Mackey Moana: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMackey Moana: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 26 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13798. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]MOANA MACKEY (Labour): Labour will be supporting this Government motion and we will be doing so because as my colleague David Parker said it is one of the few protections that are going to remain to ensure transparency around the operation of what used to be State-owned enterprises power companies—one power company in particular Mighty River Power which used to be wholly owned by the people of New Zealand and has now been partially privatised by a Government running roughshod over public concern and public opposition to asset sales. So although we remain firmly opposed to the asset sales agenda of this Government we do support this motion because it will mean that Mighty River Power would still be able to participate for example in financial reviews and will come under the Standing Orders of this House.But I think this motion really highlights what a complete stuff-up the Government’s asset sales programme has been. The Government seems to be in some kind of blind panic. It has no other plan. It is creating a slush fund that it promised would be forschools and hospitals and which turns out is for any old thing. The Government had spent the money in the Budget before the money had even come in. This is despite the fact that the original prediction for how many billions of dollars would be brought in from the sale of these energy assets has been substantially reduced and reviewed. The reality has been that the money the Government was expecting has not been made and yet it was already budgeted for and spent. That is obviously a concern for this side of the House because we are going to be picking up the Government books in 2014.Once again we are going to have a Labour Government that comes in and sorts out the utter utter economic mess left behind by a National Government completely devoid of any real economic development ideas and completely devoid of any kinds of ideas that are going to grow our economy in a sustainable way and produce real jobs environmentally and economically sustainable jobs. Instead it is just another fire sale of assets that are critical to the economic and environmental well-being of our country.Mighty River Power is a good example of this because it is a world leader in geothermal energy. It is able to take the intellectual property that it owns as a company borne out of many many years of developing geothermal energy options in New Zealand and use that to assist other countries particularly countries that are seismically active. We have seen with the tragedy in Japan what can happen with nuclear power plants in seismically active parts of the world. But where there is seismic activity there is often geothermal activity. Mighty River Power obviously has an enormous amount of potential in that area. That is potential that the taxpayers of New Zealand could have fully benefited from had we kept the company in public ownership and had we kept the dividends that will come from these activities being carried out by Mighty River Power in public hands and in the public coffers held by the Government.We are here doing this because of the rush because of the panic and because of the complete stuff-up in how this asset sales programme has gone ahead. It is a fairly significant oversight by the Government that when it passed legislation and when it was removing Mighty River Power’s status as a State-owned enterprise it forgot to give it the new status of a public organisation. That is a fairly large oversight but it tells you just how rushed these processes have been.We saw that again with the $30 million subsidy that was given toTīwai Point. The Government says that it did that because it was all about protecting jobs. My colleague Clayton Cosgrove then asked whether the Government made keeping jobs or retaining those jobs a requirement of that $30 million. He asked whether the Government had said that in order to get that $30 million the company had to guarantee that the jobs will be retained. No—no the Government just handed over the cheque and said: “There you go. Have a good time. Thank you very much.” [Interruption] Absolutely. I know. It is astounding—$30 million and no guarantee was even asked for.Hon Maryan Street: Just a handout.MOANA MACKEY: Just a handout. The Government did not even say: “Would you please consider keeping these jobs.”There is another side to that argument about the irony of a National Government subsidising jobs which it would always rail against but now seems to think is a great idea. But now we have a handing over of $30 million which is meant to save jobs but will not because there was no guarantee of those jobs being saved.That shows the desperation in this Government to force through this asset sales regime—the utter desperation that it would get in there give a major multinational company $30 million and then not even ask that the basic requirement of keeping people in work be adhered to by the company getting the corporate bailout. That is utterly shameful—utterly shameful—but the Government is so obsessed with firming up Meridian Energy which is the next one off the blocks to be sold off so utterlyobsessed with firming it up for sale that it will do anything absolutely anything. And guess what taxpayers of New Zealand? The Government will spend your money to do it.Now when you ask for your local health services to be retained and to be strengthened if you want your rail line fixed or reopened after a washout or if you want more money for your local school well guess what voters of New Zealand? You are not going to get that. But if you are a multinational company that can help with the asset sales regime here is $30 million—easy as pie. Done. You do not even have to ask twice. That is the kind of corporate cronyism that we have under this National-led Government.One of the reasons why it is so utterly important that we do maintain the ability for scrutiny of these companies at select committees is the concern that Labour has raised over the impact on power prices caused by this privatisation regime of the Government because power prices will go up. They will go up. These are very efficient companies. That is why the Government is selling them off. And when those companies no longer have to consider the social impacts of what they do as they do under the State-Owned Enterprises Act when they are no longer constrained by that and when they have private shareholders who want to get maximum value out of their shares what are they going to do? Well they are going to put up power prices. And can they do it? Of course they can because it is a completely unregulated environment—completely unregulated.So we have the National Government desperately trying to claim that power prices have gone up because of lines charges. Well that is not true. Or it is trying to claim that they have gone up because of Transpower national grid charges. Well that is true but only because the National Government reversed the decision of the former Labour Government which said: “Yes Transpower you have to upgrade the national grid. Our economy depends on it. But guess what? We are going to forgo your dividend to pay for it. So there is no pass-through cost to consumers because you will be able to pay for it out of your dividend.”What did National do? As soon as it was elected—well one it did continue with that asset upgrade programme; that is good. But two it said to Transpower: “Sorry we want a dividend and can you please back pay us for the dividends that you did not pay to the Labour Government.” So that is pushing up power prices. That is the direct result of this National Government.The problem we have is that in the retail market we do not have competition—we do not. The question that I put to the Government—it goes on and on about its What’s My Number campaign and the amount of money it has been putting into that. Well if we have a really competitive market why do we need a What’s My Number campaign? Why do we need a Government campaign to help people find cheaper electricity prices if we have a truly competitive electricity market? The reality is that we do not.I question the effectiveness of the What’s My Number campaign because for the poorest people they are lucky if they can find one power company to pick them up. The idea that they have the choice of electricity providers is utter fantasyland stuff and shows how out of touch this Government is. The other reason that I am sceptical about that programme is that not only do you have to have access to the internet in order to be able to get on there and check it out but a lot of the savings are actually down to early payment discounts not cheaper electricity prices. If you cannot pay your bill at all then an early payment discount is not going to help you.The What’s My Number campaign has not helped the people in this country who are struggling the most to pay power bills. What will help them is Labour’s NZ Power policy which will ensure that we have competition in the retail market. We are not going to be regulating the retail market. What we are going to be doing is ensuring anactual competitive market so that consumers will have choice and so that more players will be able to enter into that market and develop scale because that is what does not happen at the moment. We have a lot of small players. The big four are happy to let them stay there and give the appearance of competition but the moment they got to any scale they would squash them. The moment those companies had so many connections that they would start to have to hedge that is when the generator-retailers really exercise their power over the electricity market.So the kind of reform that the Labour Party has been talking about is the only kind of reform that is going to make a difference to power prices. It has been because of the Government’s asset sales agenda because of the loss of control of those State-owned enterprises that we saw that we had to announce that we were going to be doing this. Now was the time. We have flattening demand we have surplus of supply and we have a power sector that formerly was 75 percent owned by the New Zealand public now being partially privatised losing that transparency and losing that ability to protect consumers in New Zealand. That meant that the time for electricity reform has come and a Labour Government in 2014 will do that. We do support this Government motion but we utterly oppose the premise upon which it is based.