Parker David: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeParker David: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 26 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13796. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon DAVID PARKER (Deputy Leader—Labour): The Labour Party as my colleague the Hon Clayton Cosgrove has already indicated supports this Government motion No. 1 because it is one of the few ways in which we are going to have at least a modicum of transparency as to what is happening at Mighty River Power now that half of it is being privatised. This is necessary only because the Government has already taken it off the list of State-owned enterprises because of the privatisation. Until that step was taken of course New Zealanders had the ability through their members of Parliament to scrutinise the affairs of Mighty River Power. That was taken away through the decision of the Government to stop it from being a State-owned enterprise as part of the Government’s programme of selling half of the shares. We have already heard earlier this year from the Chief Ombudsman BeverleyWakem complaining that the Government got it wrong in removing these companies half of which were being sold from the group of entities that are covered by the Official Information Act. She pointed out that one of the reasons that you have transparency around these things is to prevent cronyism and corruption.If ever there was a Government in the history of New Zealand that is going down the road of cronyism which is related to the rise of corruption in democracy it is this one. We have seen sweet deals negotiated at the highest levels of Government involving the Prime Minister for theSkycity convention centre for the RioTinto subsidy of $30 million which I will come back to for reasons relating to the electricity market and then most recently for the intervention following the chair of Chorus phoning the Prime Minister and complaining about the draft determination from the Commerce Commission into copper broadband pricing for Chorus which led to the Government intervening for the benefit of that company.The Chief Ombudsman was quite right in pointing out that it was wrong to remove Mighty River Power from the list of entities that are subject to the Official Information Act. The excuse that was used by the Government—that these companies are more commercial because they have some private shareholders—does not hold water because of course disclosure can already be refused under the Official Information Actfor matters of commercial confidentiality. So it is important that we have transparency and openness.I want to give another example of how through this process of State-owned enterprise sales we have had too little transparency and openness. At the time of the last election the Labour Party spotted that the National Government was promising in its fiscal projections to sell off Government assets—the likes of Mighty River Power—bank the money and therefore not have as much borrowing and have lower interest costs. What it did not do was account for the fact that it lost dividends and shares of capital growth as a consequence of that sale. So it banked the savings but it did not take into account the lower revenue that it would have as a consequence of no longer owning all of those companies. At the time Steven Joyce the master spin-doctor from the Government was rolled out to accuse the Labour Party of lying and of misrepresenting. He did that through theNew Zealand Herald he did it through the television channels and he went all over the radio. He got his big sword out and tried to pretend that we had it wrong when in fact we were right. It was an absolute indictment on not only the National Government and Steven Joyce that they were willing to misrepresent to the people—Hon Clayton Cosgrove: They lied.Hon DAVID PARKER: They did. On this occasion they did lie to the electorate. They lied to the electorate as to what the fiscal effects would be of selling down interests in these companies. Treasury did not force them to come clean. Treasury—in my opinion in breach of the public finance legislation—allowed the Minister of Finance to sign off on a set of accounts that did not show that notwithstanding that the pre-election fiscal update is meant for the sake of transparency and openness to present a solid set of accounts. We know that that is necessary when you have got a National Government because what really led to that was the debacle under Mr Muldoon when he left things in such a poor state of affairs all those years ago.So we have had this lack of transparency and openness around Mighty River Power and other share floats we have had the removal of them from the Official Information Act and now we have this little glimmer of hope that we in the Labour Party can at least at the financial review look into these accounts and criticise them. What we cannot do is undo what the Government is doing with these asset sales. We cannot reverse the huge salaries and bonuses that are being paid to the chief executives of these companies that are being floated which increase the costs that have to be charged to power consumers. We cannot change the fact that money has been wasted on the process—many hundreds of millions of dollars in terms of advice and commissions being paid on sale.We ought not to forget that this is central to the National Government’s economic agenda for these 3 years even though it is opposed by so many New Zealanders yet it does nothing to improve New Zealand’s economic output. Changing who owns what already exists does not change how much electricity is produced; all it does is put up the price. The Government is always telling us “Look we’ve got a competitive electricity market that constrains price.” and yet we know that New Zealanders do not believe that because it is not true. We know that New Zealand’s electricity prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation for about 20 years. We know that the differential between residential and commercial and industrial tariffs is the second-highest in the developed world after Denmark and cannot be properly explained except by a lack of competition. We have even in the last few weeks had another intervention by the Government in respect of the Meridian Energy share sale to get Meridian Energy off the block. It did a deal with the owners of theTīwai Point smelter. It gave a $30 million subsidy effectively for the benefit of RioTinto in order to give certainty to MeridianEnergy that it would still be able to sell its power at inflated prices and keep the prices high. We know that Treasury advised that but for that intervention the price of electricity could have decreased for everyone by 10 percent. Yet the Government pretends that we have got a competitive electricity market.I just find it absolutely incredible that we have not had outrage from investment bankers because of this market intervention by the Government which proved that the electricity market was not competitive. But the reason we have not had outrage from that quarter is of course that they are self-interested in keeping the existing so-called market model. It is certainly not a competitive market model; it is an uncompetitive market model. They are self-interested because they want to clip the ticket on these sales. They like the privatisation of these assets. They are some of those who benefit from the sell-down of these assets to the less than 3 percent of the New Zealand population who owns what was previously wholly New Zealand - owned.This programme on the part of the Government is wrong. We do support this motion. We do not think that the Government should be given much credit for it because of course whilst it is doing this—which is the absolute minimum it can do—it is running roughshod over the will of New Zealanders. Citizens initiated referenda are provided for under the constitutional arrangements of New Zealand. When a citizens initiated referendum is brought forward and the more than 300000 signatures that are needed to cross that hurdle are obtained and if there is no urgency to proceed in respect of the issue that was so contentious—and there is no urgency to proceed with the likes of the Meridian Energy sale—a prudent Government would just wait and see what the referendum turns up.Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Respect the people.Hon DAVID PARKER: You would respect the people and you would give due consideration to the outcome of that referendum. This arrogant Government of course is just ignoring the will of the people pretending that it has got a mandate for this when it has not ignoring the fact that it makes the finances of the Government worse ignoring the fact that it increases the gap between the rich and the poor ignoring the fact that it makes the economy go slower if you have got a higher electricity price—because businesses are not as competitive and they cannot employ as many people—and ignoring the fact that it has an adverse effect on the wealth of the country because you do not have as many exports and you import more stuff instead if your energy price is higher than it need be. The Government is doing all of that because of this ideologically driven nonsense of selling these shares in not just Mighty River Power but also Meridian Energy. So although the Labour Party supports this motion let that not be confused with giving any support for this ridiculous central part of the Government’s economic agenda.