Copeland Gordon: Standing Orders—Sessional 
Copeland Gordon: Standing Orders—Sessional 
[Volume:614;Page:10335] 
GORDON COPELAND (United Future) 
: 
 United Future will be supporting the motion that Air New Zealand Limited be a public organisation for the purposes of the Standing Orders. I believe that it was shortly after the bail-out of Air New Zealand following the collapse of its deal with Ansett and the injection of taxpayer funds into the airline to give it ongoing viability—a move that United Future like others strongly applauds because Air New Zealand is such an iconic part of the New Zealand commercial structure and an integral part of our tourism industry—that my colleague the Hon Peter Dunne first raised with the Government the matter of how we now make this organisation accountable in some way to the Parliament of New Zealand. The reality of course is that the airline is now under Government control and therefore Parliament does have responsibility on behalf of the taxpayers to scrutinise and review the stewardship of those funds. As Stephen Franks has mentioned Air New Zealand has a sound board and management. But like any other company it remains accountable to its shareholders who in this case are the people of New Zealand. Being a shareholder carries with it the responsibility of being a proprietor. That includes evaluation of the need for new capital and all the other issues that normally arise at the annual general meeting of a public company. It is very important that shareholders take their proprietorial responsibilities seriously. We have seen a lot of examples in the commercial world in recent times and throughout the corporate sector of many shareholders basically just regarding their share scrip as an investment in an organisation. They wipe their hands of its running and stand back from it sometimes with quite disastrous results. 
Stephen Franks made some interesting observations about the kind of tensions that this new arrangement might well bring to bear but I do not see an alternative for it. It is a step forward from the present situation where this company with its hundreds of millions of taxpayer investment is effectively accountable just to a single person—namely the shareholding Minister Michael Cullen. It is a step forward to say: “No the airline should be accountable to its shareholders who are the taxpayers of New Zealand through Parliament.” I think this is an evolutionary step. Personally I would like to see this thing evolve a lot further. For example we should give thought in due course to whether there is some way we could have a kind of annual general meeting whereby the other shareholders—and of course we have many thousands of private shareholders also in this airline in addition to the taxpayer—could be represented along with perhaps some representatives of this Parliament who would be there to represent the interests of the taxpayer. It is an interesting evolution. It is a new challenge for Parliament to manage through this process as it were or scrutinise through this process a public company that is not just 100 percent taxpayer owned. Continued taxpayer ownership of Air New Zealand will carry with it the obligation for new capital injections as the airline moves forward. For example this Parliament has set aside a further $150 million to go into Air New Zealand in the very near future. In our view that kind of occasion of capital injection certainly deserves parliamentary scrutiny. The short point is that this motion makes sense at this point in time and will have the support of United Future on that basis. 
Motion agreed to.