O'Rourke Denis: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeO'Rourke Denis: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 26 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13794. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First): Here we are again taking another step as a result of the quagmire of State asset sales. The sale of Mighty River Power Ltd was an act of economic sabotage that will for ever taint this Government. [Interruption] I beg your pardon?Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER: No I was signalling to someone behind you. I apologise for the distraction.DENIS O’ROURKE: Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker. I will say it again. The sale of Mighty River Power Ltd was an act of economic sabotage that will for ever taint this Government and for ever damage this country’s economic and social well-being. Everyone except the Ministers in this Government knows that State asset sales are economic and financial madness. On any rational basis they are simply barmy.So few people support this barmy policy that with or without a proving referendum National is in fact just trashing our democracy. It is idle nonsense to claim a mandate when it is abundantly obvious that this is the Government’s most hated policy including by most of those people who voted for National at the last election. They did so for reasons that are inexplicable to me but it is nevertheless true that they elected a National Government knowing that National would sell strategic assets. They did so on a warts and all basis. In fact there were so many warts that the Government’s so-called mandate is utterly unidentifiable.So let us hear no more talk of the Government’s claim that it now has any mandate at all. It never really had one from the beginning. The fundamental objection is that the policy is now seen to be what it really is: a swindle perpetrated on the public of New Zealand. What we really own is being sold back to us—not to all of us; only some of us. We go from assets owned by all of us to assets owned by only a few—those who can afford to buy the shares. The result is further widening the already growing chasm between people with the wealth and incomes for a good living and those who struggle to earn a living own a home and bring up and educate their children while saving for their retirement.I am an egalitarian and I abhor that kind of swindle. A few may think they are winners and there may be a few pieces of silver for some but as a nation we are collectively impoverished by these sales. We will save the interest on some of our borrowing in the short term but we all lose the handsome dividend stream these companies provide as well as their capital growth for the whole of our future.To make matters worse and to exacerbate the financial stupidity of these sales we are paying an army of consultants and merchant bankers a fortune to do it for us. It is a kind of financial sadism that we now see being imposed upon us. The total bill for the float of Mighty River Power is a cool $41 million. That is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. This money would be better used elsewhere even while this slash-and-burn Government moves more and more to reduce the number and quality of public services under the guise of efficiency. The Meridian Energy float is expected to cost at least another $41 million. So that is a colossal $82 million for absolutely nothing. That money would be better spent on schools hospitals and the things that really matter.As BrianGaynor said in this Tuesday’sNew Zealand Herald the initial public offers were a gravy train for the investment banks. Even Dick Turpin and the highway robbers of old would not have been that brazen. In fact Dick would have been proud of the sheer scale and audacity of these robberies effectively robbing the poor and middle New Zealand to the advantage of the rich.Although only 49 percent of these companies are being sold for now these sales are surely only the first step of old-fashioned true full privatisation in due course. This is despite the old lessons of past privatisations not being learnt. State asset sales of this kind have always proved to be an unmitigated disaster requiring some companies to be bought back. New Zealanders will pay a heavy price for this mad policy for generations to come.New Zealand’s assets are being stripped and plundered by an economically illiterate Government that is so bereft of ideas for managing our economy prudently andeffectively and without undue austerity measures that 2013 will go down as a black year in the history of the New Zealand economy with the sale of Mighty River Power and soon of Meridian Energy. In the face of overwhelming economic and financial logic the Key Government has ploughed on with this absurd damaging project regardless of the cost to the country. National and its cronies insist on following the tried and failed ideology of the so-called market trumping all other considerations. The so-called safeguards over the extent of foreign ownership are worth as much as Mr Key’s other bogus and empty pronouncements. He is justly regarded as our least trusted politician. He is now the arch-swindler. He will go down in history as the Prime Minister who sold out who did dodgy deals and he will ultimately cut and run leaving us all to pick up the pieces.New Zealand First is committed to bringing back Mighty River Power to where it belongs: the ownership of the people of New Zealand—all of them. It is committed to buying back State assets over time and from the first opportunity. New Zealand First will restore the State-owned electricity generators now being sold back into public ownership and will put them back under a single generating entity. New Zealand First believes in a mixed economy one in which the private sector and the public sector work together to provide a prosperous and stable society that is fair to the whole population rather than for the benefit of only some. So although it does not oppose the principle of transparency of information for companies such as this New Zealand First will vote against the motion but only as a means of further expressing our implacable opposition to asset sales generally.