Browning Steffan: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Browning Steffan: Mixed Ownership Model Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 19 June 2012. Volume:681;Page:3088. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
STEFFAN BROWNING (Green) 
: 
 I rise to talk on Part 1 of the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. The Green Party certainly opposes this bill. I have been out on a number of occasions getting signatures with the volunteers for the petition against this bill. My experience with those volunteers is that the public are very deeply concerned about this bill. You can arrive at a market aim to walk through the market to get signatures and you barely move a few metres because people are coming in their droves wanting to sign that petition—even I note at the Fieldays. It was interesting to walk past the National Party’s stand and there were people coming up to me there wanting to sign the petition because they are so angry and in fact even disgusted with the way this bill and this Government is going in trying to flog off the assets that they really recognise as their own assets. 
For a bit of background on why these people are so angry what they refer to so often is the history of sell-outs and the history of breakdown of stuff that they consider their own. They go right back to Bill Birch’s day and Doug Kidd’s day. In my area a local power company was forced to sell off its own generation plant when the Electricity Corporation was split up in a way that we all know made prices rise and took it away from people—in a way setting up for this craziness that is in front of us now. 
Those same people bring up the issue around the railways—what has happened with the railways and what happened with Petrocorp. Those people of New Zealand eventually got the railways back in a dilapidated state. Then we saw it with Telecom with Fay Richwhite when that disappeared. Was it to mum and dad investors? Well not for too long. But the power companies will be even harder to get back than the railways because we are heading into an era when energy is even more precious. The rewards of keeping it would be much much greater. Energy is becoming constrained Petrocorp is gone and we need to retain our power. 
I notice that TrustPower and other generators are holding back on developing their consent approvals for new generation—no doubt waiting for some gifts from National in cheap cheap energy generation but it is actually very good energy generation that we should be holding on to—so that they can sell New Zealanders their own energy back at a much increased rate than the Kiwi mums and dads whanau elderly and community are actually purchasing it at currently but from their own generation. 
There are other aspects of this ownership that we will cover in the later parts of the bill but that is the background: the volunteers and the people of New Zealand racing to fill those petitions. They want this Government to put the brakes on to hear them and to give them a chance so that they can have an opportunity to convince the Government which has not listened and which has not got the mandate—no matter what it says about the mandate—that there were more people voting against asset sales than for. These people want another go at that at convincing the Government. They are going to sign the petition all the more. We will get there and we will be back. I am looking forward to speaking to the other parts.