Horan Brendan: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Horan Brendan: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3091. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
BRENDAN HORAN (NZ First) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to utterly oppose this bill. If we look at the definitions of stupidity or at one of them it is doing the same thing over and over again and somehow expecting a different result. 
Hon Simon Bridges 
: That’s what you did on the news every night. 
BRENDAN HORAN 
: As I was saying a perfect example of the definition of stupidity—right over there. You will notice that the speeches coming from members on that side of the House have been utterly unconvincing and entirely dull because they realise that they are flogging a dead horse that this did not work in the 1980s that it did not work in the 1990s and with the benefit of hindsight that it is criminal. 
 This piece of legislation the Mixed Ownership Model Bill removes the social responsibility clause that currently governs State-owned enterprises. This means that mixed-ownership companies will be driven entirely by the pursuit of greater profit margins. There will be a lack of public scrutiny because this piece of legislation removes the provisions for members of the public to access information that they previously had access to such as the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act. A person in a legal sense can also mean any trust or company. There is every possibility that an individual person can indirectly own far more than 10 percent of any mixed-ownership company as all they need to do is set up a few trusts. 
This Government has spoken about having a mandate by the people of New Zealand. We constantly hear those members in the House saying that 1 million people voted for them. Well what about the 3 million who did not? I understand that those members on that side of the House have a little bit of difficulty with simple mathematics but they should understand that 3 million is greater than 1 million. I ask where the fiscal responsibility is because we hear them speaking about fiscal responsibility. It is quite an interesting perception is it not? Here we have a National Government that got in 4 years ago and Mr Ryall told us tonight that there was an $8 billion deficit. Somehow these financial geniuses have turned it into a $64 billion deficit. How about that? How does that work? Can you get that maths right there? And it was approximately $17 billion in the past year. I ask if they get $6 billion for these assets which is the figure they have been touting what are they going to do with it? How is it suddenly going to solve the economic problems we have? There is only so much you can blame on the Labour Party and on the economic mess that is happening all over the world today and in Greece. You can try blaming Finland again but that did not work for you. 
When we take a look at these companies and if we consider say Genesis I ask who the chairperson of Genesis is. I googled it—I did not really need to google it but for the benefit of some members I did—and there we see a lady. I saw her a few weeks ago actually over at the Bolton Hotel when John Banks was in trouble and I wondered is that who I think it is? It looks like a cross between a cougar and a dinosaur and I thought “There’s a cougar-saurus!”. But no it was not. Then I found out that this person is also the chairperson of the Financial Services Council of New Zealand and I thought: “We’ve heard from that person today.” Then when I scrolled down it said: “Independent executive director of the China Construction Bank” and I am thinking is there possibly a conflict of interest here? Is there a conflict of interest? I ask whether this is the same person who is getting $1200 a day for the rebuild of Christchurch because I would have thought that that alone would have been a 40-hour-a-week job. But no there seems to be no limits to which this Government will stoop to look after its mates.