Where Is the Resistance to Privatisation and Austerity?

By Elliot Crossan

Yesterday, Health Minister Simeon Brown announced a “major overhaul” of our healthcare system, which will involve “partnering with the private sector.” This comes in the same week that a survey was released showing that 86% of healthcare workers believe that the government’s cuts to Te Whatu Ora will make it harder for people to get healthcare, and that 72% agree that our health system is underfunded.

Cutting funding for public services whilst simultaneously expanding private “options” is a tactic pulled directly from the privatisation playbook. Step one is to destroy confidence in the ability of the government to provide basic services; step two is to extol the virtues of for-profit “alternatives.” Step three is full privatisation.

Our health system was already suffering the effects of decades worth of underfunding. Labour’s track record on health is less shoddy than National’s, but even the governments of Helen Clark and Jacinda Ardern failed to adequately address chronic underfunding of our health system. The Coalition’s recent savage cuts have dramatically worsened the situation — meaning we were already at step one, with confidence in the service undermined. Brown’s plans for private sector expansion in health means the government is moving swiftly to step two. Meanwhile, the ACT Party is waiting in the wings, lobbying for step three: a full sell-off. David Seymour has cited privatisation of the health system as one of his top priorities for 2025.

We only need to look at America to see the disastrous consequences of a privatised healthcare system. The US is the only developed country that doesn’t have universal health coverage. It consequently has the worst-performing health system of any high-income country. Its insurance-based model ruthlessly prioritises private profit over human life; American doctors recently described the delays this causes to vital medical procedures as “a death sentence.”

Public anger about this system and the brutal effects it has on working class communities in the US recently boiled to the surface with the fatal shooting of health insurance CEO Brian Thompson. The suspect in the shooting, Luigi Mangione, has garnered huge sympathy and a cult following online, with millions supporting his alleged actions.

Working class Americans are so angry at their for-profit healthcare system that many are openly supporting cold-blooded murder. Is this utter nightmare really what we want to see introduced in Aotearoa?

The ongoing controversy over Seymour’s revamped school lunch programme is another consequence of the Coalition employing underhanded tactics in its assault on the public sector. ACT campaigned in 2023 to scrap the programme, which delivers free school lunches to 230,000 students across more than a thousand schools.

Instead of immediately abolishing free school lunches once appointed Associate Education Minister, Seymour has used “cost-cutting measures” to undermine the programme. Meals have arrived late; not enough vegetarian options have been provided; ham has been served in meals which were supposed to be halal; and on Thursday a student in Gisborne received second-degree burns when a meal was served at a dangerously hot temperature.

There are just two steps in this strategy rather than three: make the service look terrible, then scrap it. Kids in the poorest areas of the country will go hungry as a result. Seymour doesn’t give a damn.

The Coalition’s attacks on healthcare and on free school lunches are just two examples of its all-out assault on our welfare state. Other instances include sweeping cuts to Whaikaha, harsh benefit sanctions, and a freeze on construction for new state housing, just to name a few. Each of these are examples of privatisation and austerity policies — and part of a direct assault by the government on the living standards of working class communities in Aotearoa.

The driving imperative behind these decisions is simple: profit is king. Through tax cuts for landlords and investors, and by bringing in the private sector to operate previously state-run services, the Coalition parties are handing out wealth to their corporate donors as fast as they can get away with. If this agenda drives up inequality, poverty and homelessness, and increases the cost of living for hard-working families who are already struggling — so be it.

The last election saw previous records shattered for election donations, with the right-wing parties receiving twice as much money as the centre-left parties were given. Businesses overwhelmingly donated to National, ACT and NZ First; the trade unions and private individuals that donated to the other parties were simply unable to compete with the influx of corporate funding for the Coalition. Now shareholders and CEOs are getting their money’s worth — at the expense of everyone else.

Christopher Luxon is speaking at an International Investment Summit in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland next week. Our salesman-in-chief will no doubt try to tempt foreign investors with opportunities to make a killing by looting Aotearoa’s public sector. Never mind that the profits of multinational corporations over the past decade have averaged $9.9 billion — higher than our combined exports of milk powder, wool and vegetables. Sale of public assets to overseas investors will mean even more profits being sucked out of Aotearoa at the expense of local communities, while increased foreign ownership will make it harder for future generations to take back control of these assets.

ActionStation is organising a protest against this summit. At 9am on Thursday, activists will make some noise outside Luxon’s festival of privatisation, which is being held at Park Hyatt Hotel.

Thursday’s action is a start. But where is the mass movement fighting back against the Coalition’s cuts and asset sales? The agenda of the John Key government was mild in comparison to the neoliberal assault currently being unleashed by National, ACT and NZ First; yet Key’s policies provoked tens of thousands to take to the streets. Opposition to asset sales and to the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement was strong in the 2010s. The Coalition of today is going further and faster — where is the fightback?

Resistance to the Treaty Principles Bill and (to a lesser degree) the Fast-track Approvals Bill has mobilised huge numbers. This is hugely positive — the government’s racist, anti-Treaty, environmentally destructive policies are rightly causing uproar. Connections have been drawn in those movements between the government’s attacks on the Treaty, its attacks on environmental protections, and its agenda to make the rich richer.

But a mass movement against privatisation and austerity is desperately needed alongside these other movements. The left must fight back on all three fronts at the same time. In doing so, campaigners must explicitly make it clear that Luxon, Seymour and Peters do not have the best interests of “everyday New Zealanders” at heart. They are out to serve their rich mates — plain and simple.

The Coalition, and the ACT Party in particular, is trying to divide-and-rule by fanning the flames of racism against Māori. This too is part of the privatisation playbook. If the “white working class” can be convinced that they will benefit from racist policies, they can be persuaded to vote for right-wing parties whose policies do not benefit them at all — they only benefit the rich and powerful.

The left must fight to defend the welfare state at the same time as fighting for Te Tiriti o Waitangi and for urgent action on climate change. These struggles are directly connected. The Coalition exists to fight for the interests of giant corporations — their agenda makes attacks on working class communities, indigenous rights and environmental protections inevitable. A coherent alternative must be presented to this government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.

This alternative means not only halting cuts and asset sales, but turning the tide on 40 years of neoliberal policies which have worsened inequality. Public ownership must be expanded; services suffering from decades of underfunding must be properly invested in; and programmes such as free school lunches must be made universal, giving communities across the country a stake in their defence. It is harder to undermine social programmes which benefit every family directly.

Only by directly taking on the interests of the rich and powerful can such an alternative be realised. Privatisation must be reversed; corporations and the wealthiest households must be made to pay much higher tax rates. The top 1% won’t give up their wealth and power without a fight. The only way to create an alternative which works for everyone is to organise a mass movement with the support of the majority of society.

Thankfully, working class people are the vast majority of society. Together, we have an interest in creating a world that works for the many, not the few.

It is time for activists, community groups and trade unions to mobilise in the streets and in workplaces to resist privatisation and austerity. We must oust the government of the rich; and we must replace the Coalition with a left-wing government committed to genuine change. More incrementalism and half-measures from Labour will not do.

Here, we must heed another warning from America. If left unchecked, the wealthy elite will run society into the ground. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are taking a sledgehammer to the already-broken federal government, stripping back every piece of social and environmental legislation they can get their greedy hands upon. The same phenomenon is taking place in Argentina under libertarian President Javier Milei — poverty has soared as a result, with over half of the country now living below the poverty line.

This is the future that David Seymour wants for Aotearoa. The ACT Party represents ultra-wealthy libertarian donors who are hell bent on increasing their profits at all costs. Healthcare privatisation is just the start — this corporate elite will tear our society apart with its insatiable, rapacious greed.

We have to stop them before this oligarchic American horror story is unleashed upon our country.

Elliot Crossan is an ecosocialist writer and activist from Auckland. He is the Chair of System Change Aotearoa. You can subscribe to Elliot’s Substack page to read more.