Mackey Moana: State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Bill Public Finance (Mixed Ownership Model) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Bill Public Finance (Mixed Ownership Model) Amendment Bill — Third Readings 
[Sitting date: 26 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3306. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 We often have robust debate in this House but there are very few days that you can actually say are a day of shame for the New Zealand Parliament. This unfortunately is one of those days. National knows that it does not have a mandate to sell State assets. It knows that despite the fact that we are going to save some money in terms of debt servicing we are going to be losing more money in terms of the revenue flow from those companies and we are going to be $100 million worse off. National members know that. They know that overwhelmingly New Zealanders do not want them to do this but they do not care. They do not care because the people that they really represent in this Parliament the people they trot down to Wellington every week to truly represent do support asset sales. They are the 1 percent that is going to benefit from the hocking off of the assets that the rest of us own. There are very few opportunities to see that glimpse of truth of whom National really represents. Rarely do we get it but we have got it on this legislation. The 1 percent—that is whom those members come down here to represent. That is who is going to benefit and it is the rest of us who are going to pay for it. 
They like to say that this is a great opportunity for mum and dad investors. Well mum and dad investors already own these companies. And if there ever was a more true definition of Tory charity it is selling people something that they already own and then expecting them to be grateful for it. Mums and dads already own these assets. Most mums and dads I know are more concerned about how they are going to pay the power bill than trying to buy the power company. That is how out of touch the National Party is. 
The quality of the Government’s arguments and speakers we have had so far speaks volumes. We had Todd McClay chair of the Finance and Expenditure Committee who oversaw a shoddy process where he reported back 5 weeks early. He rammed the Mixed Ownership Model Bill through the select committee process so that it did not have the public scrutiny it needed. They often say that the role of the Finance and Expenditure Committee chair is an audition for Cabinet. Well I can say that based on his performance he can look forward to a long political lifetime of patsy questions Mr McClay—a long lifetime. I remember when I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee and the National Party went apoplectic about how rushed that process was. Do you know how long that process took? It took 58 hours of hearing submissions and 16 hours of deliberation. Well under Mr McClay’s watch the committee departmental report was written before the submitters had even submitted and there was less than an hour of deliberation—less than an hour. That is a double standard and it shows just how scared National is about the political impact of this legislation. 
Then we had Paul Goldsmith who lectured us on the virtues of market capitalism and told us that only private companies can ever run anything efficiently. Apparently the global financial crisis was just something that happened to other people in Mr Goldsmith’s world. He says that we have to do this because that is the only way we are going to get productivity out of these companies. 
But National’s king-hit argument is that it is doing it because Labour did it a quarter of a century ago. Well it was wrong then and it is wrong now. Labour paid politically and electorally for those decisions and more important the country paid economically for those decisions to privatise in the 1980s and 1990s. That is why the last Labour Government sold no assets. In fact we had to purchase some of them back because they were being stripped and because they were at risk of falling over. I wonder whether Mr Goldsmith thought that Air New Zealand was a shining model of market capitalism when it nearly got bankrupted and the Government had to bail it out—the Government had to bail it out. 
Kiwis know that we are all going to be poorer as a result of these sales. They know that power prices are going to have to go up when the motive becomes profit maximisation rather than any kind of aspect of social responsibility. The State-owned companies under their current legislation have to show restraint around pricing and have social responsibility. That is why on average they charge less than the privately run companies. The Government’s response to this is to say that no people are going on the internet to swap power companies and that shows the market is working. No it does not. It shows that people are desperate. It shows that they already cannot pay their power bills and they are looking for any way to reduce that burden. That is why New Zealanders oppose these asset sales: because power prices are going to go up. 
New Zealand is unique in the world in not having any protections for domestic power consumers to ensure that they can pay the power bills. That is why since the global financial crisis hit in New Zealand power prices have continued to increase while everywhere else in the world as those protections have kicked in power prices have gone down. There is no protection for domestic power consumers in New Zealand. Power prices will go up. The Government does not have a mandate to sell these assets. It should admit that. Where is Peter Dunne the man whose— 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: Order! Time has expired.