Hipkins Chris: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hipkins Chris: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee 
[Sitting date: 20 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3201. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I appreciate this opportunity to take a call on the title and commencement of this piece of legislation the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. I want to talk about the title and the commencement but I also want to talk about the amendment that I have lodged to these particular provisions and I will come to those in a minute. 
Firstly is the Mixed Ownership Model Bill an appropriate title for this piece of legislation? Clearly it is not. Mixed-ownership model—what a load of tosh! What this is is the assets sales bill. This is the bill that sells the assets that generations of New Zealanders have built up to pass on to future generations of New Zealanders and this Government wants to sell them. It should be a lot more upfront than using these weasel words like “mixed-ownership model”. It is a bit like its plan for ACC where it talks about increasing competition when actually what it means is privatisation. It should be upfront. It should stop using these weasel words to describe its privatisation plans and this bill is exactly that. It is a privatisation bill that will result in assets currently owned by all New Zealanders being sold off. Plain and simple that is what this bill amounts to. The Government should be a lot more upfront than trying to use some tricky title in order to avoid being upfront with New Zealanders about what this bill actually means. 
The Supplementary Order Paper that I have tabled Supplementary Order Paper 53 prevents the enactment of this bill unless there is a 75 percent majority in this House because this Government does not have a mandate to sell these assets. This Government has no mandate. And if it thinks it has a mandate it will vote in favour of this amendment that will require it to get a 75 percent majority to pass this legislation. It would not be afraid of that if it thought New Zealanders really supported it. But they do not. The Government knows New Zealanders do not because this Government—the Government we have here which is forcing this legislation through—was voted for by only less than a third of the voting-age population in this country. Only a third of the country actually voted for this Government. That is not a mandate to do this. 
People overwhelmingly oppose this legislation. Opinion poll after opinion poll has proved it. If the Government really thought that New Zealanders supported this it would not be ramming it through Parliament before the referendum gets off the ground. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind—there is no doubt in my mind—that there will be a referendum because enough New Zealanders will sign the petition for there to be a referendum and the result will overwhelmingly oppose these asset sales. 
So if this Government really thinks that there is a mandate for it to do this why is it trying to push it through? Why is it trying to push it through before New Zealanders have had a chance to have a say on it? And the Government is pushing it through. 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Because they don’t care what the public have to say. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: That is right. My colleague Lianne Dalziel has pointed out that the Government does not want to hear what the public has to say. Well I say to the Government that it can listen to the public now or it can listen to them in 2½ years’ time because the New Zealand public do not support this legislation. 
The amendment that I have put forward is a very reasonable one where the Government is proposing a piece of legislation that in effect overrides the law of the land. There are provisions in this legislation that allow the Government to change primary legislation by regulation without reference back to Parliament. That is a constitutional issue. Before it does that it should have a 75 percent majority in Parliament. If this Government is going to pass laws that in effect give it the power to change other laws then that requires more than a one-vote majority. It requires more than just getting Peter Dunne to vote for it. It requires getting more support from the Parliament. 
The Parliament has shown that where there is a genuine need for those sorts of powers we will come together and vote for them. We voted for them after the Christchurch earthquake because we believed that the Government did need some extra power and some extra ability to respond. There is no justification—no justification at all—to give the Government the power to change the law by regulation when it relates to asset sales none at all. The Government is going to give itself that power with a one-vote majority in Parliament—a one-vote majority in Parliament. That is wrong. To give itself that kind of unfettered power for that sort of change to our legislation it should require more than a one-vote majority in Parliament. So the amendment that I have put forward that would require the Government to have a—