Prosser Richard: Ministerial Statements — Solid Energy—Voluntary AdministrationText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Ministerial Statements — Solid Energy—Voluntary Administration[Sitting date: 13 August 2015. Volume:707;Page:5787. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): Just last week we were told a man in Dubai prevented lifeguards from going to the assistance of his daughter who was drowning. He did say it was because of his ideological beliefs. To us that seems incomprehensible: that a parent would let their own child die rather than break the protocols of a belief system that they have chosen to adhere to based on nothing more than their unproven faith in a particular ideology. It is incomprehensible.By the same token it is incomprehensible that a Government could stand by and watch while a business entity owned by the State is allowed to effectively drown in a sea of debt because its own adherence made by choice to an ideology based on faith in a failed system of non-intervention prevents it from doing so. It is madness. It is economic madness to allow a business to fail a business that is based around the extraction of a valuable resource—a resource that belongs to the nation and its people a resource that costs us nothing a resource for which we are not required to pay anybody else a royalty and a resource that is valuable and for which there is a ready world market. It is economic madness for the Government to allow any such business to fail simply because stepping in to shore it up flies in the face of its own chosen ideology.People’s lives are dependent on the viability of Solid Energy—the workers the contractors the suppliers the communities based around the mines and the regions where those mines and communities are located. I think National simply does not care. Government members might make all the right noises. They will stand in this House and spout platitudes. They will make unending references to their fine economic management and their skills in business and how the Opposition does not understand these things and so on. We have heard it all before and I am hearing it all again today but the truth is the Government has an agenda as far as Solid Energy is concerned. It had one right from the start and now it has found a way of bringing it to fruition.Solid Energy’s own statement of corporate intent from July 2013 states: “In February 2013 Solid Energy entered a support agreement with its major lenders following a sustained downturn in international coal markets with the resultant impact on profitability cashflow and balance sheet which threatened the company’s banking covenants.” So as far back as 2½ years ago it was obvious that Solid Energy was not going to be in any fit state to be flogged off with the rest of the assets this Government was putting up for sale. The Government had always intended that it be put on the block along with the power companies and anything else that was worth a buck and was not nailed down but the downturn in world coal prices put the kibosh on that.So instead of planning to ensure Solid Energy’s future this Government decided it could wait for the next opportunity to come along and it seems it has found that opportunity. Solid Energy’s press release from this morning in point 1 of the bullet-pointed list proclaims as the first of its key terms of its proposal: “Solid Energy will engage an investment bank and undertake an orderly managed sale of its assets over the next two-and-a-half years.” So the Government gets its sale through a fail. This Government never had any intention of saving Solid Energy. It never wanted to. It always planned to sell it off and now that is what is going to happen.It does not need to of course as was pointed out by New Zealand First only a few days ago. Air New Zealand proves that Solid Energy can be saved. Solid Energy is teetering on the brink of becoming the largest-ever State-owned enterprise to fail. Air New Zealand’s recovery proves that the business can be turned round. It is only in the mess that it is in because of incompetence by Treasury’s commercial operations group and National’s hands-off approach. We are very lucky that National was not in Government when Air New Zealand nearly went to the wall because now it is one of the most profitable in the world. It took a Government prepared to invest in new management to effect a turn-round.Coal is central to steel production and we have not yet touched the potential of underground coal gasification. Clean coal technologies with hundreds of years of proven lignite reserves in Southland will make us independent in terms of urea—or to be turned into diesel. The lack of Government oversight allowed a pile of debts to be built up. If the Government was serious about the regions it would get off its backside and lift that debt burden so that Solid Energy under sane management could prosper just the same way that Air New Zealand has. But the Government is pressing on regardless hell-bent on flicking off this gem of an asset to its mates overseas which highlights the absolute farce of this Government’s ideological positioning.If we break it down it works like this. Solid Energy engages an investment bank and undertakes an orderly managed sale of its assets over the next 2½ years. So that means someone will buy them. Who? People with money and that means foreigners of course. Why will they buy those assets? Because they can make money out of them because they are profitable. No one buys a coalmine with the intention of closing it down. They buy a coalmine because there is a market for coal and that coal can be mined and sold at a profit. And if the foreign buyer can mine the coal and sell it and make a profit why can the State as owner not do the same thing?