From a David Shearer speech:

Your taxes and my taxes have paid for some very productive assets: power stations and power companies, assets like the Waitaki dam that I mentioned — built by our ancestors with picks and shovels. They should be passed on to future generations.

This government wants to sell those assets off for short-term gain. But once they’re gone, we won’t be able to buy them back. They’ll be gone forever. Our children won’t have them.

There’s no fairness in taking something that’s owned by everyone, and putting it in the hands of the small number of New Zealanders who can afford to buy shares.

Most New Zealanders are too busy trying to pay their power bills to think about buying shares in power stations.

And power prices doubled when they sold Contact Energy off in the 90s. I don’t want to see that happen again.

Is it significant that this is a small comment buried in the middle of the speech? Are Labour finally starting to look forward more now?