Ewen-Street Ian: Wool Industry Restructuring Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
Ewen-Street Ian: Wool Industry Restructuring Bill — Second Reading Instruction to CommitteeCWH In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:609;Page:7113] 
IAN EWEN-STREET (Green) 
: 
 The Greens oppose this bill. We support the disestablishment of the Wool Board but from that point on we part company with what Clayton Cosgrove has just mentioned. We do not believe that there is a mandate from farmers for this restructuring. As a consequence of that this is bad legislation. It is predicated on the basis that there is a mandate. 
I want to take members through some of the figures to illustrate why I do not believe that there has been a mandate. First there are around 28000 woolgrowers in New Zealand. Of those 12000 in round figures have fewer than 250 sheep and those people were not entitled to vote. Already 40 percent of potential voters were disenfranchised even though those people paid levies to the Wood Board—sometimes for many years. Sixteen thousand people who owned more than 250 sheep on 30 June 2002 were eligible to vote but only around 40 percent of those did vote. Sixty percent of the growers were entitled to vote and 40 percent of them did so a total of 24 percent of the total number of woolgrowers in New Zealand actually voted. 
The next question is why the vote was put as only one question. Why were the farmers given only the choice of getting rid of the Wool Board and accepting the new structure? Was it so hard to have two votes to ask them whether they wanted to get rid of the Wool Board yes or no? There would have been an overwhelming vote in favour of getting rid of the Wool Board but did farmers actually understand what they were getting? Did they vote “Yes we do want this new structure.”? I doubt it. I do not think that they thought that through at all. They thought that anything had to be better than the Wool Board. 
I am also very concerned that the people who ran the Wool Board—the organisation that has been dysfunctional for many years—have also been influential in the creation of the new structure. Did they engage in true consultation with the woolgrowers? That is a very leading question. I know that McKinsey did a survey and it believed that it had a mandate from farmers for this structure but there seems to be some evidence that McKinsey was instructed to come up with the new structure. If that were the case it may be that premeditation was involved in this consultation. I remind members and farmers of the Wellington Airport case where the company was accused of not doing proper consultation. The company had an outcome in mind. It went to the shareholders and said: “This is what we’re going to do.” It believed that that was consultation! The court found against the company. If there is premeditation in the consultation process then that becomes legally challengeable. I urge farmers to think about whether there was any premeditation in the way they were consulted; if so they have a right for that consultation process and the mandate to be legally challenged. 
Another question I have about the consultation process is whether the farmers actually understood what the reforms would mean to them in a practical sense. I personally doubt it. I am a woolgrower myself but the information I received seemed so complex at the time that I just dismissed it. To be fair though at that point I had sold all my sheep—I was coming into Parliament—so I was not entitled to vote anyway. I did not really engage but on a serious note I do not consider myself to be an idiot— 
Hon Member 
: Everyone else does! 
Hon Member 
: Can we have a party vote on that? 
IAN EWEN-STREET 
: It is a real surprise! I do not consider myself to be an idiot but I really struggled to come to terms with the complexity of these new structures. They are needlessly complex. Do farmers or any members of the Primary Production Committee or any of the officials or anybody in the world understand the intimate interrelationship between organisations like Wool Equities SheepCo the Wool Research Organisation of New Zealand Keratec Ovita Covita merino growers non-merino growers and many others that I cannot remember? [ 
Interruption 
] Gerrard Eckhoff who assures me that he has led a life of blameless excellence does understand the complexity of those new structures and I can only aspire to his intellectual grip. I do not understand it and I doubt that very many people do. I am pretty well certain that farmers do not. 
I am also reasonably certain that farmers do not understand how the assets that were accumulated—primarily from World War II as Doug Woolerton said—have been diluted over time and that the control of those assets is slipping away from farmers under this restructuring. Do they really understand what they are getting with this restructuring? Do they understand that the distribution of assets amongst farmers will on average come to around $1500 or $2000 for a big farmer? A fluctuation in the currency will give them that amount of money. It is a drop in the ocean for a big farmer. We should not forget the 12000 woolgrowers who are disenfranchised. They could not even vote because they had fewer than 250 sheep even though they pay their levies. So what has happened to the $100 million in assets? Do farmers retain control of those assets? I do not think so. 
That is bad enough but the worst for me came after the select committee hearings concluded. At that point we were informed that two new structures were being introduced into this already complex structure. They were called Canesis Network and Canesis Venture Capital. If their existence became apparent only after the submissions to the committee had closed how could anyone believe that farmers had given that structure a mandate? They had never heard of those companies so they could not have given them a mandate. The average cocky would not have even heard of those names. The consultation about Canesis was non-existent. 
I believe that there is premeditation in this consultation process and as such I believe it can be legally challenged. I believe that because there is no mandate for this restructuring. Everything that happened after the abolition of the Wool Board is farcical. I will be supporting Doug Woolerton’s amendment to remove a lot of the latter part of the bill. I think we need to put the Wool Board assets in the hands of a statutory manager and let him or her decide the best thing to be done for farmers. 
I point out that the ownership of Canesis Venture Capital consists of industrial members and other investors—no farmers there. The governance of Canesis Network consists of seven directors: two appointed by Wool Equities—that is by farmers—three by the Wool Research Organisation which is now pretty much a stand-alone research organisation and two by Canesis Venture Capital. Therefore two of the seven votes are from farmers. Is that what farmers voted for? 
R Doug Woolerton 
: No. 
IAN EWEN-STREET 
: I agree with Mr Woolerton; it is not what farmers voted for. They were not consulted because Canesis Network and Canesis Venture Capital did not come into existence until after the consultation. I am not often a conspiracy theorist but this structure has my crap-detector going off full bore. It seems to me that this is a classic set-up to rip off farmers’ assets into the hands of corporate raiders. 
Gerrard Eckhoff 
: It smacks of scampi! 
IAN EWEN-STREET 
: It smacks of ENZA I can tell the member that. I would very much like my thoughts of a conspiracy theory to be proved wrong. I put this matter to the Minister and to the officials—and to their credit the officials have done their best—but I still have serious doubts about this bill.