Speaking at the annual National Party conference in Auckland today, Mr Key said the initiatives would make buying the shares easier for New Zealanders when the Government sells minority stakes in electricity generator and retailer Mighty River Power.
Today's four announced initiatives were:
* A minimum application for Mighty River Power shares of $1000.
* Loyalty bonus shares in Mighty River Power for New Zealand investors.
* A guarantee that New Zealanders seeking up to $2000 worth of shares would not have their application scaled back, meaning they were guaranteed to receive the shares they apply for.
* The appointment by Treasury of a retail syndicate of sharebrokers and banks to help potential investors understand how they can participate in the share offer.
Mr Key expected between 85 to 90 per cent New Zealand ownership in the companies; owned by the Government, individual New Zealanders, and funds like KiwiSaver, ACC and the Super Fund.
"The appointment of the retail syndicate will help to make it as easy as possible for New Zealanders to take part in the offer and get the information they need to make informed decisions," Mr Key said.
New Zealanders who bought shares in Mighty River Power and retained them for a certain period of time would also get a loyalty bonus, in the form of additional shares.
"We're working through the time period involved, but it's likely to be somewhere around three years," he said.
Labour's state owned enterprises spokesman Clayton Cosgrove said the loyalty scheme simply meant those who could not afford shares would be forced to subsidise those who could.
"The proposal to give New Zealanders who invest in companies like Mighty River Power a loyalty bonus for hanging on to their shares shifts the burden of National's bad idea on to taxpayers who can't afford to buy in," Mr Cosgrove said.
If New Zealand mums and dads had a spare $1000 the best advice would be to pay down the credit card, he said.
"Taxpayers are already taking a hit in lost dividends, this is a second blow."
Green Party co-leader Russel Norman said the bonus scheme was an attempt to get public support for the deeply unpopular state owned assets sales programme.
"The Government's fiscally reckless plan to sell off these productive state owned assets will be made even worse by this cynical move to offer potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses to wealthy NZ buyers," he said.
It appeared the Government had not budgeted for the scheme and it was unclear how much it would cost, Mr Norman said.
