Larry Williams Drive

Here’s a question for you: if you really like Winston Peters’ idea of buying back the BNZ - why? What problem do you think will be solved by buying it back? Do you think the banks are ripping you off because they’re owned by Australians, and that if only one of them were owned by us again, they wouldn’t? Take a look at the home loan rates Kiwibank is offering right now. They’re basically the same as - if not higher than -those offered by the Australian-owned banks. Do you think this might improve competition? In that case, how does taking BNZ and Kiwibank and combining them into a single bank - leaving one fewer bank in the market - help competition? Do you think it will stop $1.5 billion in profit heading to Australia, making us richer? Sure, the logic stacks up at first glance. But first, we’d have to borrow huge amounts of money to buy the bank and pay significant interest on that debt. It could take 10 to 20 years before we start seeing those profits flow into New Zealand rather than going toward int