Some of the country’s biggest businesses - the state-owned electricity enterprises and other Crown entities - can expect a major shake-up under the new Govt. Deputy leader Bill English, who will take up the Finance portfolio and will also be the country’s first Minister for Infrastructure, says the country needs higher performance from these enterprises. He wants the SOEs to become more commercial.

Between them Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis Energy, Transpower and Solid Energy hold around $20bn in assets. Throw in other state enterprises (NZ Post, Kiwibank, Landcorp, TVNZ, KiwiRail and Housing NZ)… and there’s probably another $20bn in assets. Critics say the outgoing Labour-led Govt treated the SOEs as cash cows, and point to the special dividends extracted from Meridian Energy ($800m in 2006 following the sale of Southern Hydro). The question is whether the assets are being managed efficiently. The power generating SOEs have been criticised for not building enough capacity to avoid the kind of power shortages arising from the drought earlier in the year, while at the same time they have been lifting prices to customers.

Behind the scenes influential National front benchers have been strongly lobbied to refresh the Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit, or create a new office at arm’s length from Parliament to stimulate a drive to extract more commercial benefits from the assets deployed by the state over so many crucial businesses but so far there’s been no policy detail.

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