Hughes Gareth: Standing Orders — SessionalText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Standing Orders — Sessional[Sitting date: 26 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13792. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia Ora Mr Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I would like to follow on from the last member’s Clayton Cosgrove’s contribution. Of course Minister Ryall is the worst Minister for State Owned Enterprises that we have seen since the whole concept was introduced. We have also seen one of the shortest contributions possibly ever in our Parliament’s history with this motion. Here you saw a Minister—blink and you would have missed it—introducing this Government motion No. 1 to introduce Mighty River Power as a public organisation.The Green Party supports this motion but we are implacably opposed to the Government’s asset sale agenda. We believe it is important that there is public and select committee scrutiny of Mighty River Power. That is why we are voting for this motion but we will continue to fight to our utmost in this House on the streets and online to oppose the fiscally reckless economically reckless Government asset sale agenda. The fact is that we are more focused on delivering cheaper power for Kiwis and a cleaner smarter and cheaper electricity service. We are not about flogging off theassets and flicking them overseas. The Green Party is supporting this motion because we want to see Mighty River Power publicly accountable.We saw Minister Ryall take possibly the briefest ever ministerial contribution introducing a Government motion to Parliament because he is embarrassed. Of course he is embarrassed because he should have done this last year when the legislation was going through Parliament. He is embarrassed because he does not want to talk about the Government’s asset sale agenda. The Government knows it is a vote-loser. It knows that it does not make fiscal or economic sense. It knows it is a loser plan so it is doing its darnedest not to talk about it. I challenge National members to stand up and make a contribution on this Government motion if they want to stand up for the asset sale agenda.When we are talking about this Government motion what we are seeing is Mighty River Power being listed as a public organisation. Since the partial privatisation what we have seen is that Mighty River Power is no longer a State-owned enterprise. This means it does not come under the ambit of the traditional select committee financial review process. By including it as a public organisation it will be publicly questioned and it will be able to be included in the financial review debate because it will be a Crown entity and a public organisation for the purposes of that debate. Obviously it is still not able to be the subject of a request under the Official Information Act. We would like to see greater public transparency but the fact is that that highlights that Kiwis are not in control of this State-owned enterprise. They are not in control of their electricity market. The Government would rather see the profits the dividends and the control taken out of Kiwis’ hands.The sale should not proceed. We have seen a referendum succeed. We have seen it pass the numbers with 327000 signatures. This is a historic achievement. It is now only the fourth petition ever to get the numbers to force a referendum. The Government should not be pushing on. It talks about a mandate but when it is dependent on the vote of one man—the man Peter Dunne who sold out our privacy sold out our human rights laws and is also selling out Kiwis’ assets—it does not have a mandate. If it wanted to put it to the test it should wait for the referendum and listen to the voice of New Zealanders.This asset sale agenda just does not make sense. The Government is spending hundreds of millions of dollars of public money on something New Zealanders do not want. The Government cannot argue that there is a benefit for New Zealanders and that is clearly falling apart. What we have seen is the value of Mighty River Power shares plummet since the asset sale. We have seen only 2 percent of New Zealanders being able to pick up shares. These are not the mums and dads investors whom the ads and the Government talk about. They are a minority of New Zealanders with the disposable income to do it. Because of the old tax switcheroo and the Government’s fiscal decisions we have seen a majority of Kiwis struggling and only the top few benefiting and here we see public assets going to the top few for their benefit. It does not make sense.We know that the Government is unlikely to meet the original Budget forecasts of $5 billion to $7 billion. More ridiculously what we are seeing is every New Zealand taxpayer even those who cannot afford to purchase shares paying for it. We have seen costs of more than $124 million. We have seen $2.3 million a week in forgone profit from Mighty River Power—$2.3 million a week forgone. And for what? For a minority of New Zealanders who are able to afford it. That is a terrible strategy that is costing taxpayers even more.When we saw the—well we did not see it because it all happened behind closed doors but you can imagine the executives of RioTinto licking their lips in anticipationwhen the asset sale agenda was announced because RioTinto knew that it had the Government over a barrel because of the asset sale agenda. We saw John Key having to negotiate with RioTinto from a position of weakness because of the asset sale agenda. We saw John Key literally picking up the phone against official advice and giving $30 million of taxpayers’ money to RioTinto inTīwai because of the asset sale agenda to protect the asset sale agenda. The Government is doing everything it can including the fiscally reckless “buy now pay later” scheme which is going to cost Kiwis at least $60 million. It is time for a cup of tea. It is time for a break. It is time for some sanity to prevail. The Government has an opportunity with the referendum to listen to the people of New Zealand—to put the asset sale agenda on the back-burner have a cup of tea and let us re-evaluate the asset sale agenda.The problem is of course that we are not debating what we should be which is how we deliver cheaper power to New Zealanders. Under the asset sale agenda what we know is that power prices are going to go up. Under this Government—under National—we have seen power prices go up and up by $300 a year for the average Kiwi household. Since the Bradford reforms we have seen our electricity prices rise by 72 percent in real terms while across the developed world theirs have dropped by 6 percent. We should be having a debate about how we get cheaper electricity to New Zealand households and New Zealand businesses to support the productive sector and about how we get Kiwis healthy and safe and warm in their houses and not in energy poverty which we see at the moment. By keeping our assets in public ownership we could have driven cheaper and cleaner electricity.We have a fantastic business opportunity as a country. Our strengths are never going to lie in competing for oil with Saudi Arabia or Venezuela. Our economic future depends on competing on our strengths which is clean energy and I note that we have actually done pretty well in a recent ranking out today. Our strengths are in innovation as we saw in the America’s Cup. PricewaterhouseCoopers reckons we could see a $23 billion economic opportunity from clean energy. If we had kept Mighty River Power and other State-owned enterprise assets in public ownership we could have supercharged our State-owned enterprises coupled with private businesses and partnered with them to drive exports.What we know globally is that the world is moving away from oil. In 2011 net capital investment in the electricity sector—for the first time ever in our planet’s history fossil fuels and nuclear energy were smaller than renewables. China Europe and America are crying out for clean energy technology. We should not be looking to the past to the last century’s fossil fuel economy; we should be prepared to cater to the coming century’s economy. This is where we can build exports. It is where we can grow jobs. We know that compared with oil there are going to be more jobs more profits staying in New Zealand and more sustainable prosperity for the long term in clean energy and that is the greatest tragedy of the asset sale agenda.Taxpayers are forking out millions of dollars. Big multinational corporates have the Government over a barrel taking tens of millions of dollars out of Kiwi taxpayers’ pockets but we are missing the opportunity of cleaner cheaper and smarter energy and building better exports for clean energy. This is our future and this is what the Greens will continue to champion. We are going to fight this agenda in the House on the streets and online. We will keep fighting for clean energy. Kia ora.