In a recent contribution to this journal, John O'Neill (2011) argues that recent privatisation practices in New Zealand public schooling are evidence of a small, but growing, influence of neo-liberalism on New Zealand's public education. The focus in his paper is on the active enablement of non-government provision of public education through, for example, awarding public funding to private companies to deliver educational services (rather than the withdrawal of government support for the provision of education altogether). O'Neill presents two recent cases to provide empirical evidence that this kind of privatisation is growing. The first case used is the commissioning of assessment policy advice, which he claims has introduced a new ethic into public education. The second "case" presented by O'Neill, as evidence of active enablement, is data showing that the proportion of contracts awarded to for-profit companies/contractors has increased over the period 2001-2008, at the expense of public sector organisations. In this response, the author examines both O'Neill's arguments and the evidence he uses to support them. Notably, the author challenges O'Neill's assertion that his examples illustrate recent developments, questions O'Neill's interpretation of his own data, and argues that O'Neill has not properly considered alternative explanations for the trends he claims to have discovered.