Cosgrove Clayton: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cosgrove Clayton: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3153. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) 
: 
 I want to address new section 45S in clause 16 and my amendment to that but before I do I just want to address the repeated comments that have been made by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises throughout this debate as he casts his selective mind back in history in respect of the sale of State assets. I am not going to labour this point. I am just going to ask whether the Minister recalls—he might want to give us a dissertation when he gets up and actually answers a question—his being in a Bolger Cabinet or a Shipley Cabinet that sold off asset after asset after asset— 
Grant Robertson 
: New Zealand Rail. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: —New Zealand Rail BNZ and others without any public consultation at all. 
Phil Twyford 
: Going to sell TVNZ. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: And they were going to flog off Television New Zealand. Who was the National Cabinet Minister who said before the election when we were in Government: “It’s so last year.”? Well this was 20 years ago. In fact I was attacked by the Minister for being a 14-year-old whippersnapper in short pants wandering around apparently responsible for all the ills some of which there were in the fourth Labour Government. 
That is how desperate this Minister is. He never talks about the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. We asked him a number of questions the other night and I put those questions to him again. In respect of the 10 percent ownership cap we had testimony after testimony at the Finance and Expenditure Committee that it was riddled full of holes and that there is no penalty. Of course there is no penalty in this bill. You have to remedy within 60 days and that is it. 
I put a question to the Minister who I note—because I have checked the  
Hansard 
—has made a couple of speeches in this debate and not answered one question. Mr Clendon put questions to him about the Treaty clause. I put questions to the Minister last night about that provision and specifically raised the concerns of Tuwharetoa but all this Minister has done throughout the debate is stand up and walk back in time selectively to the 1980s jump over and forget that he was intricately involved in the Bolger Government and its asset sales and talk about history and that provides him he believes with an alibi so that he does not have to answer any questions or make a case. 
So I am going to ask the Minister now: is he planning to answer any questions put to him by this Parliament on this legislation? Silence. Silence. We will take that as a no. I will just ask him again in case he got distracted. Is the Minister Mr Ryall the Minister for State Owned Enterprises who is in charge of this bill planning to answer any questions put to him by members of this Committee? I take it that that is a no. Silence. That proves the contempt that he has for this Chamber the contempt that he has for members of the House and the contempt that he has for the nearly 1500 submitters who submitted on many of these issues. 
His officials will have given him advice or maybe they have been told by the Minister not to advise him on the 10 percent ownership cap and not to provide him with any answers because he does not want to know—just like he told his officials not to go and investigate the issues of State-owned enterprise power retailers being cheaper than their private sector counterparts. He did not want to know. So I am going to put it on record so that we have the  
Hansard 
 so that people know the contempt with which this Minister is treating Parliament and treating those submitters. 
We were told on the 10 percent ownership cap that you would be able to drive a bus through it—that it would be very easy to get around especially through the nominee entities because the nominee entities of course can police what is within their own nominee entity but there is no policing across those nominee entities. As one submitter—I cannot recall her name but I will find it as this debate goes on—from an eminent thinktank who is a specialist in this area said you would need a sort of active securities police force which was the term I think she used to actually police every transaction. Then I ask the Minister why if he believes that this 10 percent cap will work there are no penalties in the legislation. Not one—no monetary penalty not any. 
So it will be interesting to see after 2 days of questioning whether the Minister gets off his backside and actually answers a number of these questions. They are important. We have put them to him for 48 hours. We put them to him before the select committee. We put them to the officials. Each time we have tried to have these questions answered and our fears allayed there has been silence. So I put it again to the Minister. Will the Minister be prepared to answer any questions? 
Hon Tony Ryall 
: If you sit down now. 
Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE 
: Oh he is alive! There was a noise. There was a gurgle or a cough or some sort of squeak that came out of the bellows over there. We have made history. He is actually going to answer some questions. Will I sit down? No problem but I am going to finish my speech first because we have got a few others. Now that he has got a bit of momentum—he has had a couple of sandwiches for lunch or a Milo or something and he has got a bit of energy up—he is actually going to do his job and earn his pay. 
In respect of Tuwharetoa and the questions around that we heard from Tuwharetoa that they did not believe the Maori Party’s commitment that the Maori Party’s clause which it takes great credit for would protect their Treaty customary legal and property rights. They came with Georgina te Heuheu and told us—armed to the teeth they were with highly specialist qualified legal advice—that the Treaty clause in their view would not protect them. I am advised that they are in some sort of discussions with the Crown. We do not know what those discussions are we do not know whether they are happening and we do not know whether the Crown is prepared to listen but we were advised very squarely by Tuwharetoa in answer to a question that I raised asking whether they would look at legal action and advance their arguments in a court if necessary that they would pursue any legal avenue through the courts or otherwise that they could to secure their position. 
They are in quite a unique position in some ways. They gifted back water resources to the Crown on the premise that the revenue derived from those water resources would be used in the interests of our community; they would be retained by the State and then utilised through the Crown by our community. Then these geniuses come along and say that they are flogging off at least 49 percent of the energy State-owned enterprises and that means that there will be private sector people utilising those resources which Tuwharetoa gifted back to the Crown for the public good in order to get private gain. This Minister woke up one day and thought “Hang on this might be a problem.” and then did absolutely nothing about it. So if there are discussions we would like to know whether Tuwharetoa are wrong. If they are wrong and all their legal advice is wrong and the Hon Georgina te Heuheu former National Minister in that Government and colleague of the Hon Tony Ryall is wrong then let us hear it. 
And let us not stop there Minister. Tell us exactly the rationale as to why this provision will protect those interests. Yet again we could not get an answer out of the officials because they were not allowed to tell us. They were not allowed to tell us in the end. We had to prepare our report and then they sort of followed up. They were muzzled by the Minister. They were muzzled by the chair of the committee. He did not want to know yet again. 
Any Minister worth his or her salt even if they do not like the advice will listen to it and then they are charged under our system with making a judgment based upon it. But not this one; he does not want to know—hear no evil see no evil. “Do not give me a memo. Do not tell me that this policy could be wrong. I do not want to know.” say the National Party members and their ilk. We have the 10 percent cap; we say we are moving an amendment to take it down to 1 percent. That is our concern and where we are in regard to it. But it would be really good if this Minister actually dealt with those issues. 
The final point I want to make is that there has been some talk and it relates directly to the 10 percent cap about loyalty schemes. Well that is a scam. That is a complete scam and we know what the National Party tactic is: we are going to have a loyalty scheme and in that scheme you will get your free shares in 2½ years’ time just after the 2014 election which will enable the Prime Minister to go around with the fiction that there are all these Kiwis staying with the company—“See we told you so they’re staying in the company”—but they get their share after the 2014 election. 
We know this happened with Contact Energy in terms of shareholders pulling out. It went from 225000 individual shareholders on float in 1999 to 78225-odd give or take. That is a 65 percent reduction. Two-thirds were sold off and you did not even have a loyalty share there. So what Kiwis will do is quite rightly what is best for them and I respect them for it. They will keep those shares until they get their bonus just after the next election and then they will sell because that is the history of it. They will sell because they have had a windfall gain and they are struggling to make ends meet. But by the next election by God they will be struggling under this regime even more. 
So I would like to know whether that loyalty scheme may be advanced to institutions and what effect the 10 percent cap will have on them. Will those institutions be availed of that scheme even though they are capped at 10 percent or will this be confined to mum and dad Kiwis—although mum and dad Kiwis are now defined as ACC KiwiSaver and other superannuation funds and institutions domiciled here not mum and dad Kiwis.