Yes, where it makes economic and performance sense.

Luke: The Building is done by private building companies today....the problem with private financing is private financing often expects an un-reasonable monopoly to make it "worth their while" and of course Govns are stupid enought to agree. So what seems to happen (or can) is instead the public sector screws up in picking/partnering with private finance stage instead in managing and paying for a project stage ie its goes over-budget...if you look at toll roads as a classic bad example, the cost to the country for private financing and recovery via tolls costs more in the long run than just simply paying for it, straight off....its easy to manage a project badly, heaven knows Ive seen enough.

How about we get back Fay & Richwhite - they work wonders with public assets. Or maybe those guru's that run those uber successful PPP road and tunnel companies in Australia. Come to think of it, where is a successful example that gives a profit to the private sector and a fair return to the crown, and doesn't leave the taxpayer holding the bag when it goes pear shaped. The reason the private sector doesn't build ports, railways and roads by itself, without a taxpayer backstop, especially in a small country like NZ, is the virtually 100% chance of not being able to service the debt at some point. If the channel tunnel surrounded by a market as huge as Western Europe can't make it pay, in a country like ours the terms would have to be so far skewed in favour of the private sector the government may as well finance it themselves. Often their only chance is to get the thing built and then float it as quickly as possible and leave the shareholders to carry the loss a few years later. Then guess what. The government steps in to pick up the pieces.

Public Private Parasites.
We don't have that shorter memories in this country do we. We know PPPs of a nations necessities of live, strategic assets, historically lead to pravatisation of the profits and socialisation of the losses. The private element can come and go at will while the tax payer is beholden for the longterm. Thus, it has been proven time and time again that the private parasites will pull a number of dodgy scams in their quest of a big payday at the taxpayers expense, reinvesting nothing and reducing maintanence to make it appear profits have risen, then selling their share for capital gain before the maintanence deficit becomes all to obvious. Then when the strategic asset needs rebuilding the taxpayer gets left footing the bill. Or, the PPP will borrow a boat load of debt and use creative accounting to make it appear profits have increased, once again providing the private parasite an opportunity to jump ship and crystilise their capital gains and leave the taxpayer lumbered with the debt. In some cases credit has been borrowed and channeled into the personal accounts or corporate entities of the private parasites and the balance sheet left to be refloated by the taxpayer.
This has occured in most every nation that has been forced to open its borders to direct foreign investment when predatory lending practices of the central bankers drove them into debt repayment crisis and ultimately conditions of receivership at the hands of the central bankers, and you quessed it, in most cases the private parasite multinational corporations just happen to be majority stakeholder owned by the central bankers.
http://www.tni.org/detail_page.phtml?&act_id=16817
http://www.policyalternatives.ca/monitorissues/2009/04/monitorissue2215/...
http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/water/private-vs-public/economic-failures

If this is allowed to happen again the damage will be almost irreversible. Just look at the recent example of the Banks deciding to appeal what was a revolving door tax avoidence system because they know the legal costs would broke the nation well before their legal costs will ever reach anywhere near what it has been judged they should repay. And, they now know they have a sympathetic cabinet executive at the helm.
What is always given as the reason we have to turn to these parasites, "we dont have the money to do it, so we must look to the private sector" any regular reader of this blog knows we have the sovereign right to issue our own money backed by our own resources. There should be no foreign owned multinational selling our own wind back to us for foreign profit.

I sincerely hope that before NZ imports these new economic cost saving theories, they take the trouble and small cost involved to take a business class/fist class trip to the UK to interview the schools, prisons, hospitals etc that UNDERSTAND the implications involved for future taxpayers, and their own budgets in rental/maintenance costs vs. the huge income streams to private investors. DON'T GO THERE NZ unless you have some really sophisticated negotiators/contract managers in government (Yeah right!!!). I would be very dubious given the interests NZ's politicians (of all persuasions) have in property.

CTNZ - good post, but slightly wrong,
Q: Where does the government get the funding from for any public building projects (and everything else the government administers) in the normal course of running a government on behalf of all people?

A: Taxes

The answer is wrong, given that 97% of our money supply enters circulation as interest bearing debt to the private international banking network, we collect taxes to pay back "debt" that we are forced to borrow first before we can supply any service.

For a sample of the result of PPPs from around the world:
http://www.interest.co.nz/ratesblog/index.php/2009/08/12/have-your-say-g...