Brownlee Gerry: Standing Orders—Sessional 
Brownlee Gerry: Standing Orders—Sessional 
[Volume:614;Page:10331] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (Deputy Leader—National) 
: 
 The National Party will be supporting this motion but only so that we can get a little bit more information about the way in which the Government has structured its investment in Air New Zealand and also so that we can formally state now that this is the final act in the renationalisation of Air New Zealand. Effectively as of tonight Air New Zealand becomes a State entity and therefore subject to the scrutiny of Parliament. That is not necessarily good for New Zealand and we will be watching very carefully through the processes now available to us just how Air New Zealand is structuring and restructuring itself bearing in mind that the assumption would be now that it has a strong level of social responsibility as all other State-owned enterprises have under the current Government—something that we do not necessarily agree with but in terms of this motion we are very pleased that there is an opportunity now to scrutinise its activities. 
In that regard I hope the Government relations people inside Air New Zealand are listening and take the strong message that they now deal with Parliament not the Government exclusively and that they need to change the way they have been dealing with the Opposition over the past 2 to 3 years. The idea that they are not accountable in any way for taxpayers’ funds to members who sit in Opposition should go out of the window. This motion should completely disabuse them of that notion and they should start engaging with us as soon as possible so that we can have meaningful financial reviews and scrutiny of the company. Otherwise of course we just get into the very unseemly exercise of dragging the chief executive and chairman before a select committee on an annual basis giving them a pretty severe grilling putting them in a position where frankly they will not be able to answer some questions and to the public they will look somewhat incompetent in the way they are running the airline. 
I do not think there is much point in hammering on too long about this tonight. We know that when the Hon Michael Cullen stands up and moves one of these motions in a mumbling fashion there is a lot more to it than he wishes the general public to understand. This is the final act of renationalisation of Air New Zealand and it is a message to the board of Air New Zealand to change its style and start dealing with Parliament on a much more equitable basis. That is now a requirement put upon the company by the taxpayer who through Michael Cullen holds those shares. 
We could go on at some length if we chose about the activities of Air New Zealand over the last 12 months. I do not think that serves a lot of purpose here other than to say we will be most interested in how the company treats the proposal from Virgin Blue Airlines to enter the New Zealand market. 
 It would be nice in Opposition to know whether it is true that it has taken particular steps to prevent Virgin Blue taking a holding in the Auckland airport and are effectively holding up the introduction of a further competitive service on our airways. Because of the complete disregard for the Opposition by Air New Zealand over the last period of time we have no idea whether that rumour is true. We simply have to take on face value that it is probably the way it has been operating. For a State entity to behave like that is not acceptable and we would expect there to be some answers to us on that issue and many others certainly sometime prior to Christmas. 
On that note I indicate that we will support this motion. We do not believe that the nationalisation of Air New Zealand is a good thing but while there is in excess of $800 million of taxpayer capital committed to this company in the interim we think that it is appropriate it answers to the whole of Parliament. I restate that I hope Air New Zealand is getting that message as well.