He believed comments he made in a weekend interview, where he didn't rule out buying back partially privatised SOE's, had been misinterpreted.
Mr Cunliffe said it was not an explicit promise to buy back all shareholdings National may sell.
He said it was just not prudent to rule out a future Labour government being in a position where, in the National interest, it may have to buy back some shares.
Mr Cunliffe made the comments in a joint interview with fellow aspiring Labour leader David Shearer on TVNZ's Q + A programme yesterday.
Mr Cunliffe said he wanted to make his position clear on National's plan to sell up to 49 per cent of the country's energy assets - Solid Energy, Mighty River Power, Genesis - and a further sell-down of Air New Zealand.
"I don't stand for a paler shade of blue, and I want to look down the barrel and say this: if the Government is going to sell off precious state assets then we would not rule out re-nationalising some of them. And people need to be aware of that regulatory risk.''
When asked by host Guyon Espiner whether he would buy them back, Mr Cunliffe replied "we would look very hard [at buying them back].''
Asked if that was a smart use of money, Mr Shearer interrupted and said "the smart use of money is making these [state owned] assets actually work for New Zealand much more.''
- Newstalk ZB/The New Zealand Herald
