English Bill: Urgent Debates — State-owned Energy Companies Sales—Delay of Mighty River Power Sale 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
English Bill: Urgent Debates — State-owned Energy Companies Sales—Delay of Mighty River Power Sale 
[Sitting date: 11 September 2012. Volume:683;Page:5054. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 One has to take what the Labour Party says about asset sales with a bucketful of salt because if it is those members’ desire that all these shares stay in the ownership of the Government then they have had every opportunity to stand up in this House and promise to buy them back after sale. Of course they have not. Neither the spokesman on State-owned enterprises nor the ubiquitous Mr Cunliffe nor the leader—none of them—have promised to buy the shares back when they have the capacity if they are the Government to go to the market and buy them any day of the week. 
The member talked about the Maori Party. I can tell that member that the Maori Party does a much better job of representing Maori interests than the Labour Party ever did—than the Labour Party ever did—because the Labour Party patronises Maori and tells them that they need the Labour Party to look after them when the Maori Party tells them that they can go and buy shares in this asset sale if that is what they want to do. The Maori Party believes that Maori can stand on their own two feet and make their own decisions. Labour has never believed that and never will. 
In respect of the decision the Government made around the delay in the float of Mighty River Power I will explain the context in which that decision has been made. The Government has been aware of Maori rights and interests in water since the day it came into office because these matters have been debated in the Waitangi Tribunal they have been part of a number of significant Treaty claims and from early on in the life of this Government we began discussion and consultation with individual iwi and with representative groups of Maori on their rights and interests in water. 
 When the Government announced the policy of partial sales back in January 2011 we were clear then about our obligations as Treaty partners to consult on that policy and that is what we have done. That consultation has been carried out in the context of a broader progressive and functional relationship with iwi across the board and water issues themselves have been dealt with in three different fora—four different fora really. One has been through individual claims and I just want to return to the member’s discussion about whether the Government would attend a national hui. I can assure that member that if there is one thing iwi are very clear about in this process it is that their rights and interests in water are theirs. They do not belong to nor can be represented by the Maori Council. The Maori Council has no rights and interests in water nor can any collective of the Maori Council and/or iwi negotiate with the Government about rights and interests because they do not have any. The rights and interests belong to the relevant iwi and hapu and we negotiate with them about their rights and interests. 
In the context of Treaty claims that is absolutely clear. The Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has been able to come to agreement with the Wanganui iwi after 150 years of their seeking to have an injustice righted and I must compliment not just the Minister but particularly the iwi leadership there who have grappled with their history in a way that can only be described as courageous to come to a conclusion over such longstanding grievance. That is just one water claim—a claim involving rights and interests in water—that the Crown has been dealing with. Others are at different stages of negotiation. Tuwharetoa has been referred to. It is a different sort of claim from Wanganui’s. It is a complex claim that leads to some reasonably tense discussion but is able to be advanced in the context of a relationship of respect. So Treaty claims have been one way in which these rights and interests have been dealt with. 
The second has been the Land and Water Forum. Explicit agreement was made 3 years ago with the Iwi Leaders Group that it would participate in the Land and Water Forum which is a broad-based representation of all sorts of groups that have an interest in how the water resource is used. At the same time there was agreement that we would continue discussion with the Iwi Leaders Group itself to see whether we could find common ground around water rights and interests as we have succeeded in finding common ground on a whole range of other complex issues whether it is the seabed and foreshore the emissions trading scheme Whanau Ora or the desire for greater social progress among Maori. So that is a third forum in which discussion has occurred: the Treaty settlement process the Iwi Leaders Group and the Land and Water Forum in which iwi are represented. 
Then of course there has been the consultation formally since January this year around the partial sales and in the context of that consultation the Maori Council has taken a claim to the Waitangi Tribunal. The Government has been aware of the fact that at any time any claimant—in fact they do not even have to be a claimant—can go to the Waitangi Tribunal or can go to the High Court to test whether the Crown has met its Treaty obligations. The Maori Council has been to the tribunal and has indicated it will go to the High Court. 
If I can deal with the claim in the tribunal first I acknowledge the tribunal’s efforts to accommodate the pace of Government policy and Government direction on this issue. The second report of the tribunal makes a number of broad findings that are consistent with the Government view—that is that Maori do have rights and interests in water. The tribunal agrees with the Crown argument that the sale of the shares does not compromise those rights and interests or the Government’s ability to settle claims over those rights and interests. The tribunal actually agrees with the Government on that point. 
What that second report did do though was propose a very narrowly specified option which the tribunal believes is a set of circumstances—I might say a hypothetical set of circumstances—in which the Crown may compromise its ability to settle a claim if a claimant made that particular claim. So it is a hypothetical solution to a claim that has not been made and it is called “shares plus”. In fact the concepts behind that have been consulted on—the concept being that changes could be made to the constitutions of these companies which would give Maori interests some kind of particular or unique influence over the direction of the company. That was discussed in the consultation around section 9 back in January it has been discussed in other forums among officials and on both occasions rejected by the Crown. 
Nevertheless as we look ahead to the float and the prospect of legal action the Government has taken the view that we should dot the i’s and cross the cross the t’s to ensure that the asset sale programme can continue having fully and clearly satisfied our obligations as the Treaty partner. 
The delay allows us to achieve a number of things. One is further consultation on the detail of the proposition that the Watiangi Tribunal put forward. The courts in the past have made it clear that the Waitangi Tribunal recommendations are not binding but they should be considered and this is a distinct proposition so the Crown is going to consider it along with iwi. So we will be setting out over the next few weeks having issued documents that set out the detail of “shares plus” on a series of hui to consult on that issue. 
It will also allow time for the legal action which appears to be almost inevitable and that is time in a more considered way for the Crown and whoever takes legal action against the Crown to have those matters considered by the court. So the Crown’s consultation as a result of this which flows from this decision to delay the float is very narrowly focused on that proposition that has been put up by the Waitangi Tribunal. It is almost more important than the rest of the tribunal’s findings because it essentially accepted that the Crown was recognising rights and interests—we have done that—and has consulted extensively with Maori over the way it is able to proceed with the sales without compromising the ability to settle claims. 
The member made some reference to going to the national hui and I have already made the point that no national body holds a right or interest in water. There are another couple of reasons why we are not trying to make a national settlement prior to a sale. One is because of the uncertainty over what the rights and interests might be at some national level. It is actually the Crown’s view that there are not any. Some Maori hold a different view. It is very hard to make a national settlement which some have been seeking when it is uncertain what those rights are. A second reason is that it is not clear at all that there is a coherent view among Maori interests about what that framework should be. 
Can I finish by acknowledging and complimenting all the Maori interests—or almost all of them—that we have dealt with on the considered and progressive way in which they have dealt with this issue. Some do not support the asset sales. I must say that as time has gone on more and more of them want to participate in buying those shares because they see that as a way of expressing their interests in particular assets. But we have found with some exceptions—very few exceptions which get more media attention than they deserve—that the rest of them have been positive progressive and very testing of the Government’s position but not unreasonable in the same way that the Crown is not unreasonable. 
 This particular issue is just one more in a collection of reasonably complex issues that the Crown and iwi have successfully dealt with over the last 2 or 3 years. This one is on track. We are crossing our i’s and dotting our t’s to make sure that the asset sales can continue because they are important for New Zealand to keep our debt levels down to have those companies better managed and to have more New Zealanders participate in share ownership and have a stake in the economy of our country. Those are all things that Labour is against. It wants more debt less ownership and badly run companies. Actually that is what it wants. However this is on track and we have every reason to believe that the sales process will continue in the first quarter as the Government has scheduled.