Shirley Ken: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Shirley Ken: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
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Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT NZ) 
: 
 We expect in the debate following the Prime Minister’s statement that Ministers particularly senior Ministers will talk about a programme and a strategy. That is the purpose of the Prime Minister’s statement at the commencement of each year. What did we hear from the Minister of Energy who has just left the Chamber? Not a whisper not a murmur. He did not talk about the energy crisis that is looming in this country. We know that the Maui field is to be exhausted earlier than we previously thought. How many members realise what happened to the spot electricity price just a few weeks back? It went from the normal 6c per kilowatt hour to $93 per kilowatt hour. Whole industries in New Zealand like Kinleith and Kawerau the basis of our economy were forced to close down.  
I predict here and now that by mid-winter this year New Zealand will be deep in an energy crisis. That Minister who had the opportunity at the start of this Parliament to talk about energy which he is responsible for did not mention one word about the looming crisis. Why? Because he is doing absolutely nothing. He is sitting on his hands dragging his feet and refusing to address the key issues confronting the energy sector.  
It is well known that the ACT party had serious misgivings about National’s electricity reforms. We believe that Max Bradford and the National Party got it wrong. We strongly believe in the market but the model and the path that they went down was not the optimal one. But this Government has compounded those problems. This Government has nationalised the industry and we now have monopolies with State-owned enterprises on a regional basis. And those State-owned “gentailers”—because they control the generation and the retail they are called “gentailers”—are price gouging. They are playing the market and taking opportunities on the crisis that we have to extort our major key industries.  
Minister Pete Hodgkin is doing nothing about that. He is happy to see State monopolies because that is his philosophy. Labour members love State monopolies and all those profits are now pouring into their coffers so they can throw them away on all sorts of spurious Government spending. They should be addressing the basic infrastructure of energy that is the key to the success of this country and they are failing to do so.  
I turn to the issue of Iraq because again ACT is the only party that is clearly saying we should be standing beside our traditional allies Australia the United Kingdom and the United States. Increasingly the nations of Europe are coming in behind that coalition of the willing—Spain Portugal Denmark Italy. There are seven others in total apart from the UK. The only key exceptions are France and Germany.  
Let us look at the German situation. Germany under Gerhard Schroeder is in chaos. It is heading for economic ruin in a very unstable coalition Government with the Greens. Gerhard Schroeder campaigned in the last election late last year that even if the UN passed another resolution Germany would not support armed intervention in Iraq. Why? He was competing with the Greens. He was trying to outdo the Greens. Who is the Foreign Minister of Germany? It is Fischer who is a Green. So it is pretty clear where they are coming from.  
While on the one hand the Greens of the world say that they champion the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to stop the horizontal and vertical spread of nuclear weapons together with all weapons of mass destruction when it comes to doing something about it and taking action against rogue States those Greens are not prepared to do a thing—other than to go off and be human shields. We have the co-leader of the Greens Rod Donald wearing his badge here in Parliament but he is not prepared to stand up and enforce the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. They love the treaty but when it is flouted by rogue States like North Korea and Iraq they will do nothing about it. 
ROD DONALD (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 I thank Ken Shirley for the free advertisement and I have some more good news for the House as well. Let us face it; it is time we had some on a day when petrol prices continue to climb because of bully-boy Bush’s threatening behaviour dairy farmers are losing another 10c a kilo on top of the $1.60 drop from last year’s high with all the consequences that will have for the economy and manufacturers are starting to shed jobs—50 alone at G L Bowron and Co. Ltd in Christchurch today—because of our overvalued dollar. The good news is that the quickest way to restore New Zealand’s dollar to a comfortable level would be for the Government to adopt the Green Party’s economic policies. Members do not have to believe me; that is what Minister of Finance Dr Michael Cullen said yesterday at the Finance and Expenditure Committee meeting. He was not serious but I took his comment as a compliment. That is because the Green Party’s economic strategy is focused on sustainability self-reliance and social justice. We are not interested in pursuing the policies of the current or previous Governments that have caused growing income inequality the squandering of natural resources and subservience to corporate globalisation.  
Dr Cullen in his speech yesterday dismissed the Greens as a “loony tunes” party but whose policies are really the loony ones? What sane sensible person would throw more than a billion dollars at the overseas sharemarket at a time of major volatility? We warned the Government but it went ahead anyway losing over $200 million of public servants’ retirement savings in the process and severely reducing the income of the Government Superannuation Fund. Apparently the Government still wants to do the same thing with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. If Dr Cullen had put his first $600 million on the Dow-Jones index and the FTSE 100 index in July 2001 it would now be worth $326 million. No one can convince me that that is a smart way to save for retirement.  
What about the Singapore trade agreement? That is something else the Government trumpeted. New Zealand’s trade deficit with Singapore jumped from $24 million before the deal was signed to $220 million in the first year. Last year it was a further $207 million. If members think that is bad they should try China. Thanks to successive Governments reducing tariffs on clothing footwear and textiles not only have thousands of jobs been destroyed in New Zealand but our trade deficit with China has ballooned to over $1.16 billion. If we put it all together we have a sorry saga of trade deficits for 7 out of the last 8 years. The $2.3 billion downturn in the last 2 years will be small beer compared with the impact of the high Kiwi dollar when it really kicks in. The only saving grace is that the sell-off of New Zealand’s land and businesses to foreigners may slow down but a slice of heaven in Aotearoa is still cheap—still very cheap. What is more the Government’s determination to flog us off overseas highlighted by this week’s so-called investment regatta is all designed to encourage even more wealthy foreigners to turn our productive farms our unique coastlines and our offshore islands into safe South Pacific hideaways. Well we have an answer to that problem. We should ban outright the sale of New Zealand land to foreign-based individuals and corporations.  
I will be putting a bill in the members’ ballot to do exactly that but I fear that I may be too late. One of the demands the Government has received under the current GATT round at the World Trade Organization is for the Overseas Investment Commission to be scrapped. In other words the few protections that we have are under threat.  
That is not all that is under threat. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is all about letting corporate capitalists get their hands on public services. The Government claims that it is not about to trade away the protections currently in place but how can we believe it when it has asked other countries to do exactly what it says it will not do itself? And how will we know what the Government is planning to offer at the World Trade Organization when it will not make it public let alone give Parliament the opportunity to debate it?  
Yesterday the Minster of Finance was asked to tackle the problem of child poverty. Despite 30 percent of New Zealand’s children living below the poverty line despite the Government running substantial surpluses and despite Dr Cullen planning to put aside $2 billion a year for our retirement he refused to respond positively to the calls from organisations such as the National Council of Women of New Zealand Presbyterian Support Services the Downtown Community Ministry (Wellington) Barnardos New Zealand Child Poverty Action Group and the United Nations Children’s Fund to invest in our young people. When I asked those groups whether they thought an operating surplus was real when there is still child poverty in New Zealand they all said “No”.