Shearer David: State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Bill Public Finance (Mixed Ownership Model) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Shearer David: State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Bill Public Finance (Mixed Ownership Model) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3288. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
DAVID SHEARER (Leader of the Opposition) 
: 
 I knew that if we waited around here long enough we would hear “If we don’t do this we’ll end up like Greece or Spain or Italy.” It is the classic is it not? You have got to look offshore and say: “If we don’t sell off our assets we’re going to be like Greece.” What a lot of nonsense. What an absolute travesty of the truth. It is absolute nonsense. 
We may be finishing this legislation the State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Bill and the Public Finance (Mixed Ownership Model) Amendment Bill in this House today but I can tell you what the fight is not finished. It will be out of here and on to the streets. That is where it is going. That is where we will continue to fight this battle to keep our assets because we are taking the petition to have a referendum on these asset sales to the people of New Zealand. I can tell you that when you go out there and ask people to sign the petition they clamour to sign it. They stand in line to sign the petition and they are not just as Mr Key would say people who vote Green or Labour or whoever. These are National Party supporters who are standing in line and they say that. They come up to you and they say: “Look I voted National but I’m willing to sign this petition because I totally disagree with this Government selling off our assets.” 
So today in the third reading this legislation is likely to go through. But it is likely to go through with a wafer-thin majority brought about by Peter Dunne of United Future who has not really taken a very active part I have to say in this debate. 
Hon Clayton Cosgrove 
: He hasn’t spoken any time. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: I think he has maybe spoken once but he has certainly not taken an active part in this debate and why would he? Because we know that in his electorate where we have been collecting the most signatures of any of the electorates around the country they are dead against him selling off and putting his name alongside the National Government in selling off our assets. So it is a wafer-thin majority that is coming before this House and our assets are being sold off in a piece of legislation that can be seen and understood only as being particularly obnoxious. 
Let us ask a few questions about this legislation. Would we be better off? Actually no. It is a little bit like selling a profitable business to put an extension on to your house. What you end up losing is the revenue that is coming in to the Government—the revenue. 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: Year after year. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: Year after year after year the people of New Zealand will lose this revenue. Will this mean we have more risk? Absolutely because even today we have Tuwharetoa and we have the Maori Council which is putting in court cases and claims against this legislation and who bears the cost of that? 
Hon Annette King 
: The taxpayer. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: The taxpayer will bear the cost. The taxpayer will own only according to Mr Ryall 51 percent but they will take the entire risk of any litigation against this legislation. So the taxpayer will take all the risk. The taxpayer will lose out on the revenue. 
But what about the cost? What about the cost to put this through? Well Goldman Sachs Group Macquarie—those banks are going to receive around about $120 million in revenue to put this deal through. I can think of a lot more things that I would rather like to do with $120 million and that might include decreasing class sizes. It might even go to getting behind and reversing the $45 million that this Government took out of improving teacher in-service training. That was supposed to increase the teacher quality that now this Government decides it wants to fix. And what about power prices? Well Mr Ryall is leaving the Chamber before he hears this— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (H V Ross Robertson) 
: Order! Order! The member must not refer to that. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: What about power prices? Well as an indicator of what is going to happen to power prices let us look at what is happening already to the directors of these companies. They have just doubled their compensation to $2500 a day. That is good work when you can get it is it not—$2500 a day that you will receive if you are a director of these companies. Already they are not even sold off and they have bumped up their compensation for being a director. And where is that money going to come from? Well the only place it is going to come from is out of the pockets of New Zealanders because they are the people who are paying the power prices. So are power prices going to go up? Of course they are going to go up. Of course they are going to go up. There is nothing surer than power prices going up. 
And are these shares going to end up in corporate ownership? Well of course they are going to end up in corporate overseas ownership. Of course they are because if they do not they will not get the price that the Government needs. That is what Treasury told the Government: “You’ve got to sell overseas otherwise you won’t get the price.” So did the Government put mums and dads—that cutesy little phrase “mums and dads”—in the legislation to make sure that these mums and dads these New Zealand investors will get to the front of the queue? Well no of course the Government did not do that. Of course it did not do that. If the Government was going to guarantee it it would have put it in the legislation and it did not do that. 
So here we are standing in front of legislation that is obnoxious to New Zealanders. More than two-thirds of New Zealanders do not like this legislation and do not support this legislation. More than 100000 people out there already—in a few weeks—have signed on to the citizens initiated referendum petition and are queuing up to sign. This Government is still persisting in putting through this piece of obnoxious legislation. 
Grant Robertson 
: Out of touch. Out of touch. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: As Grant Robertson just said this Government is so out of touch with the way ordinary New Zealanders feel and the way New Zealanders feel about selling off their assets. Mr Ryall has the audacity to say that compared with when Labour sold off assets in the 1980s—two and a half generations ago almost—somehow this is less bad. That was awful but this is somehow “less bad”. It is still bad but it is just slightly less bad than what it was in the 1980s. Well it is still bad. It is still bad policy. To liken New Zealand’s situation to that of Spain and Greece frankly is an insult to New Zealand and an insult to the people who work so hard. 
The Labour Party will be working hard out in the streets to get those 300000 signatures and as I said people are queuing up to sign that petition. We will bring that back to this House. We will bring that back to this House and we will have a referendum on whether New Zealanders want this or not. I can tell you now the way that the referendum is going to go. It is not going to go well for the Government. In 2013 or maybe even 2014 there is going to be a referendum on asset sales that will flow through to the election in 2014. 
Chris Hipkins 
: And the one after that. 
DAVID SHEARER 
: And the one after that because New Zealanders do not want these assets to be sold. If that is not a Government out of touch and if that is not a Government that is arrogantly dismissing the wishes and the desires of New Zealanders I do not know what is. I do not know what is but I can tell you and give you the commitment right now that the Labour Party will be out there fighting every inch of the way to make sure that these assets are not sold. We will be out there come rain or sunshine to get those signatures to make sure that the referendum goes ahead and that New Zealanders get a real chance to have a say in the future of their country. Thank you.