Genter Julie Anne: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 06 March 2014. Volume:696;Page:16425. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I am rising to speak on this Government motion No. 1 today because the National Government has insisted on privatising our State-owned energy companies including selling 49 percent of Meridian Energy at an extremely poor time to be selling electricity assets. John Key persisted with the asset sales despite the fact that they were very unpopular with New Zealanders who voted 2:1 against the partial privatisation in a citizens initiated referendum last year. John Key has persisted in the asset sales even though they do not make economic sense. Even theDominion Post—not exactly known as a progressive publication—has described the asset sales as bordering on “economic vandalism”.The asset sales including the partial privatisation of Meridian Energy have cost over half a billion dollars to date once we include the partial sale of Genesis that the Government has announced. The Government’s excuse for the privatisation and sale of49 percent of Meridian Energy was that it was going to help us pay down debt. We know that that is not true. Treasury’s own numbers show that the partial sale of our State-owned energy companies is actually costing us money. It is actually costing us quite a good deal of money—half a billion dollars. It is actually worsening the Crown’s fiscal position because the returns that these companies were earning were higher than the cost of borrowing. So it is not actually paying down debt. If anything we have seen numbers that show that the fact that the Government has sold some of these highly productive assets is actually going to reduce its surplus in several years’ time.We also know that the National Government actually created its own hole in the Budget by giving away tax cuts to the top 10 percent of income earners. These tax cuts to the top 10 percent of income earners are going to have cost us more by the election this year than we will have earned by selling off our productive energy companies. So the total revenue from the asset sales thus far is less than $4 billion yet the tax cuts will have cost us more than $4 billion by the election this year. The National Government is quite keen to sign us up for new debt in the shape of sneaky public-private partnerships for motorways that have extremely poor business cases like thePūhoi to Warkworth motorway and Transmission Gully.Why would the National Government go ahead with this partial privatisation—the sale of our productive publicly owned energy companies including 49 percent of Meridian Energy—if it does not make economic sense? The answer is that it benefits the Government’s mates and that there is a bit of political ideology going on here. Earlier today the Minister of Finance said that the Government simply was not a good 100 percent owner of State-owned energy companies. Well clearly there is a little bit of that ideology against public ownership that is going on here with the National Party but also it was really about its mates the top 2 percent who had piles of cash sitting around and were able to buy up these assets at a really good price. The taxpayer got a bit short-changed in the sale of Meridian Energy but the top 2 percent of New Zealanders who had thousands of dollars just sitting around to invest in energy companies got a really good deal. Potentially they will be earning those returns instead of New Zealand mums and dads—the taxpayers who would have been earning the returns on those companies if we had maintained public ownership.The Green Party was proud to stand up against the privatisation of Meridian Energy. We are very proud to have brought the high cost of it to the attention of the public. Let me just enumerate the different costs in the sale of our State-owned energy companies including Meridian Energy. There is the cost to Treasury and the energy companies themselves the give-aways to share buyers the forgone dividends that we will not be getting back in years to come the losses on the sale and to top it all off a payout to RioTinto. If you add all of that up together we are at almost half a billion dollars. The direct sales of Genesis shares are likely to total a further $20 million plus tens of millions for the bonus share give-away and potentially much more.That half a billion dollars could have been used for other things that would actually generate a return for New Zealanders. We could have employed literally hundreds or thousands of teachers and nurses improving our health system and improving our education system. That is the type of investment that the Green Party would like to make in our country not selling off public assets to benefit the top 2 percent; not selling off public assets and forgoing dividends for years to come and giving a subsidy to a private company RioTinto in order to keep the share prices of Meridian Energy a little bit higher although it was still a bit of a fire sale.The Green Party has put forward positive solutions to households’ high energy costs. One of those wasEmpowering New Zealand which was a discussion document on electricity reform. We announced it at the same time that the Labour Party announced asimilar inquiry into the possibility of electricity reform. It is colloquially known as NZ Power.Just to give one an example of how NZ Power would work it is basically establishing a single buyer that will negotiate cheaper prices for all of us. We all know that despite the fact that electricity demand is flat as the Minister of Finance has just said prices for households have been going up and Kiwis are paying $360 more for power per year since the National Government came to power. That is a sign that our electricity market is not working and it is because it is dominated by the four big generator-retailers.The partial sale and privatisation of the publicly owned generator-retailers is not going to reduce power prices for New Zealanders. If anything it will do the opposite. As foreign private owners of those shares in those companies seek to maximise returns there will be pressure on the companies to ratchet up power prices even more. So the partial privatisation has cost the taxpayer. It is going to end up costing households. The Green Party is here with a solution that will bring down power prices by ensuring we have a single buyer that can negotiate with these now privately owned power companies. Just asTīwai Point has been able to directly negotiate cheap power prices with Meridian Energy for many years NZ Power will act in the same way by negotiating on behalf of households.We also obviously want to strengthen the role of energy efficiency and green energy within our electricity system. Meridian Energy for a long time has had a focus on renewables but arguably it is the only big player that has and that is just due to the fact that it is highly invested in hydro power. What we need is some mandate in the electricity market. We need someone with a mandate to focus on new renewable generation and where that is going to come from. The National Government is not on track to meet its own target of 90 percent renewable generation by 2025. It is very difficult to see how the partial privatisation particularly the partial privatisation of Meridian Energy is going to help in that respect. So the Green Party is proposing a smart idea that is not only going to bring down power prices for New Zealanders but also going to get a better deal for taxpayers and help increase the share of renewable generation.Of course the other smart idea that we announced recently was the Solar Homes package. That does not involve a direct subsidy to anyone unlike the Government’s subsidy to RioTinto to prop up the price of Meridian Energy but it does harness the Crown’s lower cost of borrowing and passes on those benefits to regular New Zealand households to help them purchase photovoltaic solar panels. That will help them be more independent and reduce their power prices. It will increase the total reliability of our network by having micro-generation spread across a wider number of households and the total amount of renewable electricity that is being used here in New Zealand. The Green Party cares about New Zealand families and households and we care about the long-term future of this country. If we are going to deal with long-term challenges like climate change we need to be investing now. We need those smart policies. Privatisation of Meridian Energy is taking us in the wrong direction. The Green Party wants to take us to a smarter greener future.