 million dollars," said Dr Norman.

"This time around, the cost of National's entire asset sales program could be over $120 million.

"The public deserve to know exactly who will gain from the sale of our state owned assets and we will be doing our best to provide them with this information.

"The recipients of this largesse will be investment banks, advertising agencies and PR firms.

"To date $892,000 has been spent on public relations and advertising alone - and this is before a proper advertising campaign has even begun," said Dr Norman.

"Worse than this though is the long term cost to our economy of the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars of dividends that will happen through selling off our electricity generating assets."

Link to website: http://www.greens.org.nz/costwatch