Prosser Richard: Keep Kiwibank Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: Keep Kiwibank Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7268. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): I am very pleased to rise on behalf of New Zealand First to take a call in this first reading of the Keep Kiwibank Bill 2015. This is a good bill and New Zealand First is proud to support it. In fact if we have one complaint one criticism at all—and it is not about the bill itself or about this process of lawmaking; we have no issue with that. If we have one complaint about this process it is that this bill should not actually be necessary. It should not have been necessary for Mr Cosgrove to craft this bill and to put it in the ballot and to be lucky enough to have it drawn and to bring it to the House. We congratulate him on that but I fear that it is necessary and listening to Government members tonight has done nothing to assuage those fears.As Mr Robertson said when he spoke if the Government members do not stand up and say unequivocally that they are going to support the bill or do not confirm that they will be voting against it that is pretty much as good as saying that yes Kiwibank is going to be on the block at some point in the medium future anyway. It is a way of saying “We do not want to entrench the New Zealand State ownership of this bank because we want to give ourselves the opportunity to flick it off at some point down the track.” which is a reasonably safe bet I would say. It will surprise nobody that the free-market ideologues who seem to run the National Party these days do not have any interest in safeguarding the future of New Zealand’s bank in the hands of New Zealand citizens voters and taxpayers.Mr Bennett pretty much said that of course National will not interfere in the decisions of New Zealand Post’s board and that sums up National members’ attitude I think generally to State-owned enterprises overall. They would really rather not have them. They would really rather that everything was actually in the hands of the private sector. They do not like the sort of socialist connotations of the taxpayer through the State having ownership of what they call businesses even if these businesses are in fact essential parts of the fabric of what makes New Zealand New Zealand. They just regard any kind of State ownership as being anathema to what it is that is the core of their way of thinking about things. So they have come out and flagged that they will not support it.We will be supporting it and Labour obviously will support the bill and the Greens have said that they will support it through to select committee. As to the other support parties for the Government we do not know the mind of the Māori Party. We may not know until the vote. It is a safe bet that Mr Seymour will support it. But we do not know about Mr Dunne. He has surprised us once tonight already and who knows perhaps he might do that again.Do not get me wrong: New Zealand First is entirely in favour of private enterprise and of private ownership of businesses. But there are times when something more than a simple pure profit motive is required. There are times when a public service is required. There are times when a public good is involved. It is on occasions like that that the State has to be involved because only the State can be involved and that really is where the State should be involved. We did that for a long time. We used to own the BNZ for example. We used to own the Post Office Savings Bank for more than a hundred years. We owned the Post Office Savings Bank then we owned PostBank as it was called and then it got flicked off in 1989 to the Australians who now own the major slice of the New Zealand commercial banking sector apart from of course Kiwibank the Taranaki savings bank the Southland Building Society and one or two other little minnows.It is curious that the Australians own almost all of New Zealand’s commercial banking sector when in fact for a commercial trading bank to operate in Australia it has to be majority Australian-owned. That seems to be lost on this Rogernomics National Government. If we fast forward from 1989 to now the pendulum has swung the whole way. National is in power. It was Labour obviously that was in power in 1989 when Kiwibank was created. Mr Cosgrove has seen the light and he has realised the value of holding this valuable asset in the hands of the taxpayer and the State. He has brought this very fine bill to the House. We are proud to support it and we challenge other parties to do the same.