Is financial integration with Australia the long term policy objective of the National Party? Has the destruction of NZ as a sovereign state begun? It appears to be so judging by the tremendous amount of overseas debt being planned and accepted for our country.

And when we can't pay our overseas debts, the solution must be abandonment of independence and absorption with Australia. That may be the demand of our growing number of foreign creditors when NZ must inevitably default having been crushed by its debt mountain.

This worse case scenario took a step towards reality in the Prime Minister's speech of 25 January 2013 to the North Harbour Club. He has unleashed a massive debt programme which will not be recorded in the government's debt figures.

The ruse to do this is contained in the words "public private partnership". The debts these financial schemes entail are not on the government's balance sheet, but off balance sheet. They are the hidden debts to be paid in future with interest irrespective whether or not there is any asset which they represent.

Experience overseas indicates it is a con, a delusion foisted on the taxpayers.

Six journalists wrote in the London Sunday Telegraph way back in May 2007 about the Private Finance Initiative system and one commented that many of its practitioners knew it represented absolutely terrible value for taxpayers money.

It was revealed in 2006 that in the UK a company, called Innisfree, had 14 employees only and yet owned or co-owned 28 NHS hospitals, 269 schools, a Scottish motorway, a Welsh prison and the Ministry of Defence Headquarters in London. It owned 80% of a school in Clacton, Essex under the PFI scheme, for which the county's taxpayers are contracted to pay this company $2,500,000 a year until the year 2035. This is despite the school having been closed for some time.

Will the people in Hobsonville know this as the new primary school opens "under the first major public-private partnership ever undertaken in New Zealand" [John Keys 25-1-13]

At present as the British NHS collapses within itself because of heavy interest charges and PFI disasters, for the British people, hospitals are being closed, staff sacked, Accident and Emergency departments shut or "amalgamated".

So where do these PFI groups get the money which is unavailable to governments? They borrow most of it from banks! And do they pay their fair share of tax on the profits? It is very doubtful.

Let's look at the activities of the Australian investment bank Macquarie's bearing in mind Prime Minister Key's statement on 25 January 2013 that Transmission Gully in the Paekakariki area is being developed through one of the PPP - or Public Private Partnership - deals when it comes to building a road. Macquarie's has done well out of the British. It built-or had built- a 27 mile expressway between Birmingham and Cannock in 2003, borrowing the money to do so. It refinanced its loan and owes more than $2000 million. The toll charge has risen from $4 a car to $11, but many motorists prefer to drive on the roads for which they have already paid. To date, Macquarie funds and investment partners have taken out $784 million in dividends and paid no tax.

Why are we borrowing millions with added interest from private groups who usually borrow their money from private banks when infrastructure projects could easily be funded by a line of credit at the Reserve Bank? The answer, as previously, is that the rich must be given opportunities to increase their financial wealth.

Michael Clatford, DSC’s political commentator

Published: February 2013