Connell Brian: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — In Committee 
Connell Brian: Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:622;Page:17917] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 It is really good to see the young guns of New Zealand First start to hit their straps. It is good to see a bit of energy and a bit of passion in stark contrast with the drivel we heard from Gordon Copeland and Rod Donald. 
Hon David Carter 
: Did they win? 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: Rod Donald has put $10 into the Southland banking society. My advice to him is to get his money out before he goes broke because that will be his last $10. It is very good of him to invest everything he has in it but we suggest he should get his money out now before it is too late. Gordon Copeland was really upset because Simon Power suggested we did not need to legislate for Crown entities to open bank accounts. 
Hon David Carter 
: I don’t think we do. 
BRIAN CONNELL 
: I do not think we do either. I think Gordon Copeland was very right to say with such gusto passion and determination that he was really upset. Let me say this to Mr Copeland. Producers in the productive sector of this country are fed up to the back teeth with red tape and bureaucracy. This bill is a classic example of it. This bill is 500 pages long and most of it is repetitive. I think I could reduce this bill to at least one-third of its size by cutting out some of the nonsense that we see in it. The United Future members get to their feet and want to legislate for more of that sort of nonsense. 
I will tell Mr Copeland this for nothing: National is voting against the bill. Gordon Copeland and the United Future party purport to support the productive sector and small business in this country in particular. But he stands in the Chamber and wants to legislate for this type of nonsense. Let us look at some of the stuff that I am talking about. The statement of intent starts on page 229 and goes right through to page 236. There are seven pages in the statement of intent. In anybody else’s language it is just a forecast. Any board member worth his or her salt would look at that and wonder why he or she should bother. The Minister in the chair Mr Duynhoven knows what I am talking about. He is a man who has been around a little. He knows that we do not need to legislate to tell people how to do up their shoelaces before they go outside. That is exactly what this bill does. 
Let me look at clause 181. Someone has already mentioned subclause (1)(e) which states: “how the entity proposes to manage the organisational health and the capability of the entity:”. Will a Government member stand and take a call—maybe Mr Copeland will stand and take a call—and explain exactly what that means? Maybe Mr Donald will stand and take a call because he is very keen on supporting this legislation. Then subclause (1)(g) states: “the matters on which the Crown entity will consult or notify its responsible Minister before making a decision …”. That is like having a dog and barking too. Why would any self-respecting board member want to get involved in a Crown entity that gave the Minister that type of power—that type of interference? What we get is boards of inferior quality because their members are the only types of people who would take the job on. It is no wonder that Judy Bailey was able to snow the board of Television New Zealand. Because of the quality of that board which is made up of Government appointees—ex-Labour hacks—she was able to snow them by convincing them that she would go somewhere else. All the competing organisations said they were not talking to her and did not want her.