Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Associate Minister of Finance): I've been here about 20 years. I've spoken in a lot of these urgent debates. I've got to say it's not often that I get up to respond to such a lot of old cobblers compared with the last speaker Michael Woodhouse. What a load of twaddle! He is completely wrong. It is nonsense. I've been a director of many companies. I've been a chief executive of many companies—Hon Michael Woodhouse: Yeah not very successful.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well he says Not very successful." That's actually not true. Some of the companies I helped found include A2 milk which has done not too bad. But in my experience as either a chief executive or a director it's nonsense to think that a 52 percent shareholder wouldn't make their expectations of the company known. They own 52 percent; they expect to be able to tell the directors as to what their priorities are as a shareholder. That's what a letter of expectations does. That's what any shareholder does really in the private sector even at a shareholding substantially lower than 52 percent. There is nothing wrong with it. It's a pity the last Government didn't pay a bit more attention to their letter of expectations for Solid Energy before they ground that into the ground and caused a billion-dollar loss to taxpayers. What a load of twaddle that a responsible Government wouldn't set out their expectations to a company.Now I want to go through some of these. I've been involved as Associate Minister of Finance helping the Minister of Finance with these very issues so I'm happy to disabuse some of the members opposite in respect of their ignorant assertions in the House so far today. Air New Zealand hasn't been required to take one cent of the loan facility that has been provided by the Crown. If they can get cheaper money anywhere else they're welcome to it. We made that point in those very negotiations. How was the rate struck? I was intimately involved in that. It was struck by Treasury on advice from Goldman Sachs who were the investment bankers who were advising the Government and it was struck on the basis of average rates that were market rates out of the United States and elsewhere in the world at the very point at which that rate was struck. So it's a market rate and if Air New Zealand could have got money cheaper from anywhere else they could have taken it and they still can. That rate has been restruck more recently—and it's true that it's dropped because the market rate has dropped since the parlous times when it was struck first at the time when COVID struck when I can tell you what lending rates for airlines that didn't have passengers were pretty expensive because lenders thought there was a lot of risk attached to the loan.Dr Duncan Webb: And there was.Hon DAVID PARKER: And there was.The next point is about maintaining a domestic network. Now New Zealand is more reliant on having a national carrier than most countries because of our isolation. In truth when Air New Zealand gets into trouble it's because their international routes close down or become unprofitable. They lost money in Ansett. When they lose big sums of money it's on their international route not their domestic route. When we interrogated this issue we found that the capital expenditure and operating costs of the marginal routes on the regional network are a mere bagatelle to the performance of Air New Zealand. We're not expecting them to run unprofitable routes but where a route is close to their return on capital we think that they should be running those routes and we told them that. And so other investors in the company now know that and when they recapitalise other investors will be aware that the Government wants them to maintain not unprofitable routes but not just routes that are the most highly profitable routes. We want them to maintain a regional network and as a shareholder of the country we should tell them that and Air New Zealand will do that willingly and other shareholders will know that also.In respect of the biofuels issue that arose because Greg Foran came to us and said "Look we recognise that we need to do our bit by reducing our climate-changing emissions." They want to be one of the first airlines in the world that are using electric planes. That will happen on domestic routes. It will happen on domestic routes; internationally they're reliant on fuel substitution. They want to make progress in that regard. They want our support to do so. We express our support to do so and you know we're willing to talk. The other thing is having responsible workplace relations. The National Party wouldn't object to us saying "We want you to get a good return on capital." but they object to us saying "We want you to have decent labour relations." What a load of old twaddle! This is an absolutely proper letter of expectation put out there transparently. In terms of directorships of course the shareholder will show an interest and the idea that the company should feed directors to us that we then appoint so that they're in control of themselves without regard to shareholder wishes is another example of rubbish theory from Mr Woodhouse who spoke just previously."