Woolerton R Doug: State-Owned Enterprises (AgriQuality Limited and Asure New Zealand Limited) Bill — In Committee 
Woolerton R Doug: State-Owned Enterprises (AgriQuality Limited and Asure New Zealand Limited) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:640;Page:10055] 
R DOUG WOOLERTON (NZ First) 
: 
 New Zealand First supports the State-Owned Enterprises (AgriQuality Limited and Asure New Zealand Limited) Bill because this bill gives the opportunity to merge those two State-owned enterprises. Those State-owned enterprises I might say—and the Minister can confirm this to us—had a court case between them that lasted for 6 months or a year or something like that. It was quite outrageous. As the Minister has said the competition that people talk of here as being something dear and wonderful and not to be lost is illusory. This is a situation of a State-owned enterprise competing with another State-owned enterprise that is contracted to a Government agency and to some other quangos here there and elsewhere. So the competition is illusory and even the Supplementary Order Papers we see in front of us are couched in terms of providing some competition at some time in the future. In the case of the Minister’s Supplementary Order Paper that will be when two-thirds of the industry agrees to that. 
The industries we are talking about are industries that export their product overseas to countries that do not like the meat they import to be ticked off by a bunch of cowboys down in New Zealand. They want the Government’s stamp. OK they are happy enough with a State-owned enterprise’s stamp because they understand that that is a Government stamp. But it is they not we who are demanding those things and I think that it makes a lot of sense to merge the companies even though this bill does not do that. It gives the opportunity to do that and I think there are gains to be made here. When there is no real competition the only other thing to be done is to get the price down or to get the costs down of the institution that gives the service. That is what I think is in the Minister’s mind here and we applaud that. Transparency is a great thing. But the smoke and mirrors business of having two State-owned enterprises competing and then our saying that we have fair competition in the market is a nonsense. 
I know that when it comes to the TB testing contract some crunching was going on following a court case and so on and so forth. There was an advantage to farmers. Because one chief executive officer basically wanted to stick it up the other chief executive officer farmers received a good deal. 
Hon Dover Samuels 
: See you later—go on see you later! 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: See you later! But I have to tell everybody including the Animal Remedies Board that that was going to be a very temporary thing indeed and I understand from the Minister’s comments that in any case there will be the ability to contract out those things in the future if— 
Hon Trevor Mallard 
: The world changes. 
R DOUG WOOLERTON 
: —the world changes and there is two-thirds agreement to do so. I do not think that anything is being lost here and I think that this is a genuine attempt by the Minister and the Government to get the cost of delivering those essential services down. 
Before I sit down I want to give some praise to the people who carry out those duties and the meat inspections. Mr King I am sure and others will join with me in that. Those people are involved in a particularly skilled job in not the most wonderful of circumstances. They do not have heaters at every workstation or anything like that. Often they are looking for shadows on a carcass. It is hugely skilled work and our exports depend on those people as well as on others in the chain. I could not make this little speech without saying how indebted to those people we are. I know they are paid well but they have the skills and we rely on them for the integrity of our product. The product is not cheap; it is quite an up-market product by the time it gets to its destination.