Delahunty Catherine: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Delahunty Catherine: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3168. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 I would like to talk about Part 2 and this is my first chance to go on the record. I am really pleased to have this opportunity— 
Hone Harawira 
: No testosterone now. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY 
: No I will get in touch with my feminine side for the benefit of the Committee and speak in a delicate tone. My question is: do Part 2 and the bill give all our citizens more power to ensure our collective future? No they do not. Does the bill give everyone a sense of honouring our parents’ efforts to create assets? No it does not. Does the bill give us confidence that our power bills will be safe? Not at all. Also does the bill honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi? No it does not. I would like to agree with the speech of Hone Harawira about the attack on te Tiriti in this bill. 
Let us look at new section 45Q in clause 16 “The Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi)”. I find subsection (2) very interesting: “For the avoidance of doubt”. So just in case anybody thought this nation was actually serious about Te Tiriti o Waitangi just in case we actually thought we meant it just in case all these MPs who trot off to Waitangi every year pretending to honour te Tiriti just in case we thought that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was actually a serious issue for this Parliament just in case the Government said it was fine to raise the tino rangatiratanga flag because it meant something—let us test that just in case. And what it comes down to is section 45Q(2): “For the avoidance of doubt subsection (1) does not apply to persons other than the Crown.” If that is not a betrayal of te Tiriti I do not know what is. It happened before when the assets were sold and it is happening again. Some of us—me in particular—are getting older. We remember what happened in the 1980s. We have not forgotten Roger Douglas. He is much missed in this House by some but not by me. What we are finding is a repeat of history that is very very disappointing for the New Zealand public. 
What I want to talk about is Te Tiriti o Waitangi which is an obligation of Pakeha and tauiwi katoa not just of Maori. So it is not just the Maori MPs who should be standing up and saying “Shame on this bill!”; it is the Pakeha MPs because we are the beneficiaries of te Tiriti and we have an obligation to stand up for it being implemented in full not ripped off by this legislation. 
But let us get on to the favourite expression: “mum and dad”. If we were in the 21st century—which this bill definitely is not; it is a repeat of the 1980s and 1990s—we would not be talking about mum and dad. We might be talking about mum and mum or dad and dad. We might be talking about mum as a solo parent. We might be talking whanau whanaunga or hapu. We might be talking about aiga because we no longer live in the nuclear family people. We live in a vastly diverse world where families who will not be buying these shares because they cannot afford them are actually facing real challenges. 
What this bill highlights is the ideological divide between people who think that we are shareholders who want to have dividends and profit and people who think we are citizens who believe we belong to a nation. So which one do we favour? Obviously the Greens stand for the concept of citizenship. We stand for the idea that buying shares and making a profit as individuals is less important than the actual collective well-being and the ability to plan based on assets owned by us that we do not want to give away. It is very interesting this whole mum and dad kaupapa. 
I went out on the streets and I have met some fantastic people on the streets of Aotearoa in the last few weeks and months. It has been really awesome and some of them are mums and dads some of them are mums and mums and some of them are grandparents. All of them are lining up to sign the petition because they do not believe a word of this bill. They are not convinced by a word of this and what is more they are insulted by the idea that we have amnesia that we cannot remember what happened that we have forgotten that we had to buy back the railways that we have forgotten that we can actually have schools and hospitals without selling our assets and that nobody if they are a decent budgeter sells the roof of the house while they are in hard times. They keep the house then they build upon it and they make sure they stay dry in the interim. Instead we are going to sell off these things. Once they are gone they are gone and then who gets to buy them back? The taxpayer as usual. The mums and dads dads and mums and grandparents on the streets of Aotearoa did not say: “Oh I wish I could buy a share. Oh I am so excited.” They said: “What is it going to do to my power bill?” and “How dare these people do this in our name?” and “How dare they say they know how to run an economy in our name because this is just a joke.” 
I want to tell the story of one particular mother because I think the human story is important. This week I got a letter from Christchurch and it was from a sole parent. She is an unusual sole parent. She has a son in his 30s and he is an intellectually disabled and often violent young man cared for by his mother at home. She said to me with regard to power increases: “We have no oven we have no fridge we have no phone and I can’t pay the power bill now.” I do not know how I am going to look this person in the eye and say: “Well I was part of a Parliament that sold off the assets so that your power bill will go up.” She already is not surviving. I wonder whether this Committee can try to imagine what it is like to be a mother who is raising a child who will not grow up and is potentially violent and who is cold and who has no oven or fridge or phone in this winter and we are selling her assets not because she asked us to but because that is what the Government has decided is its way out of paying for tax cuts for the wealthy which is something this woman will never be. What is more she will never be buying a share. She does not have a share in your vision of the world. Her share as a citizen is through the Government owning assets that are going to provide a health and education system that should support her. I am ashamed to see the struggle that she lives in on a daily basis and now we are going to make it worse. That is actually one of the most powerful reasons for standing up against this bill—it is the human reality. Te Tiriti reality the human reality is that the Parliament does not have the right to destroy something that has been given to us to talk about and that belongs to the citizens of Aotearoa. 
I will say that these emperors are naked and it is not a pretty sight. I believe that many people in Aotearoa can see that you are naked and it is certainly not something that they are enjoying seeing because that nakedness is the nakedness of an ideology that has failed in the past and will fail again. Basically those people on the streets of Tauranga of Hauraki and of Christchurch are signing the petition and lining up to sign it—[ 
Interruption 
] Thank goodness Maurice Williamson the Minister in the chair is not naked. Those people are actually doing a fantastic job of expressing their view but unfortunately they are not being listened to. Of course the National members will not take calls on this. Of course they will not because as a flagship policy they are not prepared to defend it they do not know how to defend it and they do not even think they have to defend it. But the day will come—the day of reckoning. As a Cassandra on the walls of Troy I tell you now that the day will come. It does not take a prophetess to tell you the consequences of not listening to people. So as a Cassandra I am saying to you that there are people out there watching the Government and listening to the Government’s extremely thin rhetoric on Part 2. We need to stand up now with those people and support the ownership of our assets. It is a pretty fundamental thing that this country should have something that belongs to all people not just shares that belong to people who can afford to buy them. 
Maybe I am mixing with the wrong crowd. Maybe I should make sure I mix only with the private school crowd or maybe I should just stop going out on the street and talking to people but actually there are many citizens from every level of the economy who understand how to manage a budget and what they are seeing is that this Budget is not being managed properly. If you have to sell the roof off the house you have actually got nothing. 
I applaud all the people who have made the very complex technical analysis of this bill. I think Russel Norman has done a great job on economics. I heard a really good speech yesterday by Charles Chauvel. I have heard speeches by many people who have covered ground that I do not want to cover. But as a person working at a grassroots community level and as a woman who has been a community worker and advocate for beneficiaries I am really ashamed that this ridiculous façade is going on in this Chamber. This debacle is going on and the Government is not even trying to defend it. I can understand why it is not because there is really nothing to say except: “We want to sell the assets.” The idea that the Mixed Ownership Model Bill is somehow different from selling 100 percent of the assets is all about smoke and mirrors and it is all about naked emperors. So for goodness’ sake naked emperors go and have a look in the mirror. It will not be a pretty sight but you might learn something. Behind your shoulder you will see the people of this country lining up—they are lining up—to tell you that we do not want to sell our assets and that the 49 percent is just a façade that will never work.