Williams Andrew: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWilliams Andrew: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 22 July 2014. Volume:700;Page:19277. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]ANDREW WILLIAMS (NZ First):I take a call on behalf of New Zealand First in this Genesis Energy debate. Has any other country had to endure the sort of madness that National has imposed on our electricity system? No. This National Government has taken ideological fixation and fantasy to new heights. Nothing has been learnt from the past. Nothing has been remembered from the mistakes of the 1980s and the 1990s. Not content with Max Bradford’s theory-driven mess the National Government has spent the last 3 years selling State power assets to enrich their pals and their mates. Now we have ended up with a Byzantine structure that is baffling and wholly without logic.The State asset sales programme is entirely consistent with National’s agenda. That agenda is to use every opportunity to transfer wealth from the many—the general public of New Zealand—to the few; namely National’s friends mates and cronies of the party. Feathering the nests of the few—that is the National way. It is an outrageous theft of the common wealth into the hands of the speculator and assorted wheeler-dealers. In the case of one of the State-owned enterprise power generation companies nearly 10 percent of the shares went to a New York bank. That is hardly “moms and pops” New Zealanders when nearly 10 percent of shares went to a New York bank. I wonder how close that New York bank was to Mr Key who himself was a former New York banker. So it is very very suspicious indeed that suddenly a New York bank pops up out of nowhere to buy into our power companies.There was overwhelming public opposition to the selling-up of 49 percent of Meridian Energy Mighty River Power and Genesis Power. The public well understood that these assets built up by generations of Kiwis were not for the Government to sell. The public were not fooled by all the ideological waffle that National and an army of paid lobbyists who were paid over $100 million and media hacks churned out. These were assets owned by all New Zealanders by not just the select few—not just the 2.5 percent who ended up buying the shares—but all New Zealanders. These were assets built up by two or three generations. My parents my grandparents my great-grandparents and your great-grandparents built up those assets across the length and breadth of New Zealand—the likes of the dams on the Waikato River the likes of the hydro schemes in the South Island the likes of the thermal plants that we have in the central North Island. These were built up over many generations.There are some of us who can remember when New Zealand had a generating and electricity system that was the envy of the world. There was a time when the electricity system was a public utility that we were proud of. It was run for the benefit of all. A little bit like water a little bit like air power and gas are a basic staple requirement that we all require and that we all must have.We took advantage of hydro power to have some of the lowest power prices in the world. National in its inimitable genius threw all that away. In its incompetence and greed it cast aside a system that the rest of the world could only envy. No New Zealand’s electricity system had to be stuffed up well and truly just to favour the few. Among those few—those happy few—are the chief executive officers of those energy companies. At the top there are executives receiving huge salaries of $1 million - plus. At the other end of the scale Kiwis are struggling to pay soaring power and electricity prices.On Sunday the Sunday Star-Times did a public service by revealing what the chief executives of five of our biggest energy companies earn. The chief executive officers’ mega pay cheques are as follows: Contact Energy $1.58 million to the chief executive officer; Genesis $1.35 million—and that was an increase of 12 percent in salary in the last 12 months—Mighty River Power $1.3 million; Transpower $1.22 million; and Meridian $1 million. These are all million-dollar salaries to pay for these executives to run our power companies which have been there for decades and decades in most cases and which have been the staple backbone of this economy.As the asset sales programme has shown National’s shameless manipulation has no bounds. The public are entitled to ask who actually benefited from the asset sales programme which brought in some $4.5 billion when the Government was promising $6 billion to $7 billion. Clearly it is not electricity consumers or taxpayers. Pity the poor electricity consumers or taxpayers. They have been coshed by the asset sales programme. They have been well and truly mugged. Kiwis will be paying the prices of National’s asset sales folly for generations. What a legacy of failure National will leave when it is given its marching orders in September. When we look back on it and ask who sold off those assets that were built up by the previous generation it was a small group of people—a small tight five of Cabinet Ministers who controlled everything in those days around the years 2008 to 2014. They controlled it and they sold off the silverware. They sold off the silverware and it was gone.New Zealand First is the only political party that has said unequivocally that if we are in a position of influence in the next Government we will buy back the shares of those power-generating companies at a price that is no more than that initially paid for them. I repeat: under New Zealand First we will buy back the shares at a price that is no more than that initially paid for them. We will then merge those State-owned power-generating companies into one single energy entity. That one single energy entity will then ensure there is security of supply there is forward planning and it is strategically developed so that all modes of power and gas generation are explored and all sustainable renewable energy sources are also explored across the length and breadth of this country. That wholesale generating company will then supply to the retail market at consistent reliable affordable prices for the people of New Zealand. That is common sense. That is what New Zealanders expect. That is what under New Zealand First we will provide.We will also under New Zealand First provide a power and gas discount during the winter months—from May to September—for those with a SuperGold card. It is very important that our seniors our elderly—those who require us to ensure that they are comfortable in their homes over some of the bitter winters that we are experiencing—can afford to turn the heater on or turn the gas heater on. It is critical that people should not be suffering in their senior years because they cannot afford to stay warm. New Zealand First will ensure that a discount is put in place from the State-owned enterprise that we will be forming to ensure that those people can again have dignity in their old age in their homes. Again that is a policy that is common sense. It is common sense that we must explore in the future to ensure that the people of this country are taken care of.So in closing can I just say that New Zealand First does not support this motion. This is again a transfer and it endorses the whole situation that National is pushing time and time again. It is just backing up a situation where the wealthy in this country continue to get wealthier and the regular everyday New Zealanders—the middle-income New Zealanders the lower-income New Zealanders the hard-working families in this country—suffer. We will not allow them to suffer. New Zealand First will ensure that we do something about it. It is common sense.