Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeStanding Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 26 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13790. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Standing OrdersSessionalHon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises): I moveThat Mighty River Power Limited be a public organisation for the purposes of the Standing Orders.Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour): In case anybody missed that wonderful speech by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises that was the worst-performing Minister in the history of State-owned enterprises in this country. It is interesting that we are actually debating this motion—a motion that follows a litany of stuff-ups and a litany of incompetence by that particular Minister in all aspects of State-owned enterprises. Primarily this motion should have been before the House when the mixed-ownership model legislation was put in place in June last year but that Minister’s incompetence in this portfolio is staggering—absolutely staggering.We agree with this motion. We agree with it because it will allow finally some accountability of mixed-ownership model companies; those that have been half sold off to the private sector like Mighty River Power and those that are likely to be sold off in part like Meridian Energy. But if you look at the litany and the shambles this is the peak of it for that Minister. On the matter of State-owned enterprises John Key in June 2011 said that the mixed-ownership model would yield after the sales $7 billion to $10 billion—that is how much he said would be raised from the sale of these assets. He then claimed it would be $5 billion to $7 billion and he now claims after the 25c I think or 10 percent drop in the Mighty River Power shares and the over billion-dollar devaluation in Meridian Energy that we are going to be—I think this is the quote from the Prime Minister—“at the bottom end of the $5 billion range”.The question for John Key and the question for this Government of course to quote John Key is that he now needs to show this House and show the people of New Zealand the money the cash. Look at the promises that were made in respect of the Future Investment Fund from the sale of State-owned enterprises—do you remember that? The Future Investment Fund was going to fund hospitals and schools—[Interruption]—kindergartens and other things; kittens or whatever.Then we find out two things. We find out that the money that is supposedly going to be raised from the sale of these assets has been spent 10 or 15 times over but worse than that—worse than that—the money is set aside not for hospitals and schools but so that there is say $40 million to pay for the free shares of Mighty River Power and $100 million to bail out Solid Energy. Then if we have a look at some of the other allocations you would have to say it is simply business-as-usual expenditure—not hospitals bridges roads and schools. We have the immigrant management systems closed captioning on Parliament TV and a replacement ground station for search and rescue satellite systems. It is a whole lot of business-as-usual expenditure—appropriate expenditure but business-as-usual expenditure—that should be coming out of budgeted expenditure not the revenue generated from the sale of these assets.Then you have got to look at the combination of factors that have led to where we are today. If you look at Meridian Energy Meridian Energy of course is balanced against the huge risk of RioTinto going south before 1 January 2017. So what is the Government’s plan with that? The Government wanted to get that fiasco off the books as quickly as possible. The Minister has been asked time and time again why it was that he and the Minister of Finance threw in $30 million worth of public money to a company making billions of dollars on a multinational basis every year. He cited repeatedly that this was to secure the jobs of those Southland workers; this would create security. He even accused this side of the House of being anti-jobs or being anti those Southland jobs. Then we got him on radio and we asked whether he had got a guarantee for the $30 million pieces of silver given to RioTinto that those jobs would be secure. The answer was no—that was on Kathryn Ryan’s show. Then he was asked whether he had even bothered—even bothered—to ask for a guarantee to secure those jobs. The answer—no.That gave the lie—the absolute lie—to the claim that $30 million of taxpayers’ money a halving of the notice period and yet cheaper electricity for RioTinto was all about securing those Southland jobs because the Tuesday before the ink was dry on the cheque we know from theSouthland Times that RioTinto had signalled the redundancy of maintenance workers and a restructuring. And the Minister of Finance aided and abetted by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises did not even have the brains or the gumption to ask RioTinto—even if they were not going to get it; at least to roll the dice and ask—whether it would guarantee those jobs of those Southlanders up to 1 January 2017. Now they say that the reason they did not have the brains or the gumption to ask was because they do not interfere. Well they interfered in the private sector to the extent that they picked a winner and used $30 million of taxpayers’ money to pick that winner—and to halve the notice period which signals to anybody buying Meridian shares that if they pull the plug we know what will happen to demand and supply and the value of that company.So we welcome this motion in respect of Mighty River Power. We welcome it because it will actually allow a select committee process around a financial review. It will not of course allow us to gain information through the Official Information Act and it will limit what answers can be given in this House by the Minister of Finance—the shareholding Minister—and the Minister of State Owned Enterprises because of the so-called mixed-ownership model. What we have got after all this—after all this—is a litany of broken promises and a shambles in terms of management of assets like Solid Energy.I mean you have got to hand it to Tony Ryall. This guy has made history in this Parliament. This is the worst-performing Minister for State Owned Enterprises in the history of this Parliament since State-owned enterprises were enacted in the 1980s. Only that member and Bill English could step aside and stand there and watch as thecoal price moved south. You just had to pick up the paper like the local village idiot to work that one out. After literally 2 years of advice from Treasury and from their own scoping consultants UBS—which was charged ironically with scoping the company for sale—after a litany of $23 million worth of bonuses that did not go to the blokes and the women in the pit but went instead to the guys in the flash suits in the palace in Christchurch; after exorbitant expenditure; after Bill English with the platinum-plated spade goes down to the lignite plant in Southland tosses the first sod—tosses the first sod—and sings its praises only to have it close it later on these guys just sat there and let it slide into the sea. An export award - winning company Solid Energy slid into almost bankruptcy.We wait with bated breath—bated breath—over the next few days and weeks to see what sort of deal the Minister of Finance has cut with the banks to try to get rid of or minimise the taxpayer’s exposure to $380 million worth of debt. That was all under his watch—and all under the watch of the Minister for State Owned Enterprises. They are totally 100 percent responsible. They get up occasionally and say they took action and that there is a new board in Solid Energy. Well the problem with that proposition is that no one got sacked. A few people resigned no action was taken against them and there was no intervention by this Government.So the poor old folks who have bought those shares in Mighty River Power are now 10 percent down—10 percent down. About 440000 people pre-registered to buy those shares. What did it work out at? One hundred thousand actually bought them. Opinion polls show—I think it was the TVNZ one—that 87 percent of people do not want a bar of Meridian Energy. And I will tell you—you look at the television advertisements you look at the massive consultancy and legal expenses that this Government has used to try to get these floats off the deck and that is hundreds of millions of dollars. Yet they baulk at the cost—which is what 9 million bucks—of a referendum on asset sales so the people of New Zealand can actually have a formal say and give this lot a good political boot in the backside and scuttle any moral authority they may believe they have through a referendum that would show they do not want their assets sold.So John Key is quite happy to throw 30 million bucks at a multibillion-dollar multinational company to get—what for the taxpayer? Nothing; not even any job security. But he is not willing to have a referendum. He criticises those who organised that referendum and organisations like Grey Power and others and those in the community who want to have a say. He says: “No 9 million bucks is too much.” We support this motion and we look forward to putting Mighty River Power’s feet to the fire.GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia Ora Mr Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I would like to follow on from the last member’s Clayton Cosgrove’s contribution. Of course Minister Ryall is the worst Minister for State Owned Enterprises that we have seen since the whole concept was introduced. We have also seen one of the shortest contributions possibly ever in our Parliament’s history with this motion. Here you saw a Minister—blink and you would have missed it—introducing this Government motion No. 1 to introduce Mighty River Power as a public organisation.The Green Party supports this motion but we are implacably opposed to the Government’s asset sale agenda. We believe it is important that there is public and select committee scrutiny of Mighty River Power. That is why we are voting for this motion but we will continue to fight to our utmost in this House on the streets and online to oppose the fiscally reckless economically reckless Government asset sale agenda. The fact is that we are more focused on delivering cheaper power for Kiwis and a cleaner smarter and cheaper electricity service. We are not about flogging off theassets and flicking them overseas. The Green Party is supporting this motion because we want to see Mighty River Power publicly accountable.We saw Minister Ryall take possibly the briefest ever ministerial contribution introducing a Government motion to Parliament because he is embarrassed. Of course he is embarrassed because he should have done this last year when the legislation was going through Parliament. He is embarrassed because he does not want to talk about the Government’s asset sale agenda. The Government knows it is a vote-loser. It knows that it does not make fiscal or economic sense. It knows it is a loser plan so it is doing its darnedest not to talk about it. I challenge National members to stand up and make a contribution on this Government motion if they want to stand up for the asset sale agenda.When we are talking about this Government motion what we are seeing is Mighty River Power being listed as a public organisation. Since the partial privatisation what we have seen is that Mighty River Power is no longer a State-owned enterprise. This means it does not come under the ambit of the traditional select committee financial review process. By including it as a public organisation it will be publicly questioned and it will be able to be included in the financial review debate because it will be a Crown entity and a public organisation for the purposes of that debate. Obviously it is still not able to be the subject of a request under the Official Information Act. We would like to see greater public transparency but the fact is that that highlights that Kiwis are not in control of this State-owned enterprise. They are not in control of their electricity market. The Government would rather see the profits the dividends and the control taken out of Kiwis’ hands.The sale should not proceed. We have seen a referendum succeed. We have seen it pass the numbers with 327000 signatures. This is a historic achievement. It is now only the fourth petition ever to get the numbers to force a referendum. The Government should not be pushing on. It talks about a mandate but when it is dependent on the vote of one man—the man Peter Dunne who sold out our privacy sold out our human rights laws and is also selling out Kiwis’ assets—it does not have a mandate. If it wanted to put it to the test it should wait for the referendum and listen to the voice of New Zealanders.This asset sale agenda just does not make sense. The Government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars of public money on something New Zealanders do not want. The Government cannot argue that there is a benefit for New Zealanders and that is clearly falling apart. What we have seen is the value of Mighty River Power shares plummet since the asset sale. We have seen only 2 percent of New Zealanders being able to pick up shares. These are not the mums and dads investors whom the ads and the Government talk about. They are a minority of New Zealanders with the disposable income to do it. Because of the old tax switcheroo and the Government’s fiscal decisions we have seen a majority of Kiwis struggling and only the top few benefiting and here we see public assets going to the top few for their benefit. It does not make sense.We know that the Government is unlikely to meet the original Budget forecasts of $5 billion to $7 billion. More ridiculously what we are seeing is every New Zealand taxpayer even those who cannot afford to purchase shares paying for it. We have seen costs of more than $124 million. We have seen $2.3 million a week in forgone profit from Mighty River Power—$2.3 million a week forgone. And for what? For a minority of New Zealanders who are able to afford it. That is a terrible strategy that is costing taxpayers even more.When we saw the—well we did not see it because it all happened behind closed doors but you can imagine the executives of RioTinto licking their lips in anticipationwhen the asset sale agenda was announced because RioTinto knew that it had the Government over a barrel because of the asset sale agenda. We saw John Key having to negotiate with RioTinto from a position of weakness because of the asset sale agenda. We saw John Key literally picking up the phone against official advice and giving $30 million of taxpayers’ money to RioTinto inTīwai because of the asset sale agenda to protect the asset sale agenda. The Government is doing everything it can including the fiscally reckless “buy now pay later” scheme which is going to cost Kiwis at least $60 million. It is time for a cup of tea. It is time for a break. It is time for some sanity to prevail. The Government has an opportunity with the referendum to listen to the people of New Zealand—to put the asset sale agenda on the back-burner have a cup of tea and let us re-evaluate the asset sale agenda.The problem is of course that we are not debating what we should be which is how we deliver cheaper power to New Zealanders. Under the asset sale agenda what we know is that power prices are going to go up. Under this Government—under National—we have seen power prices go up and up by $300 a year for the average Kiwi household. Since the Bradford reforms we have seen our electricity prices rise by 72 percent in real terms while across the developed world theirs have dropped by 6 percent. We should be having a debate about how we get cheaper electricity to New Zealand households and New Zealand businesses to support the productive sector and about how we get Kiwis healthy and safe and warm in their houses and not in energy poverty which we see at the moment. By keeping our assets in public ownership we could have driven cheaper and cleaner electricity.We have a fantastic business opportunity as a country. Our strengths are never going to lie in competing for oil with Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Our economic future depends on competing on our strengths which is clean energy and I note that we have actually done pretty well in a recent ranking out today. Our strengths are in innovation as we saw in the America’s Cup. PricewaterhouseCoopers reckons we could see a $23 billion economic opportunity from clean energy. If we had kept Mighty River Power and other State-owned enterprise assets in public ownership we could have supercharged our State-owned enterprises coupled with private businesses and partnered with them to drive exports.What we know globally is that the world is moving away from oil. In 2011 net capital investment in the electricity sector—for the first time ever in our planet’s history fossil fuels and nuclear energy were smaller than renewables. China Europe and America are crying out for clean energy technology. We should not be looking to the past to the last century’s fossil fuel economy; we should be prepared to cater to the coming century’s economy. This is where we can build exports. It is where we can grow jobs. We know that compared with oil there are going to be more jobs more profits staying in New Zealand and more sustainable prosperity for the long term in clean energy and that is the greatest tragedy of the asset sale agenda.Taxpayers are forking out millions of dollars. Big multinational corporates have the Government over a barrel taking tens of millions of dollars out of Kiwi taxpayers’ pockets but we are missing the opportunity of cleaner cheaper and smarter energy and building better exports for clean energy. This is our future and this is what the Greens will continue to champion. We are going to fight this agenda in the House on the streets and online. We will keep fighting for clean energy. Kia ora.DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): Here we are again taking another step as a result of the quagmire of State asset sales. The sale of Mighty River Power Ltd was an act of economic sabotage that will for ever taint this Government. [Interruption] I beg your pardon?Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No I was signalling to someone behind you. I apologise for the distraction.DENIS O’ROURKE: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I will say it again. The sale of Mighty River Power Ltd was an act of economic sabotage that will for ever taint this Government and for ever damage this country’s economic and social well-being. Everyone except the Ministers in this Government knows that State asset sales are economic and financial madness. On any rational basis they are simply barmy.So few people support this barmy policy that with or without a proving referendum National is in fact just trashing our democracy. It is idle nonsense to claim a mandate when it is abundantly obvious that this is the Government’s most hated policy including by most of those people who voted for National at the last election. They did so for reasons that are inexplicable to me but it is nevertheless true that they elected a National Government knowing that National would sell strategic assets. They did so on a warts and all basis. In fact there were so many warts that the Government’s so-called mandate is utterly unidentifiable.So let us hear no more talk of the Government’s claim that it now has any mandate at all. It never really had one from the beginning. The fundamental objection is that the policy is now seen to be what it really is: a swindle perpetrated on the public of New Zealand. What we really own is being sold back to us—not to all of us; only some of us. We go from assets owned by all of us to assets owned by only a few—those who can afford to buy the shares. The result is further widening the already growing chasm between people with the wealth and incomes for a good living and those who struggle to earn a living own a home and bring up and educate their children while saving for their retirement.I am an egalitarian and I abhor that kind of swindle. A few may think they are winners and there may be a few pieces of silver for some but as a nation we are collectively impoverished by these sales. We will save the interest on some of our borrowing in the short term but we all lose the handsome dividend stream these companies provide as well as their capital growth for the whole of our future.To make matters worse and to exacerbate the financial stupidity of these sales we are paying an army of consultants and merchant bankers a fortune to do it for us. It is a kind of financial sadism that we now see being imposed upon us. The total bill for the float of Mighty River Power is a cool $41 million. That is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. This money would be better used elsewhere even while this slash-and-burn Government moves more and more to reduce the number and quality of public services under the guise of efficiency. The Meridian Energy float is expected to cost at least another $41 million. So that is a colossal $82 million for absolutely nothing. That money would be better spent on schools hospitals and the things that really matter.As BrianGaynor said in this Tuesday’sNew Zealand Herald the initial public offers were a gravy train for the investment banks. Even Dick Turpin and the highway robbers of old would not have been that brazen. In fact Dick would have been proud of the sheer scale and audacity of these robberies effectively robbing the poor and middle New Zealand to the advantage of the rich.Although only 49 percent of these companies are being sold for now these sales are surely only the first step of old-fashioned true full privatisation in due course. This is despite the old lessons of past privatisations not being learnt. State asset sales of this kind have always proved to be an unmitigated disaster requiring some companies to be bought back. New Zealanders will pay a heavy price for this mad policy for generations to come.New Zealand’s assets are being stripped and plundered by an economically illiterate Government that is so bereft of ideas for managing our economy prudently andeffectively and without undue austerity measures that 2013 will go down as a black year in the history of the New Zealand economy with the sale of Mighty River Power and soon of Meridian Energy. In the face of overwhelming economic and financial logic the Key Government has ploughed on with this absurd damaging project regardless of the cost to the country. National and its cronies insist on following the tried and failed ideology of the so-called market trumping all other considerations. The so-called safeguards over the extent of foreign ownership are worth as much as Mr Key’s other bogus and empty pronouncements. He is justly regarded as our least trusted politician. He is now the arch-swindler. He will go down in history as the Prime Minister who sold out who did dodgy deals and he will ultimately cut and run leaving us all to pick up the pieces.New Zealand First is committed to bringing back Mighty River Power to where it belongs: the ownership of the people of New Zealand—all of them. It is committed to buying back State assets over time and from the first opportunity. New Zealand First will restore the State-owned electricity generators now being sold back into public ownership and will put them back under a single generating entity. New Zealand First believes in a mixed economy one in which the private sector and the public sector work together to provide a prosperous and stable society that is fair to the whole population rather than for the benefit of only some. So although it does not oppose the principle of transparency of information for companies such as this New Zealand First will vote against the motion but only as a means of further expressing our implacable opposition to asset sales generally.Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): The Labour Party as my colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove has already indicated supports this Government motion No. 1 because it is one of the few ways in which we are going to have at least a modicum of transparency as to what is happening at Mighty River Power now that half of it is being privatised. This is necessary only because the Government has already taken it off the list of State-owned enterprises because of the privatisation. Until that step was taken of course New Zealanders had the ability through their members of Parliament to scrutinise the affairs of Mighty River Power. That was taken away through the decision of the Government to stop it from being a State-owned enterprise as part of the Government’s programme of selling half of the shares. We have already heard earlier this year from the Chief Ombudsman BeverleyWakem complaining that the Government got it wrong in removing these companies half of which were being sold from the group of entities that are covered by the Official Information Act. She pointed out that one of the reasons that you have transparency around these things is to prevent cronyism and corruption.If ever there was a Government in the history of New Zealand that is going down the road of cronyism which is related to the rise of corruption in democracy it is this one. We have seen sweet deals negotiated at the highest levels of Government involving the Prime Minister for theSkycity convention centre for the RioTinto subsidy of $30 million which I will come back to for reasons relating to the electricity market and then most recently for the intervention following the chair of Chorus phoning the Prime Minister and complaining about the draft determination from the Commerce Commission into copper broadband pricing for Chorus which led to the Government intervening for the benefit of that company.The Chief Ombudsman was quite right in pointing out that it was wrong to remove Mighty River Power from the list of entities that are subject to the Official Information Act. The excuse that was used by the Government—that these companies are more commercial because they have some private shareholders—does not hold water because of course disclosure can already be refused under the Official Information Actfor matters of commercial confidentiality. So it is important that we have transparency and openness.I want to give another example of how through this process of State-owned enterprise sales we have had too little transparency and openness. At the time of the last election the Labour Party spotted that the National Government was promising in its fiscal projections to sell off Government assets—the likes of Mighty River Power—bank the money and therefore not have as much borrowing and have lower interest costs. What it did not do was account for the fact that it lost dividends and shares of capital growth as a consequence of that sale. So it banked the savings but it did not take into account the lower revenue that it would have as a consequence of no longer owning all of those companies. At the time Steven Joyce the master spin-doctor from the Government was rolled out to accuse the Labour Party of lying and of misrepresenting. He did that through theNew Zealand Herald he did it through the television channels and he went all over the radio. He got his big sword out and tried to pretend that we had it wrong when in fact we were right. It was an absolute indictment on not only the National Government and Steven Joyce that they were willing to misrepresent to the people—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: They lied.Hon DAVID PARKER: They did. On this occasion they did lie to the electorate. They lied to the electorate as to what the fiscal effects would be of selling down interests in these companies. Treasury did not force them to come clean. Treasury—in my opinion in breach of the public finance legislation—allowed the Minister of Finance to sign off on a set of accounts that did not show that notwithstanding that the pre-election fiscal update is meant for the sake of transparency and openness to present a solid set of accounts. We know that that is necessary when you have got a National Government because what really led to that was the debacle under Mr Muldoon when he left things in such a poor state of affairs all those years ago.So we have had this lack of transparency and openness around Mighty River Power and other share floats we have had the removal of them from the Official Information Act and now we have this little glimmer of hope that we in the Labour Party can at least at the financial review look into these accounts and criticise them. What we cannot do is undo what the Government is doing with these asset sales. We cannot reverse the huge salaries and bonuses that are being paid to the chief executives of these companies that are being floated which increase the costs that have to be charged to power consumers. We cannot change the fact that money has been wasted on the process—many hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of advice and commissions being paid on sale.We ought not to forget that this is central to the National Government’s economic agenda for these 3 years even though it is opposed by so many New Zealanders yet it does nothing to improve New Zealand’s economic output. Changing who owns what already exists does not change how much electricity is produced; all it does is put up the price. The Government is always telling us “Look we’ve got a competitive electricity market that constrains price.” and yet we know that New Zealanders do not believe that because it is not true. We know that New Zealand’s electricity prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation for about 20 years. We know that the differential between residential and commercial and industrial tariffs is the second-highest in the developed world after Denmark and cannot be properly explained except by a lack of competition. We have even in the last few weeks had another intervention by the Government in respect of the Meridian Energy share sale to get Meridian Energy off the block. It did a deal with the owners of theTīwai Point smelter. It gave a $30 million subsidy effectively for the benefit of RioTinto in order to give certainty to MeridianEnergy that it would still be able to sell its power at inflated prices and keep the prices high. We know that Treasury advised that but for that intervention the price of electricity could have decreased for everyone by 10 percent. Yet the Government pretends that we have got a competitive electricity market.I just find it absolutely incredible that we have not had outrage from investment bankers because of this market intervention by the Government which proved that the electricity market was not competitive. But the reason we have not had outrage from that quarter is of course that they are self-interested in keeping the existing so-called market model. It is certainly not a competitive market model; it is an uncompetitive market model. They are self-interested because they want to clip the ticket on these sales. They like the privatisation of these assets. They are some of those who benefit from the sell-down of these assets to the less than 3 percent of the New Zealand population who owns what was previously wholly New Zealand - owned.This programme on the part of the Government is wrong. We do support this motion. We do not think that the Government should be given much credit for it because of course whilst it is doing this—which is the absolute minimum it can do—it is running roughshod over the will of New Zealanders. Citizens initiated referenda are provided for under the constitutional arrangements of New Zealand. When a citizens initiated referendum is brought forward and the more than 300000 signatures that are needed to cross that hurdle are obtained and if there is no urgency to proceed in respect of the issue that was so contentious—and there is no urgency to proceed with the likes of the Meridian Energy sale—a prudent Government would just wait and see what the referendum turns up.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Respect the people.Hon DAVID PARKER: You would respect the people and you would give due consideration to the outcome of that referendum. This arrogant Government of course is just ignoring the will of the people pretending that it has got a mandate for this when it has not ignoring the fact that it makes the finances of the Government worse ignoring the fact that it increases the gap between the rich and the poor ignoring the fact that it makes the economy go slower if you have got a higher electricity price—because businesses are not as competitive and they cannot employ as many people—and ignoring the fact that it has an adverse effect on the wealth of the country because you do not have as many exports and you import more stuff instead if your energy price is higher than it need be. The Government is doing all of that because of this ideologically driven nonsense of selling these shares in not just Mighty River Power but also Meridian Energy. So although the Labour Party supports this motion let that not be confused with giving any support for this ridiculous central part of the Government’s economic agenda.MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Labour will be supporting this Government motion and we will be doing so because as my colleague David Parker said it is one of the few protections that are going to remain to ensure transparency around the operation of what used to be State-owned enterprises power companies—one power company in particular Mighty River Power which used to be wholly owned by the people of New Zealand and has now been partially privatised by a Government running roughshod over public concern and public opposition to asset sales. So although we remain firmly opposed to the asset sales agenda of this Government we do support this motion because it will mean that Mighty River Power would still be able to participate for example in financial reviews and will come under the Standing Orders of this House.But I think this motion really highlights what a complete stuff-up the Government’s asset sales programme has been. The Government seems to be in some kind of blind panic. It has no other plan. It is creating a slush fund that it promised would be forschools and hospitals and which turns out is for any old thing. The Government had spent the money in the Budget before the money had even come in. This is despite the fact that the original prediction for how many billions of dollars would be brought in from the sale of these energy assets has been substantially reduced and reviewed. The reality has been that the money the Government was expecting has not been made and yet it was already budgeted for and spent. That is obviously a concern for this side of the House because we are going to be picking up the Government books in 2014.Once again we are going to have a Labour Government that comes in and sorts out the utter utter economic mess left behind by a National Government completely devoid of any real economic development ideas and completely devoid of any kinds of ideas that are going to grow our economy in a sustainable way and produce real jobs environmentally and economically sustainable jobs. Instead it is just another fire sale of assets that are critical to the economic and environmental well-being of our country.Mighty River Power is a good example of this because it is a world leader in geothermal energy. It is able to take the intellectual property that it owns as a company borne out of many many years of developing geothermal energy options in New Zealand and use that to assist other countries particularly countries that are seismically active. We have seen with the tragedy in Japan what can happen with nuclear power plants in seismically active parts of the world. But where there is seismic activity there is often geothermal activity. Mighty River Power obviously has an enormous amount of potential in that area. That is potential that the taxpayers of New Zealand could have fully benefited from had we kept the company in public ownership and had we kept the dividends that will come from these activities being carried out by Mighty River Power in public hands and in the public coffers held by the Government.We are here doing this because of the rush because of the panic and because of the complete stuff-up in how this asset sales programme has gone ahead. It is a fairly significant oversight by the Government that when it passed legislation and when it was removing Mighty River Power’s status as a State-owned enterprise it forgot to give it the new status of a public organisation. That is a fairly large oversight but it tells you just how rushed these processes have been.We saw that again with the $30 million subsidy that was given toTīwai Point. The Government says that it did that because it was all about protecting jobs. My colleague Clayton Cosgrove then asked whether the Government made keeping jobs or retaining those jobs a requirement of that $30 million. He asked whether the Government had said that in order to get that $30 million the company had to guarantee that the jobs will be retained. No—no the Government just handed over the cheque and said: “There you go. Have a good time. Thank you very much.” [Interruption] Absolutely. I know. It is astounding—$30 million and no guarantee was even asked for.Hon Maryan Street: Just a handout.MOANA MACKEY: Just a handout. The Government did not even say: “Would you please consider keeping these jobs.”There is another side to that argument about the irony of a National Government subsidising jobs which it would always rail against but now seems to think is a great idea. But now we have a handing over of $30 million which is meant to save jobs but will not because there was no guarantee of those jobs being saved.That shows the desperation in this Government to force through this asset sales regime—the utter desperation that it would get in there give a major multinational company $30 million and then not even ask that the basic requirement of keeping people in work be adhered to by the company getting the corporate bailout. That is utterly shameful—utterly shameful—but the Government is so obsessed with firming up Meridian Energy which is the next one off the blocks to be sold off so utterlyobsessed with firming it up for sale that it will do anything absolutely anything. And guess what taxpayers of New Zealand? The Government will spend your money to do it.Now when you ask for your local health services to be retained and to be strengthened if you want your rail line fixed or reopened after a washout or if you want more money for your local school well guess what voters of New Zealand? You are not going to get that. But if you are a multinational company that can help with the asset sales regime here is $30 million—easy as pie. Done. You do not even have to ask twice. That is the kind of corporate cronyism that we have under this National-led Government.One of the reasons why it is so utterly important that we do maintain the ability for scrutiny of these companies at select committees is the concern that Labour has raised over the impact on power prices caused by this privatisation regime of the Government because power prices will go up. They will go up. These are very efficient companies. That is why the Government is selling them off. And when those companies no longer have to consider the social impacts of what they do as they do under the State-Owned Enterprises Act when they are no longer constrained by that and when they have private shareholders who want to get maximum value out of their shares what are they going to do? Well they are going to put up power prices. And can they do it? Of course they can because it is a completely unregulated environment—completely unregulated.So we have the National Government desperately trying to claim that power prices have gone up because of lines charges. Well that is not true. Or it is trying to claim that they have gone up because of Transpower national grid charges. Well that is true but only because the National Government reversed the decision of the former Labour Government which said: “Yes Transpower you have to upgrade the national grid. Our economy depends on it. But guess what? We are going to forgo your dividend to pay for it. So there is no pass-through cost to consumers because you will be able to pay for it out of your dividend.”What did National do? As soon as it was elected—well one it did continue with that asset upgrade programme; that is good. But two it said to Transpower: “Sorry we want a dividend and can you please back pay us for the dividends that you did not pay to the Labour Government.” So that is pushing up power prices. That is the direct result of this National Government.The problem we have is that in the retail market we do not have competition—we do not. The question that I put to the Government—it goes on and on about its What’s My Number campaign and the amount of money it has been putting into that. Well if we have a really competitive market why do we need a What’s My Number campaign? Why do we need a Government campaign to help people find cheaper electricity prices if we have a truly competitive electricity market? The reality is that we do not.I question the effectiveness of the What’s My Number campaign because for the poorest people they are lucky if they can find one power company to pick them up. The idea that they have the choice of electricity providers is utter fantasyland stuff and shows how out of touch this Government is. The other reason that I am sceptical about that programme is that not only do you have to have access to the internet in order to be able to get on there and check it out but a lot of the savings are actually down to early payment discounts not cheaper electricity prices. If you cannot pay your bill at all then an early payment discount is not going to help you.The What’s My Number campaign has not helped the people in this country who are struggling the most to pay power bills. What will help them is Labour’s NZ Power policy which will ensure that we have competition in the retail market. We are not going to be regulating the retail market. What we are going to be doing is ensuring anactual competitive market so that consumers will have choice and so that more players will be able to enter into that market and develop scale because that is what does not happen at the moment. We have a lot of small players. The big four are happy to let them stay there and give the appearance of competition but the moment they got to any scale they would squash them. The moment those companies had so many connections that they would start to have to hedge that is when the generator-retailers really exercise their power over the electricity market.So the kind of reform that the Labour Party has been talking about is the only kind of reform that is going to make a difference to power prices. It has been because of the Government’s asset sales agenda because of the loss of control of those State-owned enterprises that we saw that we had to announce that we were going to be doing this. Now was the time. We have flattening demand we have surplus of supply and we have a power sector that formerly was 75 percent owned by the New Zealand public now being partially privatised losing that transparency and losing that ability to protect consumers in New Zealand. That meant that the time for electricity reform has come and a Labour Government in 2014 will do that. We do support this Government motion but we utterly oppose the premise upon which it is based.DAVID SHEARER (Labour—Mt Albert): I want to take a brief call on this Government motion No. 1 as well. It is pretty extraordinary that we have got to this point where we have to pass this today because it was forgotten to have been done some time before. It is easy to forget accountability really is it not? At the end of the day it is just about whether we can keep a check on Mighty River Power and our other power organisations. It is also a bit of a joke to actually put this under the category of a public organisation because it certainly is not a public organisation any more. It was but now it really is a privatised organisation and not a public organisation because Mighty River Power is half-owned by just 2 percent of New Zealand’s population. The rest of New Zealand the other 98 percent were not able to take a share in Mighty River Power. So now we have Mighty River Power which is worth $2.25 a share but was floated at $2.50 a share. It has gone down 10 percent already and what a failure of an investment that has been for that 2 percent of the population who has joined in that.On the basis of that success of that brilliant move by this Government we are now going to float an even bigger power organisation Meridian Energy. So we have failed on Mighty River Power and now we are going to launch off Meridian Energy. Who will invest in Meridian Energy? Well 34 percent of people said before Mighty River Power was floated that they would invest in Mighty River Power and it ended up being 2 percent. When the pollsters asked New Zealanders this time about Meridian Energy only 14 percent said that they were going to invest in Meridian Energy. Obviously this caused some panic amongst the Government because it then started acting a little bit like Harvey Norman—buy now pay later. So you are able to buy those shares now and pay later. As my colleague Clayton Cosgrove says they will throw in a box of steak knives along with it just to sweeten the deal up a bit. They will probably offer a trip for two to Las Vegas where you could have the same sort of gamble but more legally over there. This is to try to get this float across the line.What will we get for the money? Well we were promised $7 billion to $10 billion then it was $5 billion to $7 billion then it was the low end of $5 billion to $7 billion—and these are all quotes of either the Minister of Finance or the Prime Minister—and now we are scratching to get $5 billion across the line. What will we spend that money on? Well there has been a wide variety of issues that we can spend this money on. First of all of course it was to avoid the credit downgrade—avoid that. That was in 2011. I do not suppose people remember that. Then it was to help Kiwibank. Then in 2012 it was to pay down debt. That was MrRyall’s suggestion. Then it was to build newschools and hospitals. That did the rounds for a while because it was very popular. And then it was to bail out KiwiRail. Then it was to irrigate lots and lots of farm land a little bit like the Tukituki River which we are hearing so much about. What an appalling idea that is. It is so appalling that the Government has to doctor the results of its tests in order to be able to get it across the line. Then it is the rebuild of Christchurch. Then it is the Auckland rail loop. The list goes on and on. If you add it up it comes to $80 billion. So the $5 billion being raised goes into $80 billion. I am not sure how that works.What I do know is that the mums and dads who were promised the shares in this are a joke; it is just 2 percent of our population. We will not get anything like what we want for the power companies and as my colleague Moana Mackey just said power prices will go up. We lose all the way down the line unless you are in that 1 percent and 2 percent upper-income level. This is a disgrace and this Government motion No. 1 is a testament to that.BRENDAN HORAN (Independent):Tēnā koe Mr Assistant Speaker. Talofa. The question today is whether Mighty River Power should be a public organisation. That is a most obvious no-brainer—of course Mighty River Power should be subject to scrutiny. It must be subject to public scrutiny. It cannot be exempt from public scrutiny. The mums and dads who have been led astray by the National Party are deserving of some protection; heaven knows there is none for them in the sharemarket. If you compare the reaction of that Government to the equity of mum and dad investors—and that is the Government’s term its sneering way of referring to the poor people of New Zealand; poor in both senses of the word now. The poor people did their dough in Mighty River Power at $2.50.Compare the reactions of Sam Lotu-Iiga and the Hon Peter Dunne onThe Vote on TV a fortnight ago where they nearly became hysterical over the equity that speculators have in the housing bubble. Those two members attacked the Opposition stridently. They shouted that we were going to destroy the equity that speculators have in their housing portfolios—with 50 100 200 residential properties in their portfolios—and not a word not an ounce of sympathy from Peter Dunne and Sam Lotu-Iiga for the first-home buyers the young families who have no way to accumulate wealth under this Government’s policies nor from anyone else in the National Government.Yet what has happened to the Mighty River Power share price? It has gone down down down faster than a skydiver and there is no parachute. Since listing in mid-May over $400 million of wealth has been destroyed. From an issue price of $2.50 a share in 4 short months it has dropped to $2.23 and just 10 days ago it reached an all-time low of $2.16. Looking at the trend here there is no bottom in sight. Mighty River Power share price fluctuations are on a downward trend. The shares have lost over 13 percent in value over just 4 short months and at this rate mum and dad investors will have lost half their money within the year and will have done their dough totally by mid-2015. Maybe that does not worry Bill English because he is gambling on that being after the next election.John Key is flogging off Mighty River Power and the other State-owned enterprises like the family silver. We have seen a number of questionable manoeuvres from this Government—financial dealings that really are little different fromBridgecorp or Hanover Finance. It moves power stations around between Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy and Genesis like the pea in a three-card shell game. The hard-working folks at theTekapō ATekapō B and Whirinaki power stations could be excused for not knowing who owned each power station on a particular day.With Meridian Energy our next State-owned enterprise to be sold we have seen a $30 million handout to RioTinto. But what is not being told about that story is the absolute incompetence of the Minister for State Owned Enterprises—asleep at thewheel because who could not see RioTinto manoeuvring New Zealand? Fancy that Minister allowing RioTinto to manoeuvre New Zealand into such a vulnerable position. It would be very interesting to have the disinfectant of sunlight looking at the relationship between the heads of Comalco those National Party cronies and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises.We now have Bill English thinking we are very gullible. He is sadly banking on the adage that there is one born every minute. We come along with a “buy now pay later” deal as my colleagues have stressed and steak knives and people get to keep 100 percent of the dividend when they have not actually paid for the shares. But wait there is more. He has set a price cap on the shares so that his few mates who can afford to buy them can get in at a lower price than they should. And let us not forget the $100 million or so paid to Aussie banks just to prepare for the float. The prices that these are going to be sold for represent another subsidy from the hard-working families of New Zealand—the people whose power prices are going to go up and up just to support a few.It is interesting that Bill English ignored Treasury. He ignored Treasury’s advice against it. To Treasury’s credit it did warn Bill English and John Key that the emperor has no clothes. This motion represents a small step to turn back the tide to expose what ongoing mischief there may be from National over this power company which the public built up over 80 years. It used to be the jewel in our crown. It is a public asset of benefit to the public which this Government is selling off.Motion agreed to.Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Acting Leader of the House): I moveThat the following sessional order be adopted: “Standing Order 140(3) to be read subject to the following additional order: ‘(d) with permission granted by the Speaker to be absent on account of illness or other family cause of a personal nature following a request from a member’s party leader or whip.’”SUE MORONEY (Senior Whip—Labour): I rise in support of Government motion No. 2. I was expecting the Government to perhaps enlarge on the reasons behind the motion but perhaps it is not entirely sure. I want to actually formally thank the Speaker for taking notice of some situations that certainly Labour members have found themselves in. Newsflash to people who might be watching this: we are human and just like other people in their workplaces we sometimes have family situations and illnesses that prevent us from being able to take up our work in the way that we would wish to take it up.The point of this motion is that it allows compassionate leave to be put in place so that if one of our MPs from any party in this Parliament is in that situation then their party is not penalised by having their vote not count in certain circumstances. That will be monitored very closely and stringently by the party whips and that is important.I frequently in my role as a female member of Parliament travel the country talking to lots of people many of whom are women about the importance of having women in Parliament. It is important therefore that we make sure that it is a working environment in which women can operate and that means yes recognising that we have family circumstances that are beyond our control sometimes. Some of the situations that members have found themselves in—perhaps the public are wondering what on earth this compassionate leave could possibly be about in a parliamentary environment. Examples that come to mind are examples such as that suffered by a very good friend the HonVui Mark Gosche when his wife was very ill for a period of time. Of course we would want him to be able to support his wife and his family members at that time and that is the type of occasion that this motion will help with.It does mean that when family members have taken ill or in situations where children or dependent family members are ill we too can respond to that as other members of the public could in their own work environments. And it means that we would actually have a voting system in place to make sure that a party’s vote is not affected by that.Without any further ado I welcome this Government motion No. 2. I thank the Speaker in particular for taking this issue seriously because if we are truly going to be a House of Representatives then we do need to make sure that a whole range of people no matter their family circumstances can take part in being a member of Parliament and take part in the debate in this place. Thank you.GARETH HUGHES (Musterer—Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this Government motion No. 2 introducing a draft sessional order for a new category of leave called compassionate leave. This Chamber is not noted for its compassion. It is more noted for its dog-eat-dog political partisan petty point-scoring. It is not known for its family-friendly work hours. It is not known for the camaraderie or for the collaborative positive process. But it is great that this Parliament on the last day of this session is also debating this motion to see a new category compassionate leave. I think everyone in this Parliament would like to see a bit more compassion in this debating chamber.When it comes to the issue of leave there are two mechanisms that members and their parties can go through to deal with this issue. The first is under the discretion of the Speaker and relates to the Civil List Act 1979 which relates to our remuneration. The second one which the public might be more familiar with is the issue of leave for MPs to be able to leave the parliamentary precincts but for their vote to be cast. At the moment parties can have 25 percent of their members away without dropping down their votes.I think many people—and I know I get a number of messages online and emails about it—constantly ask why there are so few people in this debating chamber. The answer of course is not that all the MPs are off bunking or down at the pub—at the Back Bencher. The fact is that many MPs are out doing constituency work at community functions or in fact are hard at work in their offices. Under the MMP environment party votes are cast by the party not by the individual so whips—ormusterers as we call them in the Green Party—have the discretion to allow MPs to have leave.What we have not had is the ability for Parliament to have a new category of leave called compassionate leave. At the moment regardless of what the purpose of the leave is—be it that the MP is sick on family duties or has any other personal issue—it comes out of that party’s entitlement. This has the perverse incentive for those MPs who maybe have a family personal or health issue not to apply for leave because they might be disadvantaging their colleagues who may be spending time at a function or speaking at a conference. The message that we do not want to send is that sick MPs should stay working at Parliament so their colleagues can have leave at conferences or out campaigning.What we want to have is a safe work environment where if MPs have health problems or family problems or family issues they should be able to take leave. It is great to see this. It is something the Green Party has been pushing for on the Business Committee. I would like to acknowledge the work of Holly Walker who facing an imminent birth of her own has been driving this. I am not aware that her birth has occurred. She has not updated Twitter for about 7 hours so hopefully she is not going into labour as we speak.Hon Michael Woodhouse: What’s her due date?GARETH HUGHES: I am not sure of her due date. It must be pretty soon.Jan Logie: Five days ago.GARETH HUGHES: Five days ago was her due date so I am sure this Parliament will be eagerly waiting for the news of Holly’s baby’s birth.As the member Sue Moroney points out what we want to have is a House of Representatives that is truly representative including of young parents. As a father to two young kids aged 3 and 6 it is a struggle to be a good dad and a good member of Parliament. It is great to see Parliament coming together with this new amendment to Standing Order 140(3) that allows the Speaker to grant this new category of compassionate leave.I have two quick points on this. The Greens would like to see this entrenched in the Standing Orders not just in a temporary sessional order. We want to see it entrenched. We want to see a compassionate Parliament with compassionate leave in the rule book. We want to see the issue of parental leave distinctly added. At the moment it is only compassionate leave. We think parental leave is important. Looking after your kids and supporting yourwhānau is important.It is just one of many Standing Orders changes the Green Party wants to see. I will soon be putting in a submission from the Greens. We have got around 17 substantive points where we can modernise our parliamentary rules and where we can have better legislative lawmaking—for example in terms of substantive amendments which the Government has been using a great deal of to circumvent the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act and select committee scrutiny. These points go through to lobbying changes through to international treaty provisions through to the election of the Speaker and through to something close to my heart which is reforming the issue of the prayer.What we are seeing here with the compassionate leave changes is Parliament slowly modernising and becoming a more family-friendly a more personal health and well-being - friendly and a more compassionate place. There is a long way to go. This is just the start and the Green Party will keep being the party that is proposing positive solutions to support members and to support the lawmaking process in New Zealand. We will keep making these positive solutions and supporting them when they are in front of this House. Kia ora.BARBARA STEWART (Whip—NZ First): On behalf of New Zealand First I rise to take a very short call on Government motion No. 2 which relates to Standing Order 140(3). I think it is fair to say that from time to time unforeseen circumstances arise when members of Parliament do need to be absent from the parliamentary precincts on compassionate grounds and do need to be regarded as if they were present for the purposes of casting party votes.Potentially there is a wide range of contingencies that may fall under this provision. It is neither practical nor appropriate to describe in elaborate detail what these circumstances may be. In our view it is appropriate that the provisions Parliament makes for such circumstances—compassionate grounds—reflect and are consistent with the modern world and the approaches that are adopted in the world of work outside of these four walls. We are satisfied that the procedure envisaged in this motion will actually meet that test. We do not consider that these provisions are excessive or create significant or unwanted privileges for parliamentarians. New Zealand First considers that what is proposed is a practical and appropriate measure and we support the motion.Motion agreed to.