Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Williamson Maurice: Land Transport Management Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Sitting date: 01 July 2008. Volume:648;Page:17039. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I think it is important to make clear to those who are listening to the House today just exactly what sort of a position this House has got itself into. When we look at the Government orders of the day the business before the House we see that order of the day No. 1 is the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. So people who were expecting the House to move on to that straight after question time will be surprised to hear that we are having a debate that does not seem related to that legislation at all. That is because Dr Cullen tried to seek leave to stick a very shabby little Supplementary Order Paper a one-pager in as part of that bill. He thought he could just come down here get the leave of the House and stick in something that as my colleague Gerry Brownlee says is not even slightly related to the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill. Actually as Gerry Brownlee also said Dr Cullen was exceedingly lucky that that bill was on the Order Paper at all because the next one down was the Organised Crime (Penalties and Sentencing) Bill the next one was the Judicial Matters Bill and the one after that the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill. It could have been that the Toll workers got their superannuation protected through the Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Amendment Bill with a Toll Supplementary Order Paper attached to it. 
I want to go back and check some of the history of this. I can tell the House that I was around then; I was a member of Cabinet at the time of the sale of New Zealand Rail back in 1993. I was part of the Cabinet that did it. But I want to ask some questions first of all. 
Sue Moroney 
: Disgraceful! 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: “Disgraceful!” says Sue Moroney. That is really interesting. Let me ask Labour a couple of questions. Did Labour vote for the bill that sold New Zealand Rail? There is a good question. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Did they? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: I know the answer. Let me just check this because Sue Moroney said that it was disgraceful. Did Labour vote for the bill that privatised New Zealand Rail? I cannot hear any answers. I will ask the question a third time. Sue Moroney must know. If what went on back in 1993 when we sold New Zealand Rail for $370 million was so disgraceful I assume that Labour voted against it. Is that right? I ask Sue Moroney whether Labour voted against the legislation. She has to help me with this one. You see Labour will not answer the first of the hard questions because it actually voted for the legislation; it voted for the sale of the railway line. 
Now we come to something more interesting. Rodney Hide made a great point and members should listen to how this works. The Government sold New Zealand Rail for $370 million and I remember the issue about the workers their superannuation and their entitlements. It was a major issue. What is the name of the railway workers’ union? I cannot remember what the acronym is. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: EPMU. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: No it is not EPMU. It is the maritime and rail something. 
Hon Mark Gosche 
: The Rail and Maritime Transport Union. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: The Rail and Maritime Transport Union. I can remember that the union that represented the workers was very very vociferous at the time. I am interested to note that it has not been heard on this issue. I have not heard the union saying anything on the issue this time. But at the time it said that this would be an outrage to its workers because they would be sold into private hands and would have all those long-service Government superannuation entitlements. We thought that the union was right and we thought that the point was exactly fair and stuff was put into the legislation to protect those workers—as it should have been. That was 15 years ago at the time of privatisation. 
Let me go through Rodney Hide’s reasoning today because I thought this was a cracker. We sold New Zealand Rail for $370 million—that is what the owners bought it for. Then we hear from Winston Peters and Labour that the private sector then took this asset and ran it into the ground. The private sector asset-stripped it and ran it into the ground. So the private sector bought it for $370 million then took everything out and ran this thing into being almost a shadow of its former self until it was almost of no value at all. Does that not beg the question of why one would then buy it back for close to $1 billion? It has been bought for $690 million plus there is $120 million of debt so that comes to $810 million plus there are some other payments to take account of. 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Commercial leases. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Yes the commercial leases and so on—it is the thick end. Let us go with $900 million. But let me go through the logic of New Zealand First again. We sold it for $370 million and the private sector then asset-stripped it tore it to shreds and made it worth nothing. And the Government is buying it back for $900 million! 
Gerry Brownlee 
: Without the trucking company. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: That is right. Gerry Brownlee reminds me that the actual jewel in the crown of the business—in fact the only part of it that is really profitable and a great little bit—is the trucking operation. 
Chris Auchinvole 
: Who got that? 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Well Toll has kept that. We have been done over a few times by the Aussies with the underarm bowling incident and the single aviation market. But we have never been done over by the Aussies like this—they must be back at the headquarters right now in fits of laughter. The question I would like to ask Labour is why this needed to happen at all. Would the railways have just gone away if the Government had not bought it? Would Toll have just said that that was it that it could not keep doing it and that it would give up? 
Gerry Brownlee 
: We’ll pack it up. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: We will pack it up. Well it might have taken its train set but it would have been quite a good idea to let it do that. It could have bought some new trains in at a better price and not paid all the legacy costs surrounding it. So that question really needs to be asked. One could have started “Rail Two” or whatever one wants to call it almost straight away once the Aussies had walked off in a fit of pique. But no this Government decided to pay top dollar—actually when one takes the trucking operation out of it and everything else it is more than top dollar. The one thing that Labour keeps crowing about almost as a sort of mantra is that it is the party of the workers. If Labour were the party of the workers it would have been talking to the people from the Rail and Maritime Transport Union and telling them not to worry because it would look after their workers. Labour would have told them that when the deal was done it would make sure that all the entitlements privileges and all the stuff that they carry from history would be protected. 
Suddenly we get to the day after the deal is done—it was done yesterday 30 June and agreed to as of midnight last night. The big announcement occurs this morning and suddenly it is a case of “Oh dear!”. Labour voted for the sale to privatise the railways it openly admitted that an asset worth $370 million had been run into the ground and then it bought it back for $900 million. And that was without the trucking operation which was basically everything that was of value in the operation. Suddenly the people whom Labour supposedly represented the workers missed out altogether. 
I say to the House—and my colleagues Bill English and Gerry Brownlee have made this clear—that we will not stop this; we will not vote against Supplementary Order Paper 211 even though attaching it to a bill like the Land Transport Management Amendment Bill will have people in the future sitting and scratching their heads. People who are looking at legislation in the future will ask what on earth was going on on that day that somehow an instruction to the Committee in respect of a Supplementary Order Paper had to be moved because it was not accepted by leave it did not comply with any Standing Order in terms of being within the spirit of the original bill. People will ask how that happened. 
Hopefully historians will say that the reason was simple: Labour in spite of all of its massive dealings in the media and all of the coverage that Michael Cullen received about what a wonderful idea it was to be buying back the rail operation had not thought for one minute about the workers at Toll who would be coming into the State sector. It is really important that members of the public and members of the railway union understand that when the National Government privatised the railway back in 1993 it made sure that those privileges protections rights and historic coverage of all of the Government superannuation were covered and protected when it moved to the new entity. Not so the Labour Government: in its race to buy an asset that was not worth even half of what it paid for it it could have told Toll Holdings that it would give it $370 million which is basically what was originally paid for it—take it or leave it. I can tell members that Toll would have taken whatever price was going. 
The whole sale process is best summarised by one of the best cartoons I have ever seen in the  
New Zealand Herald.  
It is a split cartoon—on one side is the Phoenix Mars Lander and on the other side is a railway train off the tracks facing side on with its wheels fallen off. On the left-hand side we have what the National Aeronautics and Space Administration got for $430 million for the Mars Lander and over on the right-hand side we have what Dr Cullen got for $690 million. 
This is a very symptomatic shoddy little piece of legislation that shows that Labour thought nothing about workers; and I am surprised at the union: next time I see the Rail and Maritime Transport Union before our select committee I will be asking its members why they were so vocal at the time when National was looking to privatise but why we did not hear anything from them in the media about why the Government was not taking count of their privileges their rights and their protections. It is just a little too late a little too little and very disingenuous.