Mackey Moana: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Mackey Moana: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:665;Page:12711] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 Labour is taking a call on Vote State-Owned Enterprises lest the Minister for State Owned Enterprises feel the need to stand up and give us chapters 4 and 5 of his autobiography which I am sure he may do anyway. 
It has to be said: I do not think there is any other area of this Government’s plan where there have been more U-turns more tyre-kicking and more running of the flag up and down the flagpole than in the area of State-owned enterprises. 
We would like to hear from this Minister whether asset sales are part of National’s long-term plan for this country. Are they part of the long-term plan for this country? The day after the Budget the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance Bill English floated the idea of the privatisation of Kiwibank—the day after the Budget. This is the man who wrote the Budget. This is the man who we would assume knows a little bit about what is going on in terms of revenue for the Government’s future plans. We are expected to believe that the day after the Budget the Minister of Finance mistakenly floated the idea of the privatisation of Kiwibank. Well I think New Zealanders know differently and they know differently from experience. 
The National Government would desperately love to privatise State-owned enterprises but it cannot do that because New Zealanders do not want it to sell our silver to overseas interests. It has happened before and we did not become any wealthier because we had lost control of assets in New Zealand. In fact the reality was far from it. But National has had to swallow that dead rat and as a TV3 poll said 80 percent of New Zealanders are opposed to asset sales—80 percent. The Minister of Energy and Resources based his entire mining policy on a TV3 poll—his entire mining policy on a TV3 poll. So National knows that 80 percent of New Zealanders are opposed to asset sales. Interestingly enough 53 percent of New Zealanders do not believe the Prime Minister when he says that he will never sell assets. They do not believe him. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: That’s just the back bench. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: And that is just the back bench of the National Party. 
Hon David Parker 
: And never in their first term. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right I tell Mr Parker thank you. Fifty-three percent do not believe that because they know that National is fundamentally opposed to the State owning assets. So we would like to hear from the Minister why National has now backed away from the policy that it has always held which is privatisation either wholly or partially of those assets. Is the Minister for State Owned Enterprises admitting that his party was wrong in the past? Is he now admitting that the privatisation of those assets in the past did not work and was wrong? No? They rub their chins and do not say anything. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: David Carter sold Contact Energy. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well David Carter did sell Contact Energy. I want to talk a little bit about Kiwibank because Kiwibank is an asset that New Zealanders are extremely proud of. It is an asset that Jim Anderton and the Alliance Party had as a policy in Labour’s first term in Government. Labour is very proud of the work that Kiwibank has been doing. New Zealanders do not feel that the Australian-run banks have been working in their best interests. They know that interest rate cuts have not been passed on in the way that they have been in Australia. New Zealanders very much value the work that Kiwibank does and I believe they would like to see Kiwibank able to do more in New Zealand and work for New Zealanders. But what did Bill English say? The Minister of Finance advocated the sale of Kiwibank because he said that would be good for mum and dad investors in New Zealand. Well I have a newsflash for Bill English: mums and dads in New Zealand already own Kiwibank— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: All of them. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —all of them. The sale of Kiwibank would be a prime example of Tory charity: Tories take something people already own and sell it back to them. But we know that it will not be sold back to them because it will be lost overseas like so many other assets. 
I imagine there are a number of National Party donors out there who are already lining themselves up to purchase these very profitable very well-run State-owned enterprises. They know that Bill English has got himself into trouble because he has introduced unaffordable tax cuts and has to pay for them somehow. He does not care about the long-term interests of the New Zealand economy; he has no plan for the long-term interests of New Zealand’s economy. He just needs to get himself out of a hole because he has introduced tax cuts 25 percent of which have gone to the top-earning 5 percent of New Zealanders—$4 billion to the top-earning 5 percent of New Zealanders—and he has to pay for those tax cuts. Hocking off New Zealand’s family silver in the form of State-owned enterprises would be a very easy short-term way of doing that. 
Of course long term it would do nothing for the New Zealand economy; long term it would be detrimental. In the part of the country I live in we suffered enormously because of the earlier loss of our rail line. We are desperately trying to keep it open but the National Government wants to turn it into a cycleway! Clearly none of those members have ever been to that part of the country and seen it because it would probably be the most treacherous cycleway—over the Mohaka Viaduct—that there is anywhere. It would be true adventure tourism. We sincerely hope the Government will keep that rail line open because we fought long and hard to get it back. 
The previous Labour Government did that. It invested money into getting rail up to speed. We want to see more traffic on that rail line and off our roads. We would not have had to do that of course if it had not been hocked off at bargain basement prices in the first place but that was the position that we ended up in. We can look at the example of Air New Zealand and of many of our State-owned enterprises—the list goes on and on. 
New Zealanders want to know and the Opposition wants to know what the Government’s plan is for State-owned enterprises and what role the Government sees them playing over the next financial year and the years beyond that. Because so far as I said before all we have seen are flip-flops and U-turns and all we have heard are grand statements and then hurried back-downs as the public has its say on how it feels about the sale of State assets. The Prime Minister John Key is on record many many times saying that his Government will never ever sell State-owned enterprises or State assets—never ever. To me “never ever” means that at no point while John Key is leader of the National Party will the sale of State assets ever be considered. But then he said that it just meant that the National Government would not sell them in its first term. That raises the question for the Minister for State Owned Enterprises of which one of those two statements is right because both of them cannot be correct. Will National never ever sell State assets or will it just not sell them in its first term? The Minister and the Prime Minister like to say that they will go into an election campaign with a mandate on this issue. Well they did not go into an election campaign with a mandate on raising GST. 
Chris Tremain 
: No no no. We will go into an election campaign asking voters to vote on it or not— 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Right. I ask Mr Tremain whether he— 
Chris Tremain 
: —to get a mandate from the electorate. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: OK. Then I ask Mr Tremain whether National told voters about its plan to raise GST. Oh no! That is exactly right and this is why the Government cannot be trusted. It is all very well to talk about having a mandate and putting it to voters at an election—in fact that is what should happen—but this Government does not have a record of doing that. It never went to the public about mining in national parks—never—but it was talking to the mining companies about it. It never went to the public about increasing GST yet come 1 October we will have an increase in GST. 
This Prime Minister said that National would make sure it told New Zealanders during an election campaign if it was going to sell State assets so that they would have the opportunity to vote on that issue. If they feel strongly about it they could vote against National; if they did not feel strongly about it they could vote on other issues. But the Government has no credibility because it has not done that on other key policies that are of extreme importance to New Zealanders such as the protection of our environment and how they pay their family bills every single week. 
I ask the Minister to stand up again and tell us which one of the Prime Minister’s statements are correct—that National will never ever sell State assets or that it just will not do that in its first term. I ask him to give us a guarantee that if part of National’s long-term plan for New Zealand is to sell State assets it will admit to it during an election campaign. I also ask that National tells us who has been donating to it in that election campaign and does not funnel donations through a trust so that New Zealanders cannot see who is funding National. Those questions are important when it comes to this debate on State-owned enterprises because New Zealanders have been here before and it was a disaster. The Labour Government inherited an incredible infrastructure deficit which took us 9 years— 
Chris Tremain 
: And who sold the most State-owned enterprises? You guys did. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Yes me—right! I tell Mr Tremain I was at primary school during the fourth Labour Government. 
Chris Tremain 
: The Labour Party—oh don’t take any account of that. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: So Mr Tremain thinks that the 1990s National Government did nothing to sell assets. Mr Tremain might want to go out and explain to his constituents why their electricity costs so much. 
Chris Tremain 
: Who sold the BNZ? Oh the Labour Party. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Chris Tremain does not even know what he is talking about. He just said that Labour sold BNZ. It was actually the National Government that sold BNZ I tell Mr Tremain. He might want to withdraw that statement because it is not correct. But the fact is that during the 9 years of the previous Labour Government we had to address an enormous infrastructure deficit—an enormous infrastructure deficit. It cost us billions of dollars—billions of dollars—but we did it because it was the right thing to do for New Zealand’s economy. 
Vote agreed to.