O'Connor Damien: General Debate 
O'Connor Damien: General Debate 
[Volume:624;Page:19063] 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR (Minister for Racing) 
: 
 I have three questions to put to this House today. The first question is whether the National Party will get its act together the second is whether the National Party will get together with ACT and the third is what National would do if it ever got its act together. I shall ask the first one: will National get its act together? I know Murray McCully. He is a team player. He is prepared to put his body on the line in a parliamentary team right to the bitter end. He is a team player yet he has admitted that he is playing with a bunch of losers in the National Party because they cannot win the next election. It is not good enough just to take Murray McCully’s word. We should ask Richard Long. Perhaps Murray McCully is outside the inner circle. Richard Long said that as far as he was aware Murray McCully remained very much an active member of the election campaign committee.I suggest that Murray McCully may be the only active member of that committee. 
The second question given that we can clearly see the National Party will never get its act together is whether it can get together with ACT. ACT is the only other foolish party chasing right-wing ideology in this House and the only other party that could ever get into bed with the National Party. How would the National members build a relationship with ACT? They could ask their deputy leader what he thinks about their potential coalition partner. Gerry Brownlee said that ACT had been in Parliament for 9 years and had done nothing. I do not think that is a very good start to a good relationship. I do not think that we can seriously suggest that ACT and the National Party can get together. So that is the second question and I suggest the answer is no. 
What would National do if it ever got into Government? I look to John Key that master of economic destiny and his speech this week. What would he do as Minister of Finance? The new revolutionary policy that National has is to sell State assets. 
John Key 
: I didn’t say that! 
Hon DAMIEN O'CONNOR 
: Let us take one small example of that because John Key qualified his sales pitch by saying that in the first 3 years National probably would not sell Transpower or Air New Zealand. Would people trust National? I will tell the House why National wants to sell things. It is not because the assets “slow the boat” to use Mr Key’s words; it is because his mates want to have a slice of the action. Would National sell a non-performing State asset to the sharemarket? No it would not. Would National sell a top-performing asset? Yes it would. 
Two examples of those top-performing assets would be Landcorp and Solid Energy. Both of those are brilliantly performing State-owned enterprises returning huge returns to the taxpayer. For example what is the financial performance of Landcorp? Its net profit after tax last year was $37.4 million and its increased value of land and improvements was 28 percent up to $623 million. There are some who say that perhaps Landcorp should sell off the smaller farms. I have to say that there are no small farms with Landcorp because very successfully it has built up amalgamated units that are quite substantial in size. 
If John Key gets his way if National ever gets its act together if it ever gets together with ACT and if they are ever in the position of being in Government which is highly unlikely they would sell key State assets. They would sell the performing State assets to their mates. We can take an example of what happens if we sell strategic assets and put them into the hands of the wonderful private sector. Lockwood Smith told us in this House that the private sector can no longer guarantee jobs because those poor workers unfortunately lost their jobs yesterday. We feel sorry for them but this economy will give them job opportunities. National would sell our State assets. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.