Robertson Grant: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeRobertson Grant: Debate on Crown Entities Public Organisations and State Enterprises — In Committee[Sitting date: 14 May 2013. Volume:690;Page:9896. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour):When the Commerce Committee did its report on Mighty River Power it was owned 100 percent by New Zealanders. As I stand here today we know that only 2.5 percent of New Zealanders have bought into the shares of this company.Hon Dr Nick Smith: Rubbish.GRANT ROBERTSON: Nick Smith says “Rubbish.” This asset sale is one of the greatest transfers of wealth away from all New Zealanders to Nick Smith and his mates. That is what this is all about—taking away from New Zealanders an asset that has been built up over generations and putting it in the hands of a small minority.Mighty River Power is a company that can be proud of its record. It is a company that has done good things in its time as a State-owned enterprise and has returned significant dividends to New Zealanders. This National Government says: “We will take that. We will take that out of the hands of all New Zealand taxpayers and put it into the hands of 2.5 percent of New Zealanders”. Do not let anyone say that if the National Government could have got away with it it would not have been a 100 percent sale. Of course it would have been a 100 percent sale. We know that is what the National Government wanted. It could not get away with it so it has gone for selling off 49 percent of what all New Zealanders own and giving it to those 2.5 percent.We have seen from the Mighty River Power chief executive officer Doug Heffernan some interesting behaviour both in the select committee itself in the financial review—John Hayes: Oh what a diatribe.GRANT ROBERTSON: What was that? Mighty River Power actually failed to answer the questions that had been put to it by the select committee—and that is just the beginning because we know that under the model that this Government has put through there is no role now for the Official Information Act with these companies. There is no role for the Ombudsman. New Zealanders might think that they have still got some say in this company but no this National Government has taken that away and said that there will be no transparency anymore for these companies. It is absolutely disgraceful and we saw the beginning of that from Doug Heffernan.Doug Heffernan is paid over $1 million a year to be the chief executive of Mighty River Power—$1.5 million a year. He came out when Labour released its New Zealand power policy and described it as socialism. He was running the National Party’s lines. That is not what we would expect of a chief executive. But what is more it is so wrong because if the National Party actually believes that it is saying that all the states of America that have a single buyer model are socialists. That is what the National Party is saying. What the National Party does not want to acknowledge is that currently Mighty River Power has been part of an uncompetitive electricity market in New Zealand. There is no competition in the New Zealand retail market. We have the generator-retailers that dominate the market. We have the super-profits that have been taken out time and time again and there is no competitive market.So when the Labour Party says it is time to introduce some proper competition—and we know that that will happen; we know that there will now be competition in the retail sector and consumers will now come first—the National Party says no. The National Party says it does not want a bar of consumers having lower power prices. I will tell you that on this side of the Chamber that is our priority to give New Zealanders a fair go when it comes to their electricity system to be able to say that we can actually lower power prices for consumers and for small businesses—by 5 to 7 percent for small businesses. That will help generate wealth in this country. That will help generate jobs in this country. The National Party does not want a bar of it. It wants to keep power prices high. I challenge any member over there to get up and tell me whether under the current settings for the electricity industry power prices will come down. Because the answer is no they will not. They will keep tracking up and New Zealanders will keep having super-profits gouged out of them by companies.What we want on this side of the Chamber is a fair rate of return. Companies like Mighty River Power will still be able to get—John Hayes: Communist!GRANT ROBERTSON: —a fair rate of return. But what they will not be able to do is get the super-profits. John Hayes says it is communist. Well I want John Hayes to go to the state of Virginia and to the state of Texas and tell those people that they are communists because what they have is a single-buyer model for power that actually puts consumers at the centre and says that electricity is important. Electricity is something that everybody needs and there is no choice in that. We need to make sure that consumers are getting a fair go instead of having super-profits ripped out from under them. National does not care about high power prices. Labour does and we will be reducing them.