Martin Tracey: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Martin Tracey: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3073. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TRACEY MARTIN (NZ First) 
: 
 Kia ora. Firstly can I acknowledge my fan club on the other side of the Chamber. I thank them very much for their support! I rise to speak on Part 1 of the bill and to acknowledge that we have heard an awful lot about mum and dad New Zealanders so I thought it might be a good time to actually hear from one. 
I would like to respond to Minister Ryall’s statement where he said that New Zealand must take this action. So here we go again—New Zealanders must take this action. We have heard this before. It was called the “tina” theory—there is no alternative—once before. This is the only way forward according to National. Back in the 1980s Roger Douglas said the same thing. Back in the 1990s Ruth Richardson said the same thing. 
I notice that both sides of the Chamber have been batting back and forward as to who sold what back in the 1980s and 1990s. However all I can say about that is that they are both as bad as each other. This country needs a New Zealand First - led Government to actually come up with something different—something different something vital and something that recognises that New Zealanders own this nation. They own these assets. They have worked for these assets and it is their interests and all New Zealanders’ interests that should be put first. 
So that is what we are being told. We are being told there is no alternative. That is what the National Government wants us to believe. It wants us to believe that this is not a philosophical stand. This is a philosophical stand because there is always an alternative. You make a decision and then you find a way to bring that decision to fruition. 
If this Government wanted to make a decision to save those assets it could do so. If this Government wanted to sit down and actually work with others to find another pathway to prosperity for this country it could do so. But philosophically it is starved for ideas. This is as good as it gets unfortunately. It has been brought forward by a finance Minister from a previous age and that is a shame. We had an opportunity in this country. We had an opportunity to recognise the faults from the past come up with a new way forward join together and take this nation on that pathway. But that Government refuses to even think outside that box. What a shame. 
As a mum New Zealander who lived through those times—who lived through the damage that was done with no trickle-down with no opportunity for mum and dad New Zealanders like myself to buy anything—this is a farce. This conversation is a farce because no mum and dad New Zealander anywhere near where I live will be able to buy anything from these shares. 
Let us just talk about that—about mum and dad New Zealanders buying back 49 percent of what they already own. I mean the thing is a joke. How can you try to sell that to the people? The people know they own it. The people know they own it now. Yet your spin doctors your marketing are attempting to tell them it is a good thing to buy back your own product. They own it they have always owned it and when New Zealand First repurchases it after National has gone then they will own it once again. 
 But let us just ignore that fact. Let us ignore the fact that somehow the Government is trying to convince the New Zealand public that they need to buy 49 percent of something they already own. Let us just try to ignore the fact that actually the Government is now handing 49 percent of the profits from those assets to whoever it is who buys them with no safeguards that they will stay in the country. 
Let us just go there before Mr Henare stands up and decides to have a go about New Zealand First policy about a partial float of Kiwibank to New Zealanders only so that that bank could grow its business to handle the Government’s business thereby bringing back millions upon millions of dollars’ worth of banking fees currently going offshore to Australia so that we could have that money back in circulation here. 
Let us just get that out of the way shall we Mr Henare so that you cannot bring that up and twist it into something that looks like this model you are trying to sell to the New Zealand public. But let us just ignore all those obvious little things. Let us actually talk about—and I am stunned that the Labour Opposition has not talked about it—the fact that these assets are to serve the New Zealand people. That is what they were built for. They were built to serve the New Zealand people not to provide a profit into a general coffer for funds to be flitted away somewhere else. What would happen if we in this Chamber decided that that was our philosophical stand?