Parker David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
Parker David: Questions for Oral Answer — Questions to Ministers 
[Volume:673;Page:19373] 
7. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister of Transport 
: Were all comments he made on behalf of the Prime Minister in response to Oral Question five yesterday accurate? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 Speaking as the Minister of Transport I believe the responses made by the Minister yesterday on behalf of the Prime Minister were indeed accurate. Indeed as a casual observer I thought they were answered reasonably well. 
Hon David Parker 
: When he said yesterday that the previous Government “saw fit to have an international tender for rolling stock and under its watch the Korean trains were built in Korea.” was he aware that at that time the railways were not owned by KiwiRail but by Toll and the tender was not from either Toll or the then Government but rather from the Greater Wellington Regional Council? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: The previous Labour Government provided $200 million of funding through the National Land Transport Programme to the Greater Wellington Regional Council to purchase new electric trains. It could have placed any condition it chose on Greater Wellington’s procurement but in fact decided not to. I think that action in Government speaks louder than any words today by Mr Parker in Opposition. As usual Labour members are lambs in Government and lions in Opposition. 
Hon David Parker 
: That was a very long yes. Was he also aware that Hillside workers at the time were trusted by Toll employed and kept busy cost-effectively rebuilding rolling stock for the Auckland commuter trains thereby keeping skilled engineering and manufacturing staff in jobs and contributing to the New Zealand economy? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: I am aware of some of the excellent work done by the workshops in Dunedin but again I say to the member what I said to him yesterday which was that we must give KiwiRail the opportunity to make its own business decisions about what it does to operate successfully. If we were to insist that KiwiRail paid higher for rolling stock and electric trains than can be purchased from other vendors we would basically be saying to it that it will be uncompetitive and that would put at risk far more jobs including the 4000 jobs of the KiwiRail operation. 
Hon David Parker 
: Is not the real reason he misrepresented the record of the Labour Government Toll and Hillside that he is trying to avoid his Government being held to account? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I do not believe the member can say that because that is certainly not what I said in response to the previous question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There was a fine line in the question. To assert in a question that a Minister misrepresented something is certainly right on the boundaries of what might be acceptable. The member did not say that the Minister had not told the truth; he said that the Minister had misrepresented. We do not normally rule out in general debate an allegation that someone had misrepresented something because it can be done perfectly accidentally but one should not really build that into a question. I will not rule it out but I caution the member that the Minister will have open slather in responding. Once that kind of assertion is made in a question I will not pull up the Minister in terms of how he responds. 
Hon David Parker 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Thank you for that ruling because neither did you pull up the Minister for his very long yes answer in response to the second supplementary question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will resume his seat. We will not get into that sort of thing at all. I let the member get away with his comment at the start of his last question because I believed the Minister had made an unnecessary comment at the end of his answer. The member’s comment at the start of his question was also out of order but I let it go and I will not now have him use a point of order to try to give it more credibility than it had before. The member may repeat his question and I will not rule out that claim in his question but it does give the Minister a lot of licence in answering. 
Hon David Parker 
: Is not the real reason he misrepresented the record of the Labour Government Toll and Hillside that he is trying to avoid his Government being held to account for its double standard in subsidising irrigation schemes for farmers changing the labour and tax laws for  
The Hobbit  
and gambling laws for the casino but refusing to even consider keeping real manufacturing jobs in New Zealand for New Zealand workers? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Firstly I will say to the member for the final time that I did not misrepresent the situation. The previous Labour Government provided over $200 million of funding to the Greater Wellington Regional Council to purchase new electric trains in 2007 and I understand that the then Minister of Transport was at the signing ceremony for the purchase of the trains. That Government placed no limits on the procurement whatsoever and Labour members are now sitting in Opposition and saying that they would have done it differently if it had been them. That is absolute rubbish. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I want some order in the House now so that I can hear members. 
Clare Curran 
: Has the Government not contravened section 4 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act which requires KiwiRail to be operated with a sense of social responsibility by having regard to the interests of the community in which it operates and by endeavouring to accommodate or encourage these when able to do so? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: No. In addition I would point out that the procurement rules advised not just for Government departments but also for State-owned enterprises and other organisations state that tenderers must not give preference or weighting to local content in itself. Also so that we are clear those procurement guidelines were set up by the previous Government in 2001 they were refined in 2006 and in 2007 and in all cases they say that Government agencies are not to provide preference to local tenderers over foreign tenderers. 
Clare Curran 
: Does he not believe that section 4 of the State-Owned Enterprises Act requires the shareholding Minister and the Government to protect New Zealand jobs rather than ship them offshore or has he not read it? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: What I do believe is that we need our State-owned enterprises to be run effectively and to do the job commercially so that they are successful. In fact the Act requires that they be operated commercially and successfully. The Act does not require that they make decisions that would not be sensible commercial decisions and we do not place that requirement on any New Zealand company. 
Clare Curran 
: I seek leave to table the State-Owned Enterprises Act— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: We are not going to do that. The member will resume her seat.