Brownlee Gerry: Television New Zealand Bill — In Committee 
Brownlee Gerry: Television New Zealand Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:606;Page:3803] 
GERRY BROWNLEE (NZ National—Ilam) 
: 
 I have a number of questions for the Minister. 
Hon Murray McCully 
: Good luck! 
GERRY BROWNLEE 
: My colleague wishes me good luck; I guess it is the record of this Government that it simply does not answer questions. If one answers a question there is a chance that one’s life of blameless excellence may be brought into question or further that one will get off side with the Prime Minister for not answering the question appropriately. I suspect that the current Minister is particularly sensitive to any criticism that might come from the Prime Minister or from others in the Labour caucus.  
I now come back to the bill. I want to talk about clause 26 and in particular 26(a) of the bill. I am told that there is a Supplementary Order Paper here that amends that clause so I will fish through and find that particular clause. Clause 26 refers to the duties that are put upon Television New Zealand when it comes to reporting. The statement that I am particularly concerned about—and the Minister may be able to indicate that it has been dealt with and changed—is clause 26(a) of the bill which states: “TVNZG’s statement of intent must include a statement of the methods to be used and the principles to be taken into account to ensure that in the event that the functions or objectives of the TVNZG subsidiaries are or may be in conflict or competition it will give those functions or objectives the appropriate weight:”. What does that mean? If the officials concerned with the presentation of this bill have decided that that paragraph should come out and be replaced I would be very pleased.  
But there is a new clause 26 in Supplementary Order Paper 57 headed “Additional information requirements for statement of intent” which is exactly the same heading but which states “(1) In addition to the information required to be contained in the statement of intent under section 41D of the Public Finance Act 1989 TVNZ’s statement of intent must include the following information: (a) its functions;”—putting its functions is certainly a wise thing—“and (b) qualitative and quantitative performance measures for measuring performance against its Charter;”. The Minister needs to explain to the Committee exactly what that means. If we let a bill go through this House without a clear understanding of its intent we leave a whole lot of subjective judgments without much direction to those who will be required to run the organisation.  
Paragraph (c) of clause 26(1) goes on to state: “a statement of how it will involve the public in measuring performance against its Charter.” I would have thought that the public involvement is measured every day or night or every hour that the broadcaster is on air. If people are turning their sets on to that channel that is a vote of confidence. If they are switching off then surely it is not. I would be very very keen to hear from the Minister exactly what those particular requirements are.  
Clause 26(3) is the simple statement: “From the commencement of this Act to 30 June 2003”—getting this bill through by 30 June of this year might be optimistic—“TVNZ must continue to operate under its statement of corporate intent.” From the commencement of this legislation it must continue to operate under its statement of corporate intent so I would like the Minister to give us an assurance that there is no conflict between the statement of corporate intent and the requirements of the charter. Here we have a State asset with a current value that is something short of $400 million which was obviously once much more valuable. TVNZ was worth anything up to $1 billion but under this Government its shareholder equity and value has been falling on a regular basis. We need to know that this charter will not get in the road of the statement of corporate intent which was delivered to MPs offices today—late in the piece as usual and well after we started discussing the bill—and that the commercial aspect of the statement of corporate intent will not be overridden by the requirements of the charter.  
I ask the Minister again to stand up and tell us what he thinks “qualitative and quantitative performance measures for measuring performance against its Charter” actually means. Is it simply an indication that there has to be a formula somewhere?