Alexander Marc: Television New Zealand Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Alexander Marc: Television New Zealand Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:606;Page:3726] 
MARC ALEXANDER (United Future) 
: 
 I had the opportunity of going to a proctologist but instead I chose to listen to Mr Ryall’s speech. I obviously made the wrong choice.  
This bill should actually be called the “Thank God for United Future Bill” because on 13 October last year Peter Dunne and I went to see Michael Cullen and suggested to him breaking up TVNZ into two groups to operate as a public service broadcaster separately from BCL which should be allowed to get on with the job of setting up excellent transmission facilities for New Zealand. We wanted to make sure that BCL was allowed to go unchallenged as a business enterprise and could not be cannibalised by the charter. We achieved that and— 
Dail Jones 
: Oh! 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: Well it is right here on Supplementary Order Paper 57. We have managed to separate the two which I think is a great thing. We will not end up with a situation where a Minister could be in the untenable position of having to make a choice between a $10 million investment in for example BCL that could return some very good profits to this country or dumping it into a television programme about the mating season for whales. So BCL will be able to carry on with the job of being a business and the charter will be able to look after itself.  
On the question of the charter we look forward to having the TVNZ bill allow Television One and TV2 to go unchallenged and be leaders in numerous areas. We can see from some of the clauses in Part 2 that will come later on— 
The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Clem Simich) 
: Could the member return to the question please. Could he relate his comments to the title. 
MARC ALEXANDER 
: The question is how we should title this bill and it addresses the charter. It fundamentally addresses how we are to set up TVNZ in comparison with what that would have been like without the involvement of United Future. We have at least saved the business side of TVNZ and I gather from TVNZ that it is very happy that we have done that as well. United Future can stand proud that it has saved the transmission side of the business from economic cannibalism which could have been undertaken had the two areas not been separated and I think that is very very important.  
So I do think this bill should be called the “Thank God for United Future Bill”. We have saved the taxpayer from seeing something that could have been a huge black hole. It was quite within the realms of possibility that the bill would have been nothing more than a big black hole that taxpayers would have filtered their money through for many years to come and it would not have been a transparent process. The fact that BCL was separated from the rest of the business and that we cannot have that kind of a cannibalistic financial approach will say to the taxpayer that we can make TVNZ accountable and transparent. The “Thank God for United Future Bill” is what the bill should be called because that is exactly what it is. Because of our involvement we have separated the two parts of TVNZ and I think that everybody from here on out can be grateful that we did so. We can concentrate a little more on the charter later on in this debate.