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Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

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11<br />

was NZ$28.3 billion. Of this, NZ$11.9 billion was domestic debt held by New Zealanders,<br />

while the government overseas debt stood at NZ$16.4 billion. 24<br />

Since the early 1990s, government overseas debt has apparently been reduced<br />

through the action of deliberate government policy. But because SOEs (state­owned<br />

enterprises) are now classified by Statistics New Zealand/Te Tari Tatau as corporations,<br />

many billions of dollars of public debt are hidden in the corporate debt figures. As the<br />

‘Government and Corporate Debt 1983–2000’ graph on page 000 shows, if we include the<br />

overseas debt of SOEs in the public debt, government debt is actually rising and not<br />

falling at all. State­owned enterprises, including corporations like Meridian Energy and<br />

New Zealand Post, are part of the larger group called Crown entities, which includes<br />

district health boards, the Accident Compensation Commission and Housing New<br />

Zealand. In the years between 2000 and 2003, the total liabilities of Crown entities rose<br />

from NZ$12.4 billion to NZ$16.1 billion. 25<br />

Hospitals, for example, are in debt. During the nurses’ threatened strike in January<br />

2002, it was reported that the Canterbury District Health Board was NZ$110 million in<br />

debt. As at December 2001, the total debt of district health boards was NZ$1035 million<br />

and the average interest rate was 8 per cent. This means that the district health boards pay<br />

something like NZ$80 million a year in interest to debt holders such as banks and<br />

overseas insurance companies. 26 Even a small body such as Wanganui District Health<br />

Board had a NZ$40 million debt for 40,000 people in 2002. And schools and universities<br />

are also going into debt.<br />

Local Government Debt<br />

The local government debt is officially included in the total government debt by Statistics<br />

New Zealand/Te Tari Tatau, but since they do not make the figures publicly available we<br />

have to work them out for ourselves. A survey by Malcolm Thomas of the Lower Hutt

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