Robertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to MinistersText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Oral Questions — Questions to Ministers[Sitting date: 20 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:6023. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]6.GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) to the Minister of Finance: What State Owned Enterprises and Crown Entities were identified as having “specific opportunities” for “capital recycling” in the Treasury Report: Capital Investment Recycling and the Fiscal Strategy dated 3 November 2014 and did he reject any of the specific opportunities identified by officials?Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Associate Minister of Finance) on behalf of theMinister of Finance: As was pointed out to the member yesterday opportunities for capital recycling within State-owned enterprises and Crown entities are commercially sensitive so the Minister is not going to go into the specifics of options that Treasury suggested. What he can say though is that the Government has a clear policy of no further Government share offer - type asset sales or indeed outright sales of State-owned enterprises. With regard to the second part of the question the Minister of Finance did disagree with a number of options from Treasury as Ministers often do but of course these are independent entities that need to actively manage their balance sheets. The Minister would expect individual State-owned enterprises to be buying and selling assets all the time as part of their usual business—at times without needing ministerial improvement—basically making sure that they maximise returns to taxpayers.Grant Robertson: What is his definition of capital recycling?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I am not sure what the formal definition is but I imagine that it would be releasing capital and recycling it into other things.Grant Robertson: In light of that answer does he mean by the “other things” that capital will be recycled into “going back into those State-owned enterprises and Crown entities from which they have come”?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: No not necessarily. I will give the member an example. There was a significant sale by a then State-owned enterprise Meridian Energy which sold a big investment in 2005 as it happens called Southern Hydro which created a $652 million gain and then there was an applying of that to dividends to New Zealand taxpayers. So that meets the definition of capital recycling.Grant Robertson: Is the purpose of capital recycling in fact what the Treasury paper says: that the $2 billion that he hopes to save would be “sufficient to bring forward debt repayment”—i.e. the Government is planning to pocket the proceeds of the sales not recycle them into the State-owned enterprises?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: That is a very interesting insight that the member has just given us. He defines repaying debt as pocketing the proceeds of the sale of—[Interruption] It may come as a surprise to him but repaying debt is actually of benefit to taxpayers. If he thinks that that is pocketing it pocketing the money is not repaying debt. Repaying debt is improving the capital position of taxpayers. That is an appalling suggestion.Grant Robertson: Why should New Zealanders who are the ultimate owners of these State-owned enterprises and Crown entities not have the right to know which parts of the assets are being put forward for sale or is this another application of the “Groser principle”—that ordinary New Zealanders are to be viewed as children?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: I may be wrong but I do not recall for example in 2002 or 2003 the then Labour Government saying: “Oh well we’re going to get Landcorp to sell some farms over subsequent years and we’ll probably sell Southern Hydro in Australia and we’ll report to you now a couple of years in advance and actually make sure that you’re aware of it ahead of time.” I do not recall that but then I am used to the idea that the Opposition applies a different rule for the current Government than it did for the previous Government.Grant Robertson: Will he rule out that the recommendations that he accepted from Treasury in this paper included Landcorp and KiwiRail?Hon STEVEN JOYCE: Having made the point that these matters in relation to the list are commercially sensitive I am not going to play a game with the member now where he progressively rules out individual organisations. But I can tell the member that if he thinks we could make a lot of money out of KiwiRail then he really does need to reconsider his position as finance spokesman for the Labour Party.