Cunliffe David: State-Owned Enterprises and Crown Entities (Protecting New Zealand’s Strategic Assets) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Cunliffe David: State-Owned Enterprises and Crown Entities (Protecting New Zealand’s Strategic Assets) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 29 August 2012. Volume:683;Page:4891. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
: 
 The member opposite Todd McClay had the opportunity to make a reasoned defence of National’s plans to embark on future asset sales but chose not to. I think he has demeaned his party and himself in advancing arguments as spurious as those that he has just done. To launch into an ad hominem attack on my colleague Clayton Cosgrove on the basis of his seat rather than addressing the issues at hand is not worthy of the highest standards of this House. 
He said in one sentence that this bill the State-Owned Enterprises and Crown Entities (Protecting New Zealand’s Strategic Assets) Amendment Bill was unworkable but then provided absolutely not one shred of evidence or argument to say why. Actually the bill is very simple it is very clear and it only takes the Government at its word by entrenching future assets into a 75 percent threshold thereby requiring a broad range of the representatives of New Zealanders to assent before what is the common heritage of all New Zealanders is sold. If we had that kind of requirement the truth is we would have a better informed debate. We would move more carefully through the issues that this Government has run headlong into—things as important and as basic as the Treaty rights debates around water issues. One would have thought the Government would have asked itself before it committed to this sale. The truth is it could not paddle a canoe down the Waikato River to save itself. It could not organise a party in a brewery this lot. It is shameful that it is not prepared— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: Keep the analogies going. 
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE 
: We will not go into any ad hominem arguments which so obviously tempt the member sitting just behind me and to my right. 
The argument was raised that the previous Labour Government sold some assets. You know that is factually correct. The problem with that for the Government today is that we learnt from that experience. The difference between a fool and a wise man is that only a fool repeats the same mistakes twice. We have learnt from it. We know that the privatisation of Telecom which both parties worked on was done with an insufficient regulatory framework. We fixed it and we learnt from that. But the Telecom sale did actually include an entrenched Kiwi share obligation now known as the Telecom share obligation which includes restrictions on foreign ownership and provides protections to New Zealand consumers. It was not done with no forethought; it is just that those protections were not strong enough. In my view that privatisation should not have proceeded at all on that basis. 
You know the member then said that there was nothing about gang members and there was nothing about DPB mums. What he was really saying was it is a bill without dog whistles. Well New Zealanders are sick to the back teeth of being dog whistled at while they are on the dole queue. They want to feed their families they want decent jobs and they want a home to live in and the well-heeled members opposite who are troughing in their own tax cuts might laugh but New Zealanders are very concerned about those issues. 
New Zealanders do not want dog whistles; they want solutions. A solution is not selling off the family silver to make up the deficits of today because the Government is devoid of real ideas to grow the pie to build high-value manufacturing and to build a high performance economy. Those so-called stewards of the public interest have come up short—they have come up short. A few chips short of a Happy Meal as the kids would say—a few ideas short of a strategy. Privatisation of existing assets to simply transfer the value to a foreign owner is not a strategy. If it is such a good strategy we say to the Government to have the courage of its convictions and give us a 75 percent threshold.