Peters Winston: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumePeters Winston: General Debate[Sitting date: 17 April 2013. Volume:689;Page:9451. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS (Leader—NZ First): I met Maggie Thatcher. She was beautiful focused intelligent and she could seriously speak—and there the contrast ends.This is where we are at with the electricity-generating sector in New Zealand. Under a system that National set up and Labour governed with power companies are making record profits and the Government is extracting massive dividends from power companies which is seriously an undeclared taxation system. We pay tax on petrol alcohol and cigarettes and the tax is acknowledged. The Government takes hundreds of millions out of the electricity sector by way of dividends and the tax is by stealth.The entire electricity generation sector is a shambles. It is a phoney fictional market. The so-called competition is a fantasy designed to hide what is actually happening. The model is hopelessly flawed and needs to be radically overhauled—and now. I seriously doubt there is any person in this country even someone with a PhD in advanced electronics or economics who could give a clear coherent explanation of how the New Zealand electricity sister—the New Zealand electricity sector—actually functions.Jacqui Dean: The “electricity sister”—ha ha!Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well I know that woman over there could not—the woman who is laughing about it. Apparently rocketing prices on the farms of her electorate and in the homes of her part of the country are of no matter whatsoever. They are a laughing matter—what is her name?Andrew Williams: Jacqui Dean.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Jacqui Dean does not give a tinker’s damn about a huge cost to New Zealand businesses farms and homes. Jacqui Dean needs to get out there and find out what is going on in her electorate.If one sets out to design a system that would gouge the public with electricity price hikes one would create the system we have ended up with now. It is a complete mishmash of half-baked economic theories foisted on the country by National and Jacqui Dean thinks it is a great idea. Jacqui Dean does not give a hoot for her electorate. She thinks this cost structure which benefits the few—Jacqui Dean: Where’s that member’s electorate?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: It is no use hysterically shouting like a fishwife. Answer the challenge: what on earth is going on? It is a mess. The public and businesses are paying through the nose for this mess.Jacqui Dean: Say my name—say my name.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: No strident hysterical anti-feminine call from there is going to change my mind. The Government ploughs blindly on with its State asset sales and the cannon fodder that Jacqui Dean and her ilk represent just signs up every day. Something has to be done to earn the “Max Bradford market matters”—remember what he said? He said: “I’m going to plateau prices.” It was 1998. Well under National this is what electricity plateaus mean. It is a vertical line straight up straight through the roof and Mr Key has the audacity to blame Labour for the system that he and his party set up.What is the Government doing to reduce electricity prices? Nothing. Despite—Hon Tau Henare: Turn the lights off—that’s New Zealand First policy eh?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Oh I see. The solution that Tau Henare and Jacqui Dean have got is that if you want to save electricity turn the lights off. Turn the fridgeoff. Turn the heater off. In fact why not just turn things off completely? That is their solution.I know that there are people from the Pacific Islands here and they will be shocked to think that this Parliament in the First World has got such puerile debate from one side of the House namely the side of the House that is the Government. There those ones—not over here. We have predictably been told by Dr Geoff Bertram from Victoria University that in comparison with the US the UK Japan France and South Korea for example our prices are much higher.Hon Tau Henare: What are you going to do about it?Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: What are we going to do about it? Here is the answer. This is what our policy is and today I am announcing it. New Zealand First will restore the State-owned electricity generators now being sold back into public ownership and put them under a single generating entity. We will seriously investigate putting a cap on electricity pricing related to the CPI and no more.Mr Henare said in a lucid moment: “What is your policy?”. He has heard it. It is definitive. And if he concerns himself about his people up there in west Auckland he should be cheering from the rafters that finally there was announced today a solution that will work. We are going to—Hon Tau Henare: He’s going to nationalise it—that’s all he could come up with.Rt Hon WINSTON PETERS: Well the volume of noise over there suggests that he should wind up—you are right Mr Speaker. So today we have announced our policy and tomorrow and in the next few months—Mr SPEAKER: The member’s time has expired.