Cosgrove Clayton: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCosgrove Clayton: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19279. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour):I do not disagree with many of the sentiments from the New Zealand First colleagues apart from one. We will be supporting this motion. I do not agree that supporting a motion somehow validates or supports the selling-off of State-owned assets. We are supporting this motion simply because it will allow through the select committee process a modicum of scrutiny of the activities of this asset. We know that the Official Information Act and even parliamentary questions now because of this Government’s wish to sell that asset off with the others as it did limit the scrutiny by members of Parliament the general public journalists and others. Under the guise of so-called increased scrutiny the Minister of Finance says that somehow the magic hand of the market will provide that scrutiny through stockbrokers analysts and others.I would wager that that scrutiny will be nowhere near the level of scrutiny that occurs in this place where Ministers’ feet are put to the fire before the select committees and this Parliament where full disclosure can occur through parliamentary questions and Official Information Act requests. They are now limited. There is no way that a broker or an analyst can provide—or would be interested in actually—many of the key pieces of information that members of Parliament and members of the public gain through the various mechanisms like the Official Information Act parliamentary questions and full select committee scrutiny which will be lost because of the sell-off. So I make it very clear that in supporting this motion the Labour Party does in no way endorse the fire sale—the bargain basement sale—that occurred as this Government sold off asset after asset.Let us look at the history. It was the Prime Minister who originally said—and we have got the quotes—that the total asset sale proceeds would number in the order of $10 billion. People forget this—$10 billion. Then that was revised down. Somebody tapped the Prime Minister on the shoulder presumably Tony Ryall or Bill English and said: “Taihoa. That is a bit over the top. That is a bit of propaganda. We need to ratchet back expectations.” Then it went to $7 billion then it went to $6 billion then the range was revised again to $5 billion to $7 billion. Then it was revised down again to $6 billion. Where did we get to when the Government sold the final asset which is Genesis Energy after the raft of others like Mighty River Power Meridian Energy Air New Zealand? Well it got to $4.7 billion—bargain-basement prices. My word the Warehouse as an entity would be proud of Bill English. Maybe he should go into sort of a mail-order business or a discount business or selling Tupperware or something I do not know because my word can this guy get a huge discount on the assets he sells.I have got to say the gall of Mr English to say that we are sort of tidying things up. This is not a tidy-up; this is an attempted clean-up of one of the biggest stuff-ups in the history of this Parliament. We have already heard the Green colleague talk about the wasted hundreds of millions of dollars in costs to get these assets away. Bill English talks about the fact that he is prudent with the purse. He talked in sort of voice-breaking tones about every $300 being important to the average Kiwi and he is right about that.So my question is how does he explain the Rio Tinto deal when he gave Rio Tinto $30 million? And here are the facts on that. Rio Tinto did not even ask for the $30 million that he gave it. It did not ask for it in the deal. Nowhere does it appear in the deal. The halving of the notice period does. The cheaper electricity price does. But nowhere in the deal I am advised did Rio Tinto put its hand out and say it would like $30 million. It was a free gift. Bill English talks about being prudent about every $300 that the Government spends on behalf of taxpayers. So he doled out $30 million to Rio Tinto that it did not ask for and then he came into Parliament and went around New Zealand and said that this was a prudent spend of money because it guaranteed the Southland jobs. We know that was a lie. It was an absolute lie because on Kathryn Ryan’s show he was asked by Kathryn Ryan whether he asked for a jobs guarantee and he said no he did not and he did not get one. So that was a lie—absolute unequivocal from his own lips. So you tell me how that is a prudent use of taxpayers’ money.And then the Government made the argument that it was selling these assets because it had got this Future Investment Fund and it would be buying new assets and is that not a good thing? It was in a sort of blind attempt to hoodwink the taxpayer. But the taxpayer worked out as evidenced by the referendum that when you sell a revenue-generating asset and you buy non - revenue-generating assets—and the last time I checked public hospitals and schools and the like were not revenue-generating entities; they were taxpayer-funded entities designed to make people healthy and to educate kids—there is a wee problem. At the end of the day the slush fund runs out and there is no more money.These turkeys over here did it in the 1990s. They learnt absolutely nothing from it. I say to Mr English that if this policy is so remarkably successful what happened when you and your mate Jim Bolger and the like flogged off all the assets in the 1990s? Where is the success? It is Groundhog Day. We are back here again with the same National cronies the same guys who were there under Jim Bolger selling things off again.These guys are good I have got to say. When it comes to the old pyramid scheme these boys are phenomenally professional. Look at the promises that were made in respect of the Future Investment Fund. If you take the promises at face value National has promised on the latest count $80 billion worth of spending from proceeds of $4.7 billion. We had promises from John Key that they would fund Kiwibank in 2011. In 2012 Tony Ryall said that asset sales were necessary to pay down debt. Then in 2012 John Key said no the asset sales were for new hospitals and schools. Steven Joyce in the same year said no we have got to use some of this money to fund KiwiRail. Nathan Guy in 2013 said no some of this money will be to subsidise irrigation schemes—multimillion-dollar schemes—for farmers. Then Gerry Brownlee the big fellow himself came out and said no the asset sales money would be used to rebuild Christchurch. And then John Key in June 2013 said the asset sales would be used in part to fund the Auckland rail link. And then you look at some of the other little missives that they put in. Remember this asset sales money was all about big investments—schools hospitals all this sort of thing.But then you get into the sort of additional asset sales proceeds that they have paid for not to mention the $100 million - odd that they appropriated of course to try to stabilise Solid Energy. Tony Ryall and Bill English stood by and watched the then directors and then management run it into the ground to the tune of 800 to 1000 jobs and counting. I am sure those poor people are watching every $300 they make if they do through the unemployment benefit. I am sure they are taking due care with every $300 they are lucky enough to scrape up given they have lost their jobs.You have a look at some of the other stuff such as $40 million for the bonuses for Mighty River Power. This is what the Government has spent taxpayers’ money on from these proceeds—replacement of the refugee resettlement facilities immigration management systems and closed captioning on Parliament TV. I cannot remember that in the last National Party manifesto in terms of a major sort of investment from the Future Investment Fund. There is the replacement of the ground station for search and rescue satellite systems; replacement of something called the Matriarch system in the Debt Management Office; the whole-of-Government radio network; “analysis of outcomes Cabinet investment function”—whatever that means—and a computer system for Cabinet presumably so Bill English can actually tot up all the dough he has wasted from the sale of these assets; and a few other obligations to the IMF.You tell me Mr Deputy Speaker and colleagues where that was mentioned in the list of assets that the Future Investment Fund would use in respect of these sales. The truth is that the people of New Zealand own these assets. For generations they have paid for them through blood sweat and tears through generations of people. The truth is that Bill English was generous enough to say “I’m going to allow you to spend your own money”—the big end of town of course—“to buy what you already own back again.” What has happened is a wealth transfer and an asset transfer from every Kiwi and every member of our community who owned these assets down to the privileged few who pay for the so-called free shares which have never been free. They are paid for by the people who could not afford to buy or did not wish to buy shares in these particular assets.All the loyalty bonuses remember will expire a few months after the next general election. A few months after the loyalty bonuses expire. I make this prediction: those shares as soon as the bonuses are picked up when the expiry happens will wing their way to New York London and Tokyo just like Contact Energy’s.Motion agreed to.