Harawira Hone: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Harawira Hone: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 14 June 2012. Volume:680;Page:3022. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Kia ora tatou katoa. The agenda of this Government as evidenced through this bill the Mixed Ownership Model Bill is now clear for all to see. Assets services and resources currently being managed by the Government for the benefit of the citizens of this country will be sold to the highest bidder many of whom will be overseas companies that have no interest in the Treaty of Waitangi or the people of this country be they Maori or Pakeha.  
Twenty years ago when National decided that electricity was no longer an essential service the industry was deregulated and households started paying more for their power than big business. Today welfare services are being privatised and the Government is wiping its hands of its responsibilities to provide for its most vulnerable citizens. Education continues to be privatised through the introduction of charter schools and the continued funding of private schools at the expense of public education for the children of ordinary New Zealanders. Access to health is being denied to the poor by ever-increasing costs while the country leads the developed world in Third World diseases. Accident compensation is being denied to victims through complex and costly processes and bad management as the Government prepares to privatise ACC. The Department Corrections is getting a brand new billion-dollar jail but the rights to run it have already been sold off to an overseas company. State housing is being sold off to the private sector while homelessness reaches record levels. And water management and water rights have already been privatised by the Government in different parts of the country.  
But the really surprising thing to me is how long it has taken us to wake up to the fact that selling off resources assets and services built up by generations of New Zealanders will leave our children and our mokopuna with a future almost too bleak to contemplate. Yet such is the future that this bill and this Government offer us all. Mana opposes this bill to sell off 49 percent of the shares in Mighty River Power Meridian Energy Genesis and Solid Energy because there are no provisions to guarantee that New Zealanders will get preferential treatment or even a dedicated percentage of the shares. There are no provisions stopping overseas companies from bidding for a majority of the shares in the new companies. There are no provisions requiring the Government to protect the interests of New Zealand citizens to regulate the price to New Zealand customers or to guarantee supply to New Zealand citizens over business interests. There are no provisions to require the new companies to honour Treaty obligations even though the Government is still the majority shareholder. And there are no provisions to ensure that Maori interests in water will be protected. In fact the Government’s opposition to the New Zealand Maori Council’s application to have those interests considered by the Waitangi Tribunal shows how much contempt this Government has for Maori opinion and how much disregard it has for its coalition partner the Maori Party.  
The Government is clearly committed to its plan to push ahead with the sale of State assets but I want to take this opportunity to thank all those who have taken a stand already against this bill. There have been many including the 1500 who made submissions to the Finance and Expenditure Committee the overwhelming majority of which were opposed to the bill; the tens of thousands who joined the “Aotearoa is Not for Sale” march from Te Rerenga Wairua to Parliament last month; Grey Power and the students associations which were an unlikely mix brought together by a hugely unpopular bill; the New Zealand Maori Council and those iwi doing their best to stop the Government selling the assets and the “to hell with the people” agenda; and the unions the Labour Party the Greens New Zealand First and Mana who attended the launch and have all committed people to gathering the 300000 signatures required for a referendum on stopping asset sales. 
Let me take this opportunity to urge those same groups to redouble our efforts because once those shares have been sold and those companies have been privatised investor demands for an ever-increasing return courtesy of higher power prices will force more of our old people to switch off their hot water to save power; lead to even greater sickness in cold and damp homes as poor families are forced to cut back on heating light and refrigeration; and reduce this nation to a level of servitude that our children simply do not deserve. Kia ora ra.