Mallard Trevor: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
Mallard Trevor: Debate on Prime Minister’s Statement 
[Volume:670;Page:16736] 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD (Labour—Hutt South) 
: 
 Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. It is great to follow Tony Ryall. He has a reputation these days for being the choreographer to the Prime Minister. It was interesting to see that even he was bored during his own speech. He was not interested and four Government members seemed to snooze off. It was not the Tony Ryall of old. 
He is known around Wellington these days as the “Minister for Redundancy and Consultancy”. He is causing redundancies all over Wellington. Some very good payments are occurring. Wellington unemployment rates are up. In the last 3 months the rate of increase was twice that of any other area in the country—twice! But there is a group that is doing very well under that Minister and that is the consultants. The consultants are doing really well. It is the National Party approach: fire the public servants give them redundancy hire about half of them back at about twice their previous wages and end up with none of the corporate knowledge. 
It is really interesting that Julia Gillard as part of her preliminary comments as she was coming to New Zealand indicated that she saw New Zealand as a source of skilled migrants. That is a sad situation for New Zealand to be in to have our nearest neighbour seeing us not as a partner not as an equal but as a place where Australia can have its training needs met by our employers and by our institutions which train staff who then go off overseas. The trouble is that at the moment she is right. All of us know of friends family constituents and people who live in our area who are upping stakes and going to Australia because that is where they can get a job and that is where they can have a reasonable standard of living. Their standard of living there is 1½ times in real terms what they can get in New Zealand. And the situation is getting worse because our wages in real terms are going down while Australian wages in real terms are going up. 
We have heard Bill English talk about his “mom”—his mixed-ownership model. I think a lot of members on this side of the House are trying to work out what the “dad” would be. Would it be “disastrous asset ditching” or “dog’s addition to Dipton”? There are a number of ways to describe it. I thought the Leader of the Opposition hit the nail on the head today when he asked a question that Bill English on behalf of the Prime Minister could not answer. He asked why one would give up an asset that is returning 15 percent and costing only 6 percent. Why would one give it up? 
Hon Bill English 
: Labour wants to buy the stock market. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: The member says it is a risky investment. Well I tell him that I do not think Kiwis who over the years have paid their taxes to build dams around the country as occurred under the NZED—the New Zealand Electricity Department—would regard it as a risky investment. I agree that there are some questions about their valuation and I noticed that when he came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee he thought they were overvalued. That is an interesting approach because they are valued on the same basis as private sector companies are. 
I would have thought that if a Minister was trying to hock off assets saying that they would go cheaper would hardly be the responsible approach to take. But that is the approach that Mr English is taking. I am not suggesting that we go out and gamble on the stock market; I am suggesting that we do not sell the things that people have paid for for years and years—they have paid for them in their power prices and they have paid for them in their taxes. But he wants to sell them off and he wants to pay off debt and end up with a minus 9 percent return on it. That is what he wants. The return is 9 percent less which is the difference between 15 and 6 I tell Craig Foss. That is the difference. The 10-year bill rate is 5.5 or 6 percent. The average return for the last 5 years has been 15 percent but Mr English wants to sell those assets. I think it is about the level of economics we had back in the period just after he was Leader of the Opposition or maybe while he was still Leader of the Opposition and when Don Brash was suggesting that we should all sell our houses and rent them. That is the sort of approach. Mr English wants New Zealand to divest itself of assets and send them offshore—to send the ownership of those assets offshore. He wants to sell our power companies to Australians to Chinese and to Americans yet we have paid for those power companies for years and years. 
Today in the House Simon Power who is meant to be the Minister for State Owned Enterprises indicated his ignorance in saying that no one could buy a cornerstone investment in a State-owned enterprise under his scheme because they could not be able to get 51 percent of shares. Well I tell him that he should go back up to his room and have a chat with the three or four people in his office who understand a little bit more than a country lawyer about the way stock markets work. They will tell him that although there are a range of definitions there is not much doubt that a 2 to 15 percent investment is regarded as a cornerstone investment and owners of those investments have rights that can block the majority shareholder from doing what it wants to do even when it is in the interests of the country. 
I will leave one comment from a discussion I had yesterday with a cleaner. She and her husband are both cleaners and they were just absolutely rapt at the idea they would both get $10 a week—$1000 a year for a poor family—because of the Labour policy that people will not pay tax on their first $5000 of taxable income. 
Hon Bill English 
: Tell them the truth—they wouldn’t. 
Hon TREVOR MALLARD 
: But Mr English does not like paying cleaners very much. He does not like paying them except if they live in his house—no not his house but the house he was leasing from a trust of which he was a beneficiary. It was not his house; it was a house he was leasing from the trust of which he was a beneficiary. Bill English is someone who has no credibility. He is making a fool of the Government and the end of the year cannot come soon enough.