DAVID CLENDON (Green) : When the House rose last evening I was asking the Government and, indeed, the Minister who was in the chair, the Minister of Police, to explain the intention of this new section 45Q, “Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi)”, inserted by clause 16. We have just heard, interestingly enough, from the previous speaker in the previous debate, Tony Ryall, that this Government prides itself on transparency, integrity, and other desirable attributes. I ask the Minister for State Owned Enterprises to please explain what the intention is of new section 45Q, because it is entirely unclear to me. It proposes that the majority shareholder—the 51 percent owner, the Government, 51 percent of a mixed-ownership model company—will be bound to not act inconsistently with the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, but, for the avoidance of doubt, this does not apply to persons other than the Crown. This sounds to me like a nonsense, where 51 percent of the time the company will be obliged to act in a way that is consistent with the principles of the Treaty and 49 percent of the time it will not.

Let us have a little bit of clarity and transparency on this. I would urge the Government to accept Supplementary Order Paper 71 in the name of our co-leader Dr Norman, which will make it crystal clear that the new companies, the new entities, 100 percent of the time will be obliged, absolutely, to operate in a way that is consistent with the principles of the Treaty. The clause, otherwise, is a meaningless nonsense. It is a sop to those Māori interests that have objected very strongly to having the Treaty clause that is within the State-Owned Enterprises Act removed from this Mixed Ownership Model Bill. Of course, it was not present in the original drafting of the bill. This is a little bit of trying to have a dollar each way, to have a clause without really having a clause. I would ask the Minister to either explain to us exactly how this clause will work in practice or simply adopt the Supplementary Order Paper.

The other point I would like to raise, briefly, is the question of new section 45S.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) : I want to address new section 45S in clause 16 and my amendment to that, but before I do, I just want to address the repeated comments that have been made by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises throughout this debate as he casts his selective mind back in history in respect of the sale of State assets. I am not going to labour this point. I am just going to ask whether the Minister recalls—he might want to give us a dissertation when he gets up and actually answers a question—his being in a Bolger Cabinet or a Shipley Cabinet that sold off asset after asset after asset—

Grant Robertson: New Zealand Rail.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —New Zealand Rail, BNZ, and others, without any public consultation, at all.

Phil Twyford: Going to sell TVNZ.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: And they were going to flog off Television New Zealand. Who was the National Cabinet Minister who said, before the election, when we were in Government: “It’s so last year.”? Well, this was 20 years ago. In fact, I was attacked by the Minister for being a 14-year-old whippersnapper in short pants, wandering around, apparently responsible for all the ills, some of which there were in the fourth Labour Government.

That is how desperate this Minister is. He never talks about the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. We asked him a number of questions the other night, and I put those questions to him again. In respect of the 10 percent ownership cap, we had testimony after testimony at the Finance and Expenditure Committee that it was riddled full of holes and that there is no penalty. Of course, there is no penalty in this bill. You have to remedy within 60 days and that is it.

I put a question to the Minister, who, I note—because I have checked the Hansard—has made a couple of speeches in this debate and not answered one question. Mr Clendon put questions to him about the Treaty clause. I put questions to the Minister last night about that provision and specifically raised the concerns of Tūwharetoa, but all this Minister has done throughout the debate is stand up and walk back in time, selectively, to the 1980s, jump over and forget that he was intricately involved in the Bolger Government and its asset sales, and talk about history, and that provides him, he believes, with an alibi so that he does not have to answer any questions or make a case.

So I am going to ask the Minister now: is he planning to answer any questions put to him by this Parliament on this legislation? Silence. Silence. We will take that as a no. I will just ask him again in case he got distracted. Is the Minister, Mr Ryall, the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, who is in charge of this bill, planning to answer any questions put to him by members of this Committee? I take it that that is a no. Silence. That proves the contempt that he has for this Chamber, the contempt that he has for members of the House, and the contempt that he has for the nearly 1,500 submitters who submitted on many of these issues.

His officials will have given him advice, or maybe they have been told by the Minister not to advise him on the 10 percent ownership cap and not to provide him with any answers, because he does not want to know—just like he told his officials not to go and investigate the issues of State-owned enterprise power retailers being cheaper than their private sector counterparts. He did not want to know. So I am going to put it on record, so that we have the Hansard, so that people know the contempt with which this Minister is treating Parliament and treating those submitters.

We were told, on the 10 percent ownership cap, that you would be able to drive a bus through it—that it would be very easy to get around, especially through the nominee entities, because the nominee entities, of course, can police what is within their own nominee entity but there is no policing across those nominee entities. As one submitter—I cannot recall her name, but I will find it as this debate goes on—from an eminent thinktank, who is a specialist in this area, said, you would need a sort of active securities police force, which was the term I think she used, to actually police every transaction. Then I ask the Minister why, if he believes that this 10 percent cap will work, there are no penalties in the legislation. Not one—no monetary penalty, not any.

So it will be interesting to see, after 2 days of questioning, whether the Minister gets off his backside and actually answers a number of these questions. They are important. We have put them to him for 48 hours. We put them to him before the select committee. We put them to the officials. Each time we have tried to have these questions answered and our fears allayed, there has been silence. So I put it again to the Minister. Will the Minister be prepared to answer any questions?

Hon Tony Ryall: If you sit down now.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Oh, he is alive! There was a noise. There was a gurgle or a cough or some sort of squeak that came out of the bellows over there. We have made history. He is actually going to answer some questions. Will I sit down? No problem, but I am going to finish my speech first, because we have got a few others. Now that he has got a bit of momentum—he has had a couple of sandwiches for lunch or a Milo or something and he has got a bit of energy up—he is actually going to do his job and earn his pay.

In respect of Tūwharetoa and the questions around that, we heard from Tūwharetoa that they did not believe the Māori Party’s commitment that the Māori Party’s clause, which it takes great credit for, would protect their Treaty, customary, legal, and property rights. They came with Georgina te Heuheu and told us—armed to the teeth, they were, with highly specialist, qualified legal advice—that the Treaty clause, in their view, would not protect them. I am advised that they are in some sort of discussions with the Crown. We do not know what those discussions are, we do not know whether they are happening, and we do not know whether the Crown is prepared to listen, but we were advised very squarely by Tūwharetoa, in answer to a question that I raised asking whether they would look at legal action and advance their arguments in a court if necessary, that they would pursue any legal avenue, through the courts or otherwise, that they could to secure their position.

They are in quite a unique position, in some ways. They gifted back water resources to the Crown on the premise that the revenue derived from those water resources would be used in the interests of our community; they would be retained by the State and then utilised through the Crown by our community. Then these geniuses come along and say that they are flogging off at least 49 percent of the energy State-owned enterprises, and that means that there will be private sector people utilising those resources, which Tūwharetoa gifted back to the Crown for the public good, in order to get private gain. This Minister woke up one day and thought “Hang on, this might be a problem.”, and then did absolutely nothing about it. So if there are discussions, we would like to know whether Tūwharetoa are wrong. If they are wrong, and all their legal advice is wrong, and the Hon Georgina te Heuheu, former National Minister in that Government, and colleague of the Hon Tony Ryall, is wrong, then let us hear it.

And let us not stop there, Minister. Tell us, exactly, the rationale as to why this provision will protect those interests. Yet again, we could not get an answer out of the officials, because they were not allowed to tell us. They were not allowed to tell us, in the end. We had to prepare our report, and then they sort of followed up. They were muzzled by the Minister. They were muzzled by the chair of the committee. He did not want to know, yet again.

Any Minister worth his or her salt, even if they do not like the advice, will listen to it, and then they are charged, under our system, with making a judgment based upon it. But not this one; he does not want to know—hear no evil, see no evil. “Do not give me a memo. Do not tell me that this policy could be wrong. I do not want to know.”, say the National Party members and their ilk. We have the 10 percent cap; we say we are moving an amendment to take it down to 1 percent. That is our concern, and where we are in regard to it. But it would be really good if this Minister actually dealt with those issues.

The final point I want to make is that there has been some talk, and it relates directly to the 10 percent cap, about loyalty schemes. Well, that is a scam. That is a complete scam, and we know what the National Party tactic is: we are going to have a loyalty scheme, and in that scheme you will get your free shares in 2½ years’ time, just after the 2014 election, which will enable the Prime Minister to go around with the fiction that there are all these Kiwis staying with the company—“See, we told you so, they’re staying in the company”—but they get their share after the 2014 election.

We know this happened with Contact Energy, in terms of shareholders pulling out. It went from 225,000 individual shareholders on float in 1999 to 78,225-odd, give or take. That is a 65 percent reduction. Two-thirds were sold off, and you did not even have a loyalty share there. So what Kiwis will do is, quite rightly, what is best for them, and I respect them for it. They will keep those shares until they get their bonus, just after the next election, and then they will sell, because that is the history of it. They will sell because they have had a windfall gain and they are struggling to make ends meet. But by the next election, by God, they will be struggling under this regime even more.

So I would like to know whether that loyalty scheme may be advanced to institutions, and what effect the 10 percent cap will have on them. Will those institutions be availed of that scheme, even though they are capped at 10 percent, or will this be confined to mum and dad Kiwis—although mum and dad Kiwis are now defined as ACC, KiwiSaver, and other superannuation funds and institutions domiciled here, not mum and dad Kiwis.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I call the honourable member Denise Roche.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I apologise for interrupting the member. The Minister in the chair, and you would have heard him, in response to me said that he would answer questions once I had sat down—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, that is not a point of order. The member is a very experienced member. Stop trifling with the Chair. I call the honourable member Denise Roche.

DENISE ROCHE (Green) : I rise to oppose this part—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Again, I do apologise for interrupting the member. The Minister in the chair did, indeed, make a statement. Is he now misleading the Committee and backing off from that statement?

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): That is not a point of order. I have warned the member. He has got his first yellow card. I call the honourable member Denise Roche.

DENISE ROCHE: Tēnā koe. Tēnā koutou ki te Whare. I join with many colleagues on this side of the Chamber to oppose this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. Part 1, just to recap, removed a whole bunch of requirements around social responsibility, good-employer provisions, and provisions of the Ombudsmen Act to be able to check what would happen with these companies once they are partially privatised, and also removed them from the provisions of the Official Information Act.

Then in Part 2 we see the whittling down and the watering down of the Treaty of Waitangi. It begs the question as to why you would remove the Treaty of Waitangi provisions from this part of the bill when, in fact, the Government says that these shares will be sold to New Zealanders. New Zealanders are a partner of the Treaty of Waitangi. It does not make sense that we need to put in special provisions to exclude 49 percent of our people.

I am going to talk briefly about my colleague and co-leader Russel Norman’s Supplementary Order Paper 39, which calls for this bill to be deferred until the petition for the citizens initiated referendum on the sale of the State-owned assets has been completed, because we are confident that we will be able to get 310,000 signatures. In the last 3 days I have spent hours and hours alongside Green Party volunteers collecting signatures. I can tell you very clearly that even National Party supporters are opposed to the sale of our State-owned assets. They are signing this petition in droves. As of today, the Green Party in 6 weeks has collected in excess of 45,000 signatures. It is incredibly easy to collect them. I spent 2 hours on Queen Street yesterday, and during that time I personally collected 90 signatures. That is about one signature every 1½ minutes.

The conversations were the same over and over: this is theft. Selling the assets that were bought and built for us by previous generations steals from our generation and generations to come. This was coming very clearly from National Party supporters. In fact, I got into an argument about other parts of our policy with one National Party supporter, but he was very happy to sign the petition and to take it to his friends. A referendum would not be binding, but it is a very clear signal, and the rate of people signing the petition, as it is at the moment, clearly shows that this is an election issue, and this Government does not have a mandate to sell these assets. I am sure my colleagues from the Labour Party, from Mana, and from New Zealand First, and our allies in Grey Power, Greenpeace, and the New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations are hearing these stories over and over and over again. These assets belong to us all. They are not for the Government to sell.

My colleague Russel Norman yesterday pointed out that the votes around the parts of this bill in Committee are very, very close. And the vote will be extremely close when it comes to the third reading. Yesterday Part 1 was passed with a 61 to 60 result. That is not democracy. That is not a mandate. That is not fair to New Zealand citizens, it is not fair or honourable to those who built up those assets for us, and it is certainly not fair to the generations to come, who will be paying higher and higher and higher electricity prices.

Selling these assets is short-sighted. It does not in the long term resolve any of the deficit issues. In fact, as we have heard time and time again across the Chamber, it increases our lack of resilience. It increases our situation where we are basically reliant on debt, because we lose our income-generating assets. A short-term fix, a rush of sugar, is how one person who signed the petition on Saturday explained it to me. Selling these assets—

Hon TONY RYALL (Minister for State Owned Enterprises) : It is very interesting that the previous speaker, Denise Roche, talked about the burden that this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill, will have for future generations. The fact is that increased debt is a burden for future generations. If you are worried about stealing from your grandchildren, burdening them with debt that they do not need is the biggest part of it.

Some of the more informed members of the Committee have asked a couple of questions about the Treaty clause. I will be very clear with the member: the current Treaty clause in the State-Owned Enterprises Act does not apply to the State-owned enterprises; it applies to the Crown in right of New Zealand. The obligations rest with the Crown. That exact obligation is being transferred in the new legislation, and those obligations remain the same. That is the advice that the Finance and Expenditure Committee got from the officials during the select committee consideration. The legislation also recognises—and it was the advice that the committee got—that the memorial regime that currently exists, which gives Māori specific rights on land that may or may not be transferred, remains as well.

It is very important to know that there is a penalties regime around those who breach this legislation. Those who breach the 10 percent cap risk losing the voting rights. A Supplementary Order Paper means that they will also lose their dividends from those shares in excess, and there is a criminal offence in breaching those securities rules. Right now—and members opposite may not be aware of this, but many New Zealanders will be—a company or a holder of investments or shares in a publicly listed company must declare their holding once it is at 5 percent, and then they must declare every 1 percent increase in their holding thereafter. If they fail to do that then they are subject to quite significant penalties in legislation, which include not only a criminal breach but also a significant sanction. The significant sanction is that they will stand to have shares confiscated. In fact, in the last decade there was a high-profile private company that lost, I think, 6 million shares in an investment company as a result, apparently, of failing to disclose step increases in its shareholdings. So there are quite significant penalties: losing voting rights; losing the dividends of the excess shares, which is part of the Supplementary Order Paper that we tabled on Monday; the criminal sanctions that apply to this; and the very severe sanction that shares could be confiscated if people fail to honour their obligations under those securities expectations. Those are very, very significant penalties, and I think any investor of any size in the New Zealand stock market is well aware of those and acts to make sure they respect that in order to avoid confiscation.

This is, I think, a very good approach to a State-owned enterprise sales programme. I think it replicates what we saw in the Shipley Government where we sold shares in the Auckland International Airport to ordinary New Zealanders. It was called a great example of popular capitalism by the Treasurer at the time. We also had a public float for the sale of shares in Government Property Services, and significant thousands of New Zealands took shares in that. When it came to the Contact Energy share float, the Government helped to create, I think, 120,000 first-time shareholders.

The big issue here is that Labour members opposite do not think everyday people are good enough to own shares or that they can be trusted. They do not think that the electrician from west Auckland who has worked hard and is trying to save for his or her retirement should own shares. They think those people are a bit uppity that they might want to own shares and that they cannot be trusted. They have called those people a part of a “small elite”. The nurse who has a bit of money saved from her wages that she wants to put into an infrastructural investment in these times is part of a small elite, and she cannot be trusted, either. She cannot be trusted, because the minute she gets an offer of 10c more than she paid for each share, apparently she is going to sell them.

Chris Auchinvole: Just like that.

Hon TONY RYALL: Just like that. Ten cents. The fact is that a lot of everyday people want the opportunity to own these shares and the opportunity to participate, because this gives them a good savings opportunity. Many members will remember what it was like when the finance companies collapsed under the Labour Government’s mismanagement. Many, many people came along and put their money into Blue Chip New Zealand, Five Star Consumer Finance, Capital + Merchant Finance, and Hanover Finance, and they lost it. The previous Government did very little about those situations. It let the securities legislation and prudential management fall into disrepair, and that is what happened. The Hon Simon Power had to, basically, run the process for the previous Labour Government to tidy it up.

A lot of people know they need to be cautious about investment. But as people add to KiwiSaver and superannuation funds and as iwi accumulate financial resources—and there is over $100 billion on term deposit in New Zealand today—they are looking for opportunities to invest in infrastructure and to invest in yield. That is what part of the Government’s mixed-ownership model programme is about. It is about creating investment opportunities for New Zealanders not only as individuals but also as families, iwi, and people with KiwiSaver and superannuation funds. Right now people’s KiwiSaver funds have probably got more invested in energy companies in overseas jurisdictions than they have in New Zealand. [Interruption] “The Super Fund sure has.”, says Mr Foss. We want to create those opportunities for New Zealanders to have a wider range of investments. We are backing that with the mixed-ownership model programme.

We also trust New Zealanders to make these investment decisions. We do not think people are uppity because they want to own shares. I remember when we made tens of thousands of people first-time shareholders in the late 1990s. People took great pride in their share certificates. They took great pride in their share certificates—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: On the mantelpiece beside the picture of the Queen.

Hon TONY RYALL: —and they put them on their mantelpieces. I am sure many of them did, because it was actually the first time they were able to buy shares. Only 10 percent of New Zealanders own shares directly, and that contrasts with, I think, about 30 percent in Australia. There is a need for New Zealanders to have this opportunity. But Labour members do not trust them. They say that the minute someone comes along and offers them 1c more they are going to sell them—they are going to sell them straight away. The fact is that Port of Tauranga proves the opposite—55 percent local government; 45 percent on the share market. What we are finding there is that New Zealanders are buying out—

Andrew Little: What a shocking example.

Hon TONY RYALL: “What a shocking example.”, says Mr Andrew Little.

Andrew Little: Killing workers more than any other port in the country. What a terrible example the Minister’s come up with.

Hon TONY RYALL: How pathetic! Sad, sad, sad little man! He is accusing the port of killing people. That is sad. It does not even warrant—[Interruption] So sad! This is about New Zealanders investing in infrastructure and having those opportunities. That stands in complete contrast to when Labour was last in office. Dr Nick Smith made the comment about the mine on the West Coast. Labour Ministers, apparently, approved the sale of 49 percent of Spring Creek Mine to foreign interests—foreign interests. They approved the sale, apparently, to foreign interests.

Hon Member: What were the caveats?

Hon TONY RYALL: What were the caveats? Well, I do not know the caveats. One Minister approved it from the perspective of the Overseas Investment Office. Labour was happy to sell a portion of an energy company to foreigners at that time, but now that it is in Opposition it has changed its mind. Labour members do not think energy companies should be sold to foreigners; they think there should be restrictions on foreigners. They have changed their minds. Labour sold $10 billion of public assets to the highest foreign bidders and to Fay Richwhite, which it did not tell anyone about. When it sold the public assets to the highest foreign bidders, Fay Richwhite, and the elite, Labour did not want to tell New Zealanders. But this Prime Minister has been upfront from January 2011. It was the centrepiece of the election campaign. Labour got the lowest result it has ever had since 1915, apparently, and National got the highest vote there has been under MMP. That is a mandate, but we take it very seriously, and that is the reason why we are working hard to secure a better future for New Zealanders.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) : It is a frightening thought to think of Mr Ryall’s mantelpiece. There will be the share certificates alongside the Whakatāne amateur dramatics society “most improved player” award. The truth is that the nurses around the country who Mr Ryall says are queuing up to buy the shares are the same nurses protesting against Mr Ryall because they actually do not have enough money to pay the power bill, let alone buy the power company.

Let us take just one of Mr Ryall’s words there. Who is really looking after the “small elite” here? Is it this side of the Chamber, who want to see these assets stay in the hands of all New Zealanders, or is it that side of the Chamber, who want to see them sold off, eventually into foreign hands? That side of the Chamber are the ones who are looking after the small elite; this side of the Chamber are the ones who are saying that we should continue to have these assets in public ownership for all New Zealanders.

Mr Ryall says that the Labour Party does not believe that New Zealanders can be trusted. We believe that New Zealanders can be trusted to retain these assets for future generations, unlike that side of the Chamber, who want to sell them off, hock them off, and make sure that New Zealanders will not have them in the future.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Are you going to buy them back?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Nick Smith is chirping in. I just think it is appropriate to mention what the 1990s National Government did, given that is what the Minister has just done. BNZ, New Zealand Rail, the Ministry of Works, Radio New Zealand Commercial, Contact Energy, half of Auckland Airport—they are not talking about them now, are they? That is what they sold in the 1990s. In the 2000s a Labour Government had to come in and buy back the rail, because it had been run down so badly. It bought back most of Air New Zealand, because it had been run down so badly. The record of this side of the Chamber is far stronger on growing New Zealand’s asset base than that Government over there, and the Minister in charge of this bill, the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, was in a Cabinet that hocked off those assets.

I want to talk about my Supplementary Order Paper 59 on this part to amend clause 16—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Great SOP.

GRANT ROBERTSON: —it is an excellent Supplementary Order Paper—to add new section 45Y, “Restriction on holdings in companies with control of water resources”. I want to do that because there is little more that binds all of these assets, bar Air New Zealand, together than water—the control of, and the rights to use, water. It is an essential part of this debate. We have already heard others speak about the importance of these issues for Tūwharetoa in the context of their issues. We have got the Māori Council claim in place as well. On this side of the Chamber we believe that it is actually important to say that if we have got a resource like water, a resource that is for all New Zealanders, that resource should remain in the ownership of all New Zealanders.

I do not expect the National members to agree with this. I do not expect the National members to say: “Yes, we believe that water is a resource that should remain in the ownership of all New Zealanders.”, but I would expect it out of some of the people who are voting for this bill. I think the Hon Peter Dunne needs to take some ownership of this matter, because Peter Dunne said in October last year—this is what he said—when he was talking about all of the things about asset sales that pained him: “Thirdly, and one that I feel particularly deeply about, is water.”—this is Peter Dunne—“I do not intend to wait until it is on the asset sales agenda. I do not believe New Zealanders would ever—or should ever—accept a sell-off of the supply of the water, or any of the aspects around it.” So if Peter Dunne believes that—that he does not want to see the sell-off of the supply of water or any aspects around it—he should be supporting my Supplementary Order Paper to say that—

Sue Moroney: He will be.

GRANT ROBERTSON: I think he will. I think he will support my Supplementary Order Paper, because he is bound to. He is bound to see Supplementary Order Paper 59 and say: “I stood by the words that I said in October 2011, that water should not be privatised.” And that is effectively what is happening here. Water is being privatised by stealth through the sale of these assets.

Peter Dunne should come down to this Chamber and say: “Yes, I am standing by what I said in October 2011. I am actually going to do that. I am actually going to say: ‘I’m not going to let these asset sales go through.’ ”, because they compromise the fundamental things that he has said New Zealanders believe, which is that water is something that belongs to all of us and that its privatisation will fundamentally undermine these assets. It will also fundamentally undermine the principle that New Zealanders believe in about access to water resources. I challenge Peter Dunne. I do not expect the National members to support this, because I know that the privatisation of water is on their agenda, but I do expect Peter Dunne to come down to this Chamber and say that he would like to support this.

The other matter I want to mention in clause 16 is new section 45Q around the Treaty issues. I want to pick up the words that the Minister for State Owned Enterprises used just before. [Bell rung] Thank you very much, Mr Chair, and my colleagues, I am sure, will have a lot to say on this clause when I finish in a few minutes. When Tony Ryall was speaking on new section 45Q, he said that the reason that the new Treaty clause applies to only the Crown and not other shareholders is that it applied to only the Crown in the State-Owned Enterprises Act. Well, the reason it applied to only the Crown in the State-Owned Enterprises Act is that the Crown was the only owner of the shares. So it is a ridiculous argument to make to say that it is a simple transfer of the rights and obligations of the Crown into this new bill. That is a ridiculous proposition. It is a ridiculous proposition to say that only some of the owners of these assets now have obligations under the Treaty.

I want to refer Government members to the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, which this National Government signed itself up to. I want to read from the preamble of that. This is what it says: “The Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) is the underlying foundation of the Crown-iwi/hapū relationship with regard to freshwater resources. Addressing tāngata whenua values and interests across all of the well-beings, and including the involvement of iwi and hapū in the overall management of fresh water, are key to meeting obligations under the Treaty of Waitangi.” This Government has recognised that issues to do with water are critical to the relationship with Māori. It has recognised that. But here we are standing in a debate where we have got a Treaty clause that applies to only part of these assets. It applies to only the Crown’s aspects of these assets now.

Denis O’Rourke: Half the water.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Exactly, Mr O’Rourke—half the water. It is only 49 percent of the water. How is the Government going to do that?

Hon Member: Which half?

GRANT ROBERTSON: Which half? Is it the half that is in Mr Foss’ glass here? I do not know. We do not know, because this clause now applies to only the Crown.

There is no doubt that the Government has tied itself in knots with new section 45Q in this bill. It did not know what to do, the Māori Party was looking for a way out, and so it went with a ridiculous premise that because under the State-Owned Enterprises Act it applied to only the Crown, it could apply to only the Crown now. It applied to the Crown under the State-Owned Enterprises Act because the Crown was the owner of those assets. It should apply across the board, and Mr Mallard has an amendment in his name to make sure that those principles apply across the board.

If the National Government has any faith whatsoever in this National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management, it will adopt Mr Mallard’s amendment and actually make a sensible Treaty clause here that applies right across the companies. It is a ridiculous proposition to try to say it applies to only the Crown. It is a ridiculous proposition to put forward a bill that transfers water rights away from New Zealanders, and that effectively begins the privatisation of water. That is something that is definitely on the National Government’s agenda, but it should not be done by stealth. The Government should be upfront about this, and if it is not, it should support my amendment to this clause.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) : I seek leave that a 30-minute allocation be provided in the next call so that the Hon Peter Dunne, who has not spoken in this debate, can participate.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, no. The member cannot seek leave for someone else.

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA (Labour—Ikaroa-Rāwhiti) : Mr Chair, I apologise for deviating yesterday, but can I say that I was about to give the Government a historical summary of how great this country has become. In relation to reconciliation, over generations we have worked hard with those Pākehās who came along, a lot of their tīpuna and mine—the Rutherfords and the Buntings—and took the Māori land. We flash forward and we listen to this prattle by Mr Ryall trying to ensure that Fly Buys cards and being better off by $12 is something that is important.

Let me tell you this, and mark my words: this is one of the worst days for Māoridom in relation to the Treaty of Waitangi. The Government has undermined it. How on earth can you split between 51 percent and 49 percent and say that the Treaty is relevant here and it is not relevant there? This is exactly why Sir Graham Latimer went to London—because the Government was trying to flog off the assets before the settlements were done. There are seven settlements at the moment that rely on, and are relevant to, geothermal energy supply and water resources. How come all of a sudden it becomes an edict of this Government to decide that those resources are stripped out of a process that is legislated for in this country—the Treaty process? It is shocking and Government members should hang their heads in shame.

It is noticeable that the Minister for Treaty of Waitangi Negotiations has not been involved in this discussion, because he does not like it. I know he does not like it. He knows it is treacherous, he knows it is traitorous, and he knows that it is about undercutting the good work done by successive generations in this country, both Māori and Pākehā. It is gutless. It is demeaning to the rights of the Treaty. The Māori Party has not shown up, and thank goodness it saw sense at the end and created one of the closest voting margins in this Chamber: 61 to 60. And you are saying you have got the support of the people? Ninety-eight percent of the submissions on this matter said no. They said n-o. Craig Foss knows that. He knows, living in Tukituki, that Kahungunu are still trying to etch together their Treaty claim. He knows it is relevant to water and the Mōhaka River. He knows full well that this Government is trying to pull a swiftie to ensure that the water right is diminished. This is unbelievable. To sell it on and to say that this is for mums and dads of this country—well, there will not be many Māori mums and dads buying these shares and getting a kick out of it, like the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, Tony Ryall, has suggested.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: What about their KiwiSaver accounts?

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: KiwiSaver, which we had the common sense and the foresight to start, is something that will benefit our people, but where does this benefit the people of this nation in flogging off the assets that they already own? Guess what! I own a Ford car, but I will sell it to somebody else, and I will still own it. What a load of rubbish! What a load of rubbish!

What you have opened up in undermining the Treaty settlement process is that anything that becomes involved with foreign ownership or investment now is not relevant or does not have any standing in relation to the Treaty settlement legislation in the country, which is kosher. Trevor Mallard’s amendments and Grant Robertson’s amendments are very, very important—very, very important. I am overwhelmed with the support of the members of our party in relation to this Treaty of Waitangi clause.

Go to Tūwharetoa. What did Tūwharetoa do for this country? They gifted to the nation the reserves. They gave them to it. They gifted them to this nation as a sign of goodwill in relation to nationhood and partnership. And this gutless lot over there—

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! Order!

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: —this nonsensical lot, who are culturalists, are undermining it.

Hon Maurice Williamson: No one can accuse this member of being gutless.

Hon PAREKURA HOROMIA: Maurice Williamson is one of the ones who really know the truth about this. He was the one who agreed about broadband and those things being allocated to Māori. That was Maurice. He understood that bandwidth was important to Māoridom. But to exaggerate that the water and that is nothing is a rip-off.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) : I want to begin, first of all, by setting out what National’s legacy is going to be as a result of the passage of this Mixed Ownership Model Bill, if, indeed, it does pass. In fact, there will be five legacies.

First of all, the glass will be empty when it comes to water rights for power generation in this country. Secondly, the cupboard will be bare when it comes to energy generation assets in this country. Thirdly, we will still be as deeply in debt at the end of this process as we were at the beginning. There is no doubt at all that this Government’s objective of achieving a surplus in 2014 is totally unrealistic. We will still have the debt at the end of that and it will be just about as much as we have now. That is the result of Government mismanagement, and it will not be saved by the sale of these assets.

Fourthly, we will have higher power prices for everybody in this country. Most people believe that. They believe it simply because that is what will happen when overseas purchasers get hold of the majority of the shares in these companies, as they will eventually—as they will eventually. And they will do that because they know that the ownership of these companies, and the control of these companies, is almost a licence to print money simply because of the degree of dominance these companies have in the New Zealand energy market.

Fifthly, of course, for the same reasons I have just outlined, we will have compromised New Zealand’s economic sovereignty. That is what most people think is a complete disgrace, and that is the main reason for most of the objections.

I also want to reply to Bill English, who made a speech earlier today. He goaded Labour about not making a commitment to buy back these shares. I would also like Labour to commit to a buy-back of these shares, and I would like to hear from the Greens as well on that issue, because New Zealand First has made that commitment and has made it unequivocally. But, in return, I also want to challenge Mr English and National to also commit to, and agree to, a clause in this bill empowering shareholding Ministers to buy back these shares and at no more than the price that was originally paid for them when they were sold by the Crown. I challenge Mr English and National to do that. If Mr English thinks it was smart to goad the other parties, let him put his actions where his words were and commit to exactly the same thing, because, as I have said, New Zealand First has made that commitment unequivocally and I want to hear that from all of the other parties, as well.

It makes sense. It makes sense to commit to buy back these shares, simply because these shares are such a good investment. That is why they will be popular in the market place. People know that they are worth buying, and New Zealand First does not deny that. New Zealand First understands that. That is why they should not be sold in the first place, and that is why New Zealand First will buy them back if it ever gets the chance to do so—and I think we will.

Another thing is this. Because of the dividend stream, including both ordinary and capital dividends, it makes no economic sense for these shares to be sold. In fact, they are profitable shares. They are worth more for their dividend stream than the cost of servicing loans if they were sold. It will be profitable and economically responsible to buy them back because over recent years the average return from these companies has been 16 percent or more. That is the truth, if you include both capital and ordinary dividends. That is the fact. That is exactly why we should be keeping them. At the same time, the cost of borrowing by the Government is usually less than 4 percent, so it makes absolutely no sense whatever to sell these shares.

In addition to that, of course, there is capital growth in these companies, as well. That should accrue to New Zealanders and not to some overseas purchaser of them.

So New Zealand First’s proposal in the amendment in the name of Winston Peters is to make it possible, at the option of the shareholding Ministers, to compulsorily buy back these shares—

PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) : It is always interesting to listen to New Zealand First. It is a party of great barefaced ability to say one thing and do the other. We have Winston Peters. This is the man who is recorded as saying, when he signed off the sale of Auckland Airport when he was Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer only a few years ago, that he was “very pleased with a most successful public sale—it is popular capitalism in action.” It is also the party where we had Mr Williams talking about how terrible these sales were, yet when he was North Shore mayor he was very happy to sell off the former council works depot for $11.4 million. Is that not amazing? So it is one thing when the Government does it; it is a different thing when those members are in power.

This Mixed Ownership Model Bill—we are on Part 2—is about controlling our destiny. It is about keeping the total amount of Government debt under control in a dangerous global environment. It seems ironic to me that we have heard a lot from the other side about the fear of foreigners—“Aren’t they terrible!”. That is what is behind Supplementary Order Paper 51—a lot of anti-foreigner rhetoric. This puzzles me, because any clear assessment would say that the fastest way to have this country lose its independence of action is to have too much international debt at this time. This Government is proposing to sell minority stakes in these companies—we expect mainly, though not exclusively—to New Zealand investors. In doing so, we reduce our need to borrow more on the international market, and that is a good thing. If Labour and the Greens have the courage of their convictions, they will commit here, right now, today, to buy back these companies—to go out to the international markets, borrow the money, and buy them back. They will not, because they know that it is a crazy thing to do.

It is often forgotten that by introducing a share of private sector investment—49 percent as outlined in section 45R, in clause 16—this bill will strengthen the companies involved by bringing to those companies private sector scrutiny and governance. Some people would say that is ideological. It is no more ideological than the assumption we have heard expressed relentlessly that State-owned enterprises are somehow better than private sector companies. I have seen no evidence for it, and no evidence for Mr Parker’s claim yesterday that State-owned enterprises have a lower cost structure than those in the private sector. Where is the evidence to show that? Any awareness of New Zealand history shows that State-owned enterprises—and trading enterprises back in the 1980s, such as forestry, telecoms, and the like—reveal that the State is not a good runner of business.

Let us have a listen to what Mr Lange said in 1996. What did Mr Lange say when he talked about the Government’s economic policies? He said: “We had enterprises”—this is the Government—“that were ludicrously overstaffed, horribly overcapitalised, just embarrassments because they used social services that they provided as a shield against investigation into their wastefulness and inefficiency.” That is what David Lange said about the Government’s trading enterprises in the 1980s—“ludicrously overstaffed, horribly overcapitalised, just embarrassments”. Today’s State-owned enterprises are infinitely better than that, but there is certainly no evidence to suppose, as the Greens and Labour blindingly and ideologically believe, that State enterprise is more efficient than private enterprise. So it is time you moved on with the times.

When we look at the electricity market today, the Consumer Powerswitch site, as we have heard, shows that in 14 out of the 21 regions in New Zealand today the cheapest company is privately owned. What those members do not understand is that if a company is always more expensive than the opposition, it goes out of business. That is how market capitalism works. We can legislate all we like for social responsibility and other things such as what Supplementary Order Paper 61 talks about, but a company will be successful for its shareholders only if it serves its customers well. That is how it works. And to do that, it needs to be as efficient as possible and it needs to look after its staff, and if it does not, some other company will take over. That is how capitalism works. It is bizarre to hear members opposite spitting out the word “profit” as if it were a dirty word. Well, profit is the basis of the market economy. The food, the clothing, the cars, the books, the TVs, the iPods—all the things that we desire—are provided by companies not as a response to some clause on social responsibility but because they want to provide a service and make a well-earned profit. It works well. It is the most natural thing in the world.

So the relevant question is whether the infusion of this private sector thinking and capital—a minority infusion, as outlined in this bill—will be beneficial for these companies. I believe that it will. On that basis, I think Part 2 is excellent legislation and I am looking forward to it going further.

HONE HARAWIRA (Leader—Mana) : Kia ora mai anō rā tātou. Tēnā koe, Mr Chair. Kia ora tātou katoa. Do you know what is so sad about looking across the other side of the Chamber and hearing people talking about the Treaty clause—section 45Q in clause 16? Not one of the Māori MPs from National has even bothered to speak in defence of this Treaty clause. Not one of them. Tau Henare has not spoken in favour of the Treaty clause. He has not got up to speak on it at all. You can normally not shut the man up, but do you think he is going to come here and defend National’s Treaty clause? No way, Jose. Hekia Parata—has she stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: Paula Bennett—has she stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: Mike Sabin—has he stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: Simon Bridges—has he stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: And what about your buddies in the Māori Party? Tariana Turia—has she stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: Pita Sharples—has he stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: Te Ururoa Flavell—has he stood up to defend National’s Treaty clause?

Hon Members: No!

HONE HARAWIRA: Do you know why? Because all of your Māori buddies think it sucks! The one electorate that always backed you guys has been Tūwharetoa. Georgina te Heuheu, come hell or high water, always backed National. What happens? She goes off for 5 minutes and you are kicking her tribe in the teeth. That tribe gave its water for the nation, for the benefit of the nation, and you guys have betrayed them. You are going to flog it off. You and your market capitalism.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Do not bring me into the debate.

HONE HARAWIRA: My apologies, Mr Chairman.

Hon Member: They’re going to flog it off.

HONE HARAWIRA: They are going to flog it off. Market capitalism has nothing at all to do with the Treaty. This is embarrassing. When, of course, they say that they have been out and had their consultation, come on, who is the iwi leader that has come out in support of this? Nobody! Nobody supports this.

This Treaty clause is a jack-up. You can see it when it says: “For the avoidance of doubt, subsection (1) does not apply to persons other than the Crown.” And then the Crown takes the view that it is only going to be a majority shareholder in a private company. There are no Treaty obligations on the Crown in respect of this deal. I heard somebody speaking earlier about the Crown’s recognition of the Treaty as being cast in concrete when it comes to water. That is a wonderful statement. What happens? The New Zealand Māori Council says: “Right, let’s test that commitment. Let’s take it to the Waitangi Tribunal and see what the Māori interest is.” What does this Government do? It opposes the New Zealand Māori Council even getting a hearing. This ain’t got nothing to do with the National Party supporting Māori interests in water or recognising Māori interests in water or anything of the sort. It is about betraying that Māori interest in the water.

Mihi atu ki taku tuahine e nohonoho nei, ki a Nanaia.

[I acknowledge my sister colleague seated here, Nanaia.]

Waikato-Tainui seem to have got themselves a nice private deal, so congratulations to them. But if this is supposed to be for everybody, how come other Māori did not get it? And why did Tainui get it and Tūwharetoa get a kick in the teeth? This is a sad piece of legislation. This has nothing at all to do with recognising the rights of Māori or recognising the rights of the Treaty. I want to say that Mana opposes this Mixed Ownership Model Bill in its entirety today, tomorrow, and ever after. Kia ora tātou.

CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South) : This is just typical of this Government: to say one thing and do another, to get up here and make soothing noises to reassure us about the Mixed Ownership Model Bill and say everything will be all right, and then do another thing. Deceit—that is what it is all about. Deceit.

My colleague Phil Goff in the Committee last night talked about the deceit of this Government, and I want to give this Government a history lesson of its own tonight about downright deceit. It has already practised it on previous legislation, and it is going to practise it on this piece of legislation. I am referring to “Mr Smooth”, the previous Minister in the chair, the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, who got up and reassured the Committee tonight about the 10 percent cap on shares, and that serious, terrible sanctions are going to be applied if anyone breaches them. In effect, they are being set up to breach them, and if they do breach them, they will get away with it. If they do not get away with it, the Government will provide a waiver, which is what it has done in previous legislation.

I want to speak tonight to Supplementary Order Paper 50, in my name, which would amend Part 2. I also want to show that you just cannot trust this Government. But before I do, I would just like to point out that today Otago residents are feeling the impact of electricity price rises as the winter temperatures plummet. Today, yesterday, the day before, and for at least a couple of weeks now there have been freezing temperatures in Otago. It has been estimated that an average-sized household could face increases of $58—at least $58—for the period from June to August, taking the price for those 3 months to $779 for an average household. That is a very conservative estimate, because so many households in Otago face costs of around $400 to $450 a month for their electricity bill. Any price rise on top of that will make things difficult. And this is before the sale of the assets. As we have heard, post the sales the average charges are going to increase. They are going to increase, and people simply cannot afford it. Those kinds of price rises and those kinds of costs on the average family are just simply not sustainable, and, as every member in this Committee knows, as every resident in Otago knows, and as every household in this country knows, the price of electricity is going to go up following the sale of these energy companies.

I am speaking to clause 16 in Part 2. Section 45T in clause 16 addresses the effect of exceeding a 10 percent limit on shares in the sold-off energy companies. It sets out the effect of a person exceeding the 10 percent cap. We have heard that the person who breaches the cap will have to comply with any written notice from the company to ensure that that 10 percent limit is not exceeded, that they will have to remedy it within 60 days, and that they may have their voting rights and their shares taken away should they exceed it. Such terrible sanctions they are! But where is the compliance on this? Where are the teeth? This is a toothless piece of legislation. It is a joke. It is cloud-cuckoo-land. There is no serious penalty in this legislation.

This time last year this House was debating a piece of legislation. It was the Telecommunications (TSO, Broadband, and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It was a serious piece of legislation. In that legislation there were significant financial penalties. The Labour Party, at the time, argued that those financial penalties did not go far enough. We did manage to get them increased from $5 million up to $10 million per breach of the law, and we had to argue pretty strongly for that. But that was $10 million—$10 million—for a breach of that legislation by Telecom, essentially, because the legislation enabled Telecom to be handed $1 billion, more or less, to roll out ultra-fast broadband. But if Telecom breached the key provisions in the legislation it was going to be handed down a $10 million penalty.

Supplementary Order Paper 50, in my name, requires that there be a $1 million fine—one-tenth of $10 million—if the 10 percent cap is exceeded. One million dollars. I do not think that is unreasonable. Do other members of the Committee think that is unreasonable? It is not unreasonable compared with another piece of legislation that was essentially around another important policy that this Government was pushing out. The fine was $10 million for breaching it. So a $1 million penalty is not unreasonable. If you do not have a financial sanction, you do not have a sanction that is going to dissuade people from breaking it. So that is one point I would like to make.

The second point is that this Government cannot be trusted to follow through on this part of the bill, around the 10 percent cap, and I would like to tell you why. In early May just this year the Associate Minister of Finance Steven Joyce defended the Crown’s decision to waive the 10 percent Kiwi share restriction for AMP Capital Investors following the Australian-owned company’s decision to lift its stake in Telecom’s spin-off, Chorus, to 15 percent. This was to 15 percent from the 10 percent cap that was on the Kiwi share. I challenge the Minister in the chair tonight, the Minister for Building and Construction, to get up and tell us that he will give a guarantee on behalf of his Government that there will be no waivers for the AMPs of the world that come to the Government and put up a good case to lift their 10 percent stake.

I think Mr Goff in the Chamber last night demonstrated how easy it would be for four or five foreign-owned companies to take that 49 percent. Only one of them would have to come to the Government and put up a case for putting a waiver out so that the company could buy some of those shares from the mums and dads and lift its share to 15 percent. So I challenge this Government to give a guarantee, because Steven Joyce in this Chamber, this time last year, gave this House a guarantee that there would be no breach of the Kiwi share—there would be no breach of the Kiwi share. And what did he do? In May this year it was breached, and it went to 15 percent. So how can we, and how can the public of New Zealand, be reassured that that will not happen with the Mixed Ownership Model Bill and with the sale of our assets? How can we be reassured that the so-called mum and dad shares that are bought up cannot be bought by a company outside of this country, or even inside of this country, and that a special case cannot be made to the Government whereby the company can actually lift its holding to 15 percent? As I said, I challenge the Minister in the chair tonight to get up and give us a guarantee, because we have seen it happen under previous legislation, and I suspect we will see it happen under this legislation.

Labour argued, and we have put up Supplementary Order Paper 49, in Clayton Cosgrove’s name, to keep that cap at 1 percent. That would be a much more sensible thing to do. That would provide much more reassurance for the people of New Zealand that this Government is serious about not allowing outside interests to gain more of a foothold, and about allowing and encouraging the so-called mum and dad investors to actually buy those shares. This Government appears not to be listening to that. When we argued for a 5 percent cap in the Finance and Expenditure Committee, Government members certainly did not listen. So we know that it looks as if it is going to be 10 percent, and it could be 15 percent, and if it is 15 percent, then we are going to see outside companies gaining more and more of a foothold in our energy assets.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) : I would like to talk about Part 2, and this is my first chance to go on the record. I am really pleased to have this opportunity—

Hone Harawira: No testosterone now.

CATHERINE DELAHUNTY: No, I will get in touch with my feminine side, for the benefit of the Committee, and speak in a delicate tone. My question is: do Part 2 and the bill give all our citizens more power to ensure our collective future? No, they do not. Does the bill give everyone a sense of honouring our parents’ efforts to create assets? No, it does not. Does the bill give us confidence that our power bills will be safe? Not at all. Also, does the bill honour Te Tiriti o Waitangi? No, it does not. I would like to agree with the speech of Hone Harawira about the attack on te Tiriti in this bill.

Let us look at new section 45Q, in clause 16, “The Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi)”. I find subsection (2) very interesting: “For the avoidance of doubt,”. So just in case anybody thought this nation was actually serious about Te Tiriti o Waitangi, just in case we actually thought we meant it, just in case all these MPs who trot off to Waitangi every year pretending to honour te Tiriti, just in case we thought that the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was actually a serious issue for this Parliament, just in case the Government said it was fine to raise the tino rangatiratanga flag, because it meant something—let us test that, just in case. And what it comes down to is section 45Q(2): “For the avoidance of doubt, subsection (1) does not apply to persons other than the Crown.” If that is not a betrayal of te Tiriti, I do not know what is. It happened before when the assets were sold, and it is happening again. Some of us—me in particular—are getting older. We remember what happened in the 1980s. We have not forgotten Roger Douglas. He is much missed in this House by some but not by me. What we are finding is a repeat of history that is very, very disappointing for the New Zealand public.

What I want to talk about is Te Tiriti o Waitangi, which is an obligation of Pākehā and tauiwi katoa, not just of Māori. So it is not just the Māori MPs who should be standing up and saying “Shame on this bill!”; it is the Pākehā MPs, because we are the beneficiaries of te Tiriti, and we have an obligation to stand up for it being implemented in full, not ripped off by this legislation.

But let us get on to the favourite expression: “mum and dad”. If we were in the 21st century—which this bill definitely is not; it is a repeat of the 1980s and 1990s—we would not be talking about mum and dad. We might be talking about mum and mum or dad and dad. We might be talking about mum as a solo parent. We might be talking whānau, whanaunga, or hapū. We might be talking about aiga, because we no longer live in the nuclear family, people. We live in a vastly diverse world, where families who will not be buying these shares because they cannot afford them are actually facing real challenges.

What this bill highlights is the ideological divide between people who think that we are shareholders who want to have dividends and profit, and people who think we are citizens who believe we belong to a nation. So which one do we favour? Obviously the Greens stand for the concept of citizenship. We stand for the idea that buying shares and making a profit as individuals is less important than the actual collective well-being and the ability to plan based on assets owned by us that we do not want to give away. It is very interesting, this whole mum and dad kaupapa.

I went out on the streets and I have met some fantastic people on the streets of Aotearoa in the last few weeks and months. It has been really awesome, and some of them are mums and dads, some of them are mums and mums, and some of them are grandparents. All of them are lining up to sign the petition because they do not believe a word of this bill. They are not convinced by a word of this, and, what is more, they are insulted by the idea that we have amnesia, that we cannot remember what happened, that we have forgotten that we had to buy back the railways, that we have forgotten that we can actually have schools and hospitals without selling our assets, and that nobody, if they are a decent budgeter, sells the roof of the house while they are in hard times. They keep the house, then they build upon it, and they make sure they stay dry in the interim. Instead, we are going to sell off these things. Once they are gone, they are gone, and then who gets to buy them back? The taxpayer, as usual. The mums and dads, dads and mums, and grandparents on the streets of Aotearoa did not say: “Oh, I wish I could buy a share. Oh, I am so excited.” They said: “What is it going to do to my power bill?”, and “How dare these people do this in our name?”, and “How dare they say they know how to run an economy in our name, because this is just a joke.”

I want to tell the story of one particular mother, because I think the human story is important. This week I got a letter from Christchurch, and it was from a sole parent. She is an unusual sole parent. She has a son in his 30s, and he is an intellectually disabled and often violent young man, cared for by his mother at home. She said to me, with regard to power increases: “We have no oven, we have no fridge, we have no phone, and I can’t pay the power bill now.” I do not know how I am going to look this person in the eye and say: “Well, I was part of a Parliament that sold off the assets so that your power bill will go up.” She, already, is not surviving. I wonder whether this Committee can try to imagine what it is like to be a mother who is raising a child who will not grow up and is potentially violent, and who is cold, and who has no oven or fridge or phone, in this winter, and we are selling her assets, not because she asked us to but because that is what the Government has decided is its way out of paying for tax cuts for the wealthy, which is something this woman will never be. What is more, she will never be buying a share. She does not have a share in your vision of the world. Her share as a citizen is through the Government owning assets that are going to provide a health and education system that should support her. I am ashamed to see the struggle that she lives in on a daily basis, and now we are going to make it worse. That is actually one of the most powerful reasons for standing up against this bill—it is the human reality. Te Tiriti reality, the human reality, is that the Parliament does not have the right to destroy something that has been given to us to talk about, and that belongs to the citizens of Aotearoa.

I will say that these emperors are naked, and it is not a pretty sight. I believe that many people in Aotearoa can see that you are naked, and it is certainly not something that they are enjoying seeing, because that nakedness is the nakedness of an ideology that has failed in the past and will fail again. Basically, those people on the streets of Tauranga, of Hauraki, and of Christchurch are signing the petition and lining up to sign it—[Interruption] Thank goodness Maurice Williamson, the Minister in the chair, is not naked. Those people are actually doing a fantastic job of expressing their view, but unfortunately they are not being listened to. Of course, the National members will not take calls on this. Of course they will not, because as a flagship policy they are not prepared to defend it, they do not know how to defend it, and they do not even think they have to defend it. But the day will come—the day of reckoning. As a Cassandra on the walls of Troy, I tell you now that the day will come. It does not take a prophetess to tell you the consequences of not listening to people. So as a Cassandra I am saying to you that there are people out there watching the Government and listening to the Government’s extremely thin rhetoric on Part 2. We need to stand up now with those people and support the ownership of our assets. It is a pretty fundamental thing that this country should have something that belongs to all people, not just shares that belong to people who can afford to buy them.

Maybe I am mixing with the wrong crowd. Maybe I should make sure I mix only with the private school crowd, or maybe I should just stop going out on the street and talking to people, but actually there are many citizens from every level of the economy who understand how to manage a budget, and what they are seeing is that this Budget is not being managed properly. If you have to sell the roof off the house, you have actually got nothing.

I applaud all the people who have made the very complex technical analysis of this bill. I think Russel Norman has done a great job on economics. I heard a really good speech yesterday by Charles Chauvel. I have heard speeches by many people who have covered ground that I do not want to cover. But as a person working at a grassroots community level, and as a woman who has been a community worker and advocate for beneficiaries, I am really ashamed that this ridiculous façade is going on in this Chamber. This debacle is going on and the Government is not even trying to defend it. I can understand why it is not, because there is really nothing to say, except: “We want to sell the assets.” The idea that the Mixed Ownership Model Bill is somehow different from selling 100 percent of the assets is all about smoke and mirrors, and it is all about naked emperors. So for goodness’ sake, naked emperors, go and have a look in the mirror. It will not be a pretty sight, but you might learn something. Behind your shoulder you will see the people of this country lining up—they are lining up—to tell you that we do not want to sell our assets, and that the 49 percent is just a façade that will never work.

Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram) : I am very happy to take a call on the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. Specifically, I want to talk to clause 16 and address some of the rhetoric we have heard in this Chamber over the last couple of days, and the sanctimony we have been hearing—that it is OK to sell assets because someone else has done it before. I do not even want to get started about where that logic could take us. It pretty much leaves it wide open. Anybody could do anything, because everything has been done before.

What we are hearing is the sanctimony from members opposite that somehow what they are doing is offering protection, and that our assets will not all be sold. But the bit that I love the most—the kernel I love the most—in this sanctimony that has been flowing from the other side is: “It is OK for us to sell them because we told people first.” Somehow it is OK, because they went out and told people. Well, do you know what? Going out and telling someone you are going to do them over, and then doing it, does not make it any better. Selling assets is wrong, always has been, always will be, and it does not matter what you tell them.

Maggie Barry: You’ve got amnesia.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: I have no amnesia, “Queen Margaret”. I will tell you about growing up on the streets of Sydenham in the 1980s, and the fact that asset sales are very much part of my political whakapapa.

Let us have a look at the protections—the so-called protections—that have been put in place under clause 16. What we have is a Government that is running scared. What it has said is that it is going to protect these assets because we are going to retain 51 percent ownership of them, and it has put these protections around them.

Let us think about the technicalities of these protections. It is 51 percent of voting shares. This offers no protection against asset stripping. What will still be allowed is the fact that the assets of the companies can be sold. If members opposite want to traverse the history of asset sales in this country, I am more than happy to oblige and have a discussion about what National did in the 1990s, have a look at what asset stripping did to some of this nation’s assets, and talk about the shame that members opposite should feel. They should hardly sit there with the sanctimony and the crowing that we are hearing. Let us have a look at this much-lauded clause 16 about the restriction on the reduction of the Crown’s holdings.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Is the member going to buy them back? No.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: We do not want to sell them. That is what we are doing here. What we have is a clause that prohibits a shareholding Minister from disposing of shares in the Minister’s name, or permitting the issue or allotment of shares or securities in a mixed-ownership model company if doing so would result in the Crown owning less than 51 percent. But, ladies and gentlemen, this does nothing to protect the very assets that those companies hold.

Once a mixed-ownership model company has had its shares sold to private investors, the assets of that company are very much at risk. Pressure can be put on the company to sell the assets to meet the obligation to return a profit. The assets that these companies own are not guaranteed from being flogged off. It is disingenuous of members opposite to sit here and say that New Zealanders are going to retain a majority shareholding in these companies, because it is simply not true. The dams can be sold. The assets of all of our power companies that are being put on the block by members opposite are very much at risk, because the bill that this Government has brought to this House offers absolutely no protection against asset stripping.

We know, bitterly, from history that members opposite belong to a party that will do nothing to protect against asset stripping. They have shown it once, and they will show it again. When Treasury officials came to the Finance and Expenditure Committee to talk about this, they confirmed to the members of that select committee that there was no mechanism in this bill to prevent asset stripping. Likewise, Solid Energy, one of the companies on the block, confirmed that under this legislation before the House privatisation would allow it to sell subsidiaries under partial privatisation.

So I have an amendment that addresses this. I have an amendment to provide that companies cannot sell off individual assets, like dams and wind farms, to private companies in order to asset strip or defeat the purpose of the 51 percent ownership clause. Instead, a mixed-ownership model company would be required to publicly notify that it intends to sell an asset, and then must wait for the sale to be approved by the Governor-General by Order in Council. If members opposite really do not want to make a raid on the assets of this country, they will vote in favour of this amendment. There is no reason not to—not unless they are lining up to absolutely wholesale flog off the assets.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Say something new.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: OK, Mr Brownlee, I will say something new. I am going to talk about Tranz Rail. I am going to talk about Tranz Rail and “back to the future”. I am going to look at the shameless asset stripping that happened when National was last in Government, in 1993, when the Bolger Government sold Tranz Rail far too cheaply to a consortium of Wisconsin Central Transportation, Berkshire Partners, and Fay Richwhite. This was privatised—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Talk about the bill.

Dr MEGAN WOODS: I am talking about the bill. I am talking about an amendment that will prevent that from happening again. If you do not want to flog off the assets, you should vote for it, Mr Brownlee.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

Dr MEGAN WOODS: Sorry; they should vote for it. So what happened? The assets of Tranz Rail were sold off, because there was no mechanism to prevent it, just as there is no mechanism in this present bill to prevent the sale of assets belonging to the 51 percent - owned company. There is no mechanism in here. It has been confirmed by Treasury officials at the select committee that that mechanism is not present in the bill. The amendment I am putting forward would put such a mechanism in place and would protect the very assets that have been built up by generations of New Zealanders—the dams that New Zealanders have toiled away at, and did not build just for members opposite to flog off to the lowest bidder.

The reason why the pressure will be put on these companies to sell these assets is to return a profit. These are companies that are now going to be covered off by the Companies Act, not the State-Owned Enterprises Act. They are compelled to operate with one purpose, and that is to return a profit to the shareholders. So there need to be these mechanisms to protect against that in this bill, and that is what this amendment is giving.

What this bill is doing is nothing short of looting. It is a raid on the assets of hard-working New Zealanders who have built these up over generations. We have seen what members opposite and the party opposite did in the dark days of asset sales. We have seen the state that Tranz Rail was in. We have seen the investment that needed to be put in to build it back up. There is nothing that they will do to stop the asset stripping that will happen there.

The profits of Tranz Rail dropped dramatically from 1999 to 2000. What had to happen when the Clark Labour Government came to bring it back was there had to be a huge infrastructural investment, because there was no ability for Tranz Rail to invest in that company. So if members opposite really do believe in a 51 percent stake for New Zealanders, if members opposite really do believe that, and it is more than empty rhetoric, and they are not just planning an ideological raid on our assets, they will vote for this amendment and they will put in place the mechanism that will stop the asset stripping. They will put in place the mechanism that will allow New Zealanders to, at the very least, retain a 51 percent shareholding. You should not be selling them at all, but if you are going to sell them, then you should, at the very least, protect against that.

MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) : I move, That the question be now put.

BRENDAN HORAN (NZ First) : I rise on behalf of New Zealand First to oppose this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. Let us look at five facts. First, the five energy-generating State-owned enterprises raised $868 million in dividends last year. That is a return of 16.2 percent in the last 10 years, and by comparison the Government could borrow at a rate of 3.66 percent per annum. The Government has said that the proceeds from the asset sales will go towards investing in new infrastructure. We heard that today. Well, despite this, the Government plans to spend $150 million from the Future Investment Fund on doing up New Zealand House in London.

There is also a loophole in this legislation that means that the Government can sell more than 49 percent of these shares in these State-owned enterprises, given that the 10 percent and 51 percent restrictions should be calculated on the basis of voting rights, rather than the total percentage of all securities. Growing rates of poverty show that the mum and dad investors are having a hard enough time putting food on the table, let alone investing in companies that they already own.

Earlier today we heard some members from that side of the Chamber speaking about how Winston Peters had sold Auckland International Airport shares. Let us bring a little bit of honesty to that argument. First of all, New Zealand First was in coalition with the National Government. It was a National Government idea to sell those Auckland International Airport shares. National was going to sell them to anybody, but New Zealand First put in there—and Winston Peters made sure that there was—a clause that those shares went only to New Zealanders. After doing that, the Rt Hon Winston Peters reflected and realised it was wrong, and said so at the time. Mr Brownlee would remember that.

What happened when that Government over there tried to sell Wellington International Airport? A man of infinite character, honesty, and integrity, who was Deputy Prime Minister, said: “No. I will have nothing to do with selling these Wellington Airport shares.”, and walked. That was the coalition gone. It is too bad that the Hon Tau Henare is not here. If he is watching TV, if he could get out of his barber’s chair—I apologise.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order!

BRENDAN HORAN: I apologise for that.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I know you are apologising. I know what you are apologising for. There have been too many references to members who are not present, and we must make sure we do not comment on the absence of members from the Chamber.

BRENDAN HORAN: Thank you, Mr Chair. [Interruption] It is very hard for those members over there to learn anything with their lips flapping. Perhaps if the Hon Gerry Brownlee would stop his lips flapping, then he would be doing a bit more for the people of Christchurch, because he would hear what is really happening there. But as I was saying—before I was rudely interrupted—there is a man, Winston Peters, who left the deputy leadership on principle. Now there is an opportunity for those members over there to walk across the floor, because they know that this is wrong for New Zealand. We have heard it before, in their unconvincing speeches.

Let us talk about the Hon Mr Dunne, who campaigned on the preciousness of our water. We heard about that earlier today. And yet here he is, trying to sell our water. One of the great things about New Zealand is our water.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: You can talk rubbish but you can’t tell lies.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Do not say that.

BRENDAN HORAN: The reason why our water is so precious is because it carries the wairua of New Zealand.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The Leader of the House—who is the Leader of the House, and should know better—used an unparliamentary term. I waited for a few moments to see whether you would admonish him. But I think you are very well aware that that term and accusation of a member cannot be used.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Speaker’s ruling 42/2 says that you cannot say the word “lie”. From now on in, I want to keep it seemly. It is a robust debate. I did warn the member that he could not say that, and I do not want to hear that again.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. With respect—and thank you for your ruling—as I understand it, it is the normal practice if that word is used that the member withdraws and apologises, especially somebody as eminent and powerful as the Leader of the House.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): It is my view, and I make the decision. I have ruled that he will not do it again. I am asking Brendan Horan to complete his speech. That is the end of the matter.

BRENDAN HORAN: This water contains the wairua of New Zealand. It is the blood and bones of our ancestors that has leached through the soil into the waterways. How could this Government sell our wairua—our soul? That is why the Māori members on that side of the Chamber are not standing up and giving convincing speeches.

Yesterday I drew your attention—and the media’s attention—to Genesis and the Genesis chair, Ms Shipley. Last year, just before the Budget, remember that Genesis purchased two power stations at Tekapō.

SUE MORONEY (Labour) : Thank you for the opportunity to put on record the opposition from the people of the Waikato to this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. It may have escaped some people’s attention, but most of these resources that are being put up on the block actually come from the Waikato region. We have got dams up and down the Waikato River. We have got the Huntly power station. We have got the coalmines of the Huntly region. We have got the geothermal fields of the Wairākei area. So for the region that I come from, actually, it is a bit personal. It is a bit personal, because this bill disproportionately affects the Waikato region. None of those Waikato MPs for the Government have had the courage to put on record the opposition of the vast majority of people in the Waikato to having their State assets flogged off from underneath them.

For us in the Waikato, it is not just an issue of why this is so fundamentally wrong economically but also because this actually makes up our geography. These are many of the landmarks of our region. Yes, clause 16, I think, is the part that the Waikato people object to most strongly. This is the part—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Interjections should be related to the speech and not be cross-interjections that have got nothing to do with the debate. I want to hear what this speaker is saying. I ask you to tone it down.

SUE MORONEY: Thank you, Mr Chairperson. I am talking about the vast majority of the people of the Waikato and why they oppose Part 2 of this bill, in particular. The thing that worries Waikato people the most is that many of our landmarks could be sold into foreign ownership. As I was saying, for the rest of the country this is economic madness, but for us in the Waikato this is actually deeply personal, because it is many of our families who actually built those dams. It is many of our families who built the Huntly power station. So it is about the sweat of our ancestors, who actually created these State assets, and, yes, we all own them. It is not that Government’s right to sell, from underneath the feet of the people of the Waikato, those assets into foreign ownership.

I do want to speak in favour of two Supplementary Order Papers being put forward, one in the name of Phil Goff and the other in the name of Kris Faafoi. Those two amendments to clause 16 in Part 2 of this bill actually would limit the ownership to New Zealand residents. They would do it in this way. Supplementary Order Paper 52 from Phil Goff would actually limit the ownership to New Zealand tax residents. I think that is only fair. That would give the people of the Waikato some comfort that our landmarks are not going to end up in majority foreign ownership. Then there is Supplementary Order Paper 51 from Kris Faafoi, which takes a slightly different approach.

Kris Faafoi: That’s a very good amendment.

SUE MORONEY: It is a very good amendment. The people of the Waikato would also gain comfort from this, because Kris Faafoi’s amendment would limit ownership to New Zealand passport holders. There, again, we would know that the Karapiro dam that we drive across, the Ātiamuri dam, and all of those dams up and down the Waikato actually would remain in New Zealand ownership, and I think that is deeply personal for the people of the Waikato.

I also want to talk about the lunacy of what this part does around the Treaty of Waitangi commitments. What are we going to do in the Waikato? The Waikato River—

Hon Tau Henare: Oh, yeah, that’s right. I remember the foreshore and seabed. Yeah, that’s right.

SUE MORONEY: Well, Tau Henare might like to listen to this. The Waikato River is co-managed. It is co-managed between Tainui and Environment Waikato—a fantastic model. It was actually brought about by Labour, but good on the current Government for keeping it going. But here is the problem: what are we going to do about only 51 percent of the dams up and down the Waikato River having the Treaty of Waitangi obligations applying to them? What are we going to do? Are we going to say that when it comes to opening up the floodgates and putting water down the Waikato River from the Karapiro dam we are going to consult Māori, but if it is the Ātiamuri dam we are not going to consult Māori? Is that what it is going to mean?

I want members opposite—in fact, I ask the Minister in the chair, the Hon Maurice Williamson, to get up to explain exactly how this is going to shake down. If that State-owned enterprise is split and if only 51 percent of those dams have Treaty of Waitangi obligations attached to them and the other 49 percent do not, how, literally, are we going to manage that when it comes to the water resource management, when it comes to actually consulting Māori, and when it comes—

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : I move, That the question be now put.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) : Well, there you have it. National members do not like it. They do not like it, and they want to shut it down. They want to end the debate, because it is not going well for them. It is not going well for them because they know that New Zealanders do not support this piece of legislation, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. New Zealanders know that we inherited these assets from those who came before us, and this Government has no respect for that, whatsoever. It is ready to hock them off. Forget about future generations. Forget about leaving anything for them. Just sell it—just sell it. If it cannot cut it, it wants to sell it. That is what this Government is all about. Those members do not want to talk about it any more, so now they are trying to shut the debate down. It is no wonder they do not want to talk about it, because the Mixed Ownership Model Bill is riddled with holes.

I want to talk in particular about new section 3C, inserted by clause 15. This is an incredibly important section because it is a provision that under normal circumstances would never get through this House. It would never get through this House because this is what is known as a “Henry VIII” clause. It is a “Henry VIII” clause in the sense that it gives the Government, without reference to Parliament, the ability to change the law. It gives the Government by Order in Council the ability to change the law without reference to Parliament. We call it a “Henry VIII” clause because in the Proclamation by the Crown Act of 1539, Henry VIII effectively gave himself the power to do just that—to basically make laws by a proclamation and without any reference to Parliament. These days that is frowned upon. These days we think it is a good idea that where the law is going to be changed, the Parliament should debate and vote on that. This provision here gives the Government the ability to change this legislation, once it is passed, without coming back to the Parliament to have that approved. It is a constitutional outrage. It is wrong. It is absolutely wrong.

In fact, this Parliament has recommended against such clauses. The Regulations Review Committee in this Parliament was set up at least in part to prevent those types of mechanisms being put in place. Normally, the Regulations Review Committee would produce a recommendation against this. Of course, that may well have happened, had this bill not had a truncated select committee process. Had the Government not used its majority on the Finance and Expenditure Committee to report it back 5 weeks early, perhaps the Regulations Review Committee would have had a chance to do its job. It could have highlighted to the Government the fact that this provision is a “Henry VIII” provision, and it is not something that the Parliament should be passing.

This section, new section 3C, particularly subsection (2)(a) and (b), allows the Government by Order in Council to amend the Ombudsmen Act and the Income Tax Act without those amendments going to Parliament. That is absolutely outrageous. The Ombudsmen Act is actually quite an important part of our constitutional framework. It is not just a regular law; it is actually part of our constitutional framework, the Ombudsmen Act. It is a constitutional outrage. I have already said that. Listen up, listen up. This provision gives the Government, by Order in Council, the ability to amend the Ombudsmen Act 1975. Orders in Council without reference to Parliament are not designed to amend primary legislation. They are not designed to amend primary legislation.

Gerry Brownlee needs a lesson in how the New Zealand constitution works. It is very concerning to learn that the Leader of the House, the guy responsible for overseeing how Parliament works, does not understand that the Government should not change legislation without bringing those amendments to Parliament, debating them, and having them voted upon. Gerry Brownlee seems to think it is OK. Well, it is probably not surprising, because this is the guy who brought a bill to Parliament that basically made him the tsar of Christchurch, with the ability to change just about every law in the land without it having to come back to this Parliament. This provision is wrong and it should not be allowed to stand. In fact, I have a few amendments that I intend to table on this particular provision to allow us to examine that more fully.

I want to turn now to Supplementary Order Paper 64 in my name. It has been on the Table for some time, so members should have made themselves familiar with it. It is a very good Supplementary Order Paper. By way of background, first of all, under the recommendation of the select committee, if a vote has been passed by one of these new mixed-ownership model companies whilst somebody holds more than 10 percent of the shares, under this legislation being proposed by the Government if the company could mount a case that it was unaware that someone held more than 10 percent of the shares, then that resolution would continue to take effect. What my amendment does is that it does still allow that to happen, but for situations where a person breaches the 10 percent cap and where the vote was close and it would have made a material difference to the outcome if that person had not held the 10 percent, this amendment basically says that the resolution passed by the company should not stand. So it is a very important safeguard. I hope the Government will vote in favour of it.

It is in no way a frivolous amendment. In fact, it is quite an important amendment because it basically says that if someone knowingly goes out and buys more than 10 percent of the company to exercise more than 10 percent of the voting rights and then uses those voting rights so that some resolution is passed that would not have been passed had they not breached the 10 percent cap, that should not be allowed to stand, and this amendment guarantees that it would not be allowed to stand. So I hope the Government will vote in favour of this amendment, because it is a very sensible and practical amendment.

The two major issues that I have talked about are the “Henry VIII” provision, under section 3C in clause 15—I hope the Government will take that on board and support some of the amendments that I intend to put forward to that—and I hope it will support my Supplementary Order Paper 64, which will amend clause 16 with regard to the 10 percent voting rule, because I think those are very, very important.

Just one final thing. To talk a little bit more about section 3C, there is debate around whether or not the Government should able to declare these companies to be State-owned enterprises again if it decides not to sell them. In doing so, in saying that it is not going to sell them and is going to make them State-owned enterprises again—

Hon Member: The flip-flop clause!

CHRIS HIPKINS: —the flip-flop clause; it is the back-out clause, because it knows it is on a hiding to nothing with this because the public just does not like it—this is the back-down clause—

Hon Member: Hekia Parata clause.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —otherwise known as the Hekia Parata clause; that is right—it is designed to allow it to do that. If it decides to keep 100 percent of those companies, it can make them State-owned enterprises again and make them subject, without reference to Parliament, to the Ombudsmen Act, the Official Information Act, and so on. So the question is that if, by keeping 100 percent of them, the Government thinks it is acceptable to make them subject to the Ombudsmen Act, the Official Information Act, and so on, why would it not do that if it is going to retain 51 percent of them? What is different between owning 51 percent of the company and owning 100 percent of the company? Why would it be that with 100 percent ownership it should be under the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act but under 51 percent ownership it should not be subject to those mechanisms? There is actually no justification for that. In fact, if the Crown is going to own a 51 percent stake in these companies, they should be subject to the Official Information Act and the Ombudsmen Act. They should be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny, as fully owned Crown companies are and State-owned enterprises are, because it is ultimately the taxpayer’s money that is involved in the shareholding here. It is taxpayers’ money, so they should be subject to that. Unfortunately, under this section 3C that the Government has put forward, the Government could make these companies that are becoming mixed-ownership model companies subject to those pieces of legislation only if it retained a 100 percent shareholding in them. If we take, for example, Air New Zealand, the Government does not own a 100 percent shareholding but it owns the vast majority of shares, because it was sold off and it collapsed, and the Government had to buy it back.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: What Government did that?

CHRIS HIPKINS: It was the Labour Government that did that, Mr Cosgrove, and it was a very sensible decision by the Labour Government. Because of the failed privatisation of Air New Zealand, we were faced with a choice between having no national airline at all and the Government buying it back. So the then Labour Government decided that it should be purchased back because it was important that New Zealand had a national airline. The difference between that and this bill, of course, is that these things are bolted down. The hydro dams and the gas plants are bolted down. It would be a very, very difficult situation, if these companies collapsed, that the Government would find itself in. I strongly oppose this legislation.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : I rise to speak on this bill before the Committee, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill, which is the partial privatisation of the people’s assets by this National Government. I wish to speak to a few particular aspects of this bill, and I want to start with the amendment that the Government is moving around protecting—or apparently protecting—the 51 percent ownership limits. That is, it is moving an amendment so that the Government needs to maintain 51 percent not only of the voting shares but of all categories of shares.

On the one hand, this is a bit of a victory, in the sense that it is forcing the Government on to the back foot on this issue. Originally, what the Government wanted to do was maintain 51 percent of the voting shares only but then allow more of the non-voting shares to be sold off. It will not be able to do that any more, so that is progress. However, what it points to is one of the fundamental problems with this bill, which is about access to capital. Because these mixed-ownership model companies, which are established by Part 2, could originally, as the bill was, have accessed more capital by issuing non-voting shares, and the Crown would not necessarily have bought those non-voting shares—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member. The time has come for the dinner break.

• Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: As I was saying before the break, I was discussing the Government’s amendment that would prevent the Government from selling more than 49 percent of all the share types, not just the voting shares, and the significance of that for the companies. What this means is that there is now fundamentally no difference in terms of access to capital between the mixed-ownership model companies and the State-owned enterprises. Previously, before this amendment came in, the mixed-ownership model companies had the ability to issue non-voting shares in order to raise capital, even if the proportion of non-voting shares in private owners went above 49 percent. That gave them a mechanism to raise capital via that method. Once this amendment goes through, assuming that it will, the mixed-ownership model companies will no longer have that access to that capital. In fact, they will totally require the Crown to buy 51 percent of all the shares that they issue, whether those shares are voting shares or non-voting shares, in order for the Crown to maintain its 51 percent ownership of all the shares—voting and non-voting.

There is no way that the Government is going to provide these electricity companies with half of all their new capital needs—it is just not going to do it. The Government has repeatedly said that it has no capital to spare, it does not want to provide capital to these companies, and it does not want to provide capital to any companies. So, from the point of view of the companies, their only option to raise capital will be through debt instruments—that is, they will issue bonds. They will not be able to issue new shares, because the Government will basically block it from happening. So their only way to get more capital is to issue bonds or debt instruments. That is exactly what they can do now. They do not need to be converted into mixed-ownership model companies in order to raise capital through issuing debt instruments. The only new opportunity that they are provided in order to raise capital, in becoming mixed-ownership model companies, is that they could issue new equity instruments. But because the Government will not be willing to fork over new capital to buy the necessary 51 percent of all the shares that these companies may issue, there is no way the Government will allow them to do that. It fundamentally undermines the basic rationale of the entire reason that the Government started down this path.

The next issue I want to talk about is the issue of appropriations. The Government has been floating in this House and elsewhere the idea that it will be issuing bonus shares, if you like. It is a loyalty programme. What this means is that if you purchase 15 shares and you keep them for a certain amount of time, then you will be given a bonus share, a 16th share, for free. The bonus share does not come for free from the point of view of the seller of the asset. From the point of view of the seller of the asset, they are basically giving away money. The Crown does not have the legal ability to give away money, without getting an appropriation from this Parliament. Under the Constitution Act—

Gareth Hughes: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I wish to apologise to the member for interrupting, but the Standing Orders very clearly say that interjections must be related to the debate. I find it highly disrespectful what is happening between the Minister and Clayton Cosgrove.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I do not think the member is a Minister; I think he is a member. But the point is well made that there should not be interjections going backwards and forwards.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I apologise to my Green colleague and I apologise to you. I was assisting Mr Heatley with his addition.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is not a point of order, and, let me just say, there will be no tolerance for that. If members are going to use points of order to make points that are not related to the debate or in regard to the order of the House, they may not be in the Chamber. Let us have some decorum.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: The important point here is that the free shares that the Government will be issuing are essentially an expense on the Government account. They do not come for free. Someone has to pay for them, and the people who pay for them will be the Government itself. Under the Constitution Act, you simply cannot make expenses on the Crown account without parliamentary authority.

LOUISE UPSTON (Junior Whip—National) : I move, That the question be now put.

KRIS FAAFOI (Labour—Mana) : I will take a call on Part 2 of the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. This bill is part of what the Government calls the rolling maul of economic initiatives. But today we have had the ANZ bank say that our economy is in the danger zone. I just want to use another line out of that famous early 1980s movie Top Gun, in terms of concerns in this bill that we have: “This is … a target-rich environment”, Part 2. It is a target-rich environment.

Hon Member: Like a fish in a barrel.

KRIS FAAFOI: It is. But I do want to look at one clause in particular, and that is section 45S, “10% limit on holdings by persons other than the Crown”, in clause 16. I will read it for the benefit of those who might be listening: “(1) No person (other than the Crown) may have a relevant interest in securities that confer more than 10% of the voting rights of a mixed ownership model company (the 10 percent limit).” This is the passing effort of the National Party to try to ensure that some—not all—of the 49 percent of the shares that it plans to sell in this share float stay in New Zealand.

I do need to—as the members across the Chamber have done ad nauseam during this debate—go back to some history. I will go back to 26 January 2011 when John Key gave a speech. There was a press release that came out with it, and a point in that press release said: “New Zealand investors would have to be at the front of the queue for shareholdings, and the Government would have to be confident of widespread and substantial New Zealand share ownership …”. These are the words, out of that press release, from John Key on 26 January 2011. As the press releases that come out of the ninth floor do on the odd occasion, it came with a Q and A. There were some other points that were made: “Will New Zealanders own the shares that are issued?”. Mr Key, in this press release, said: “New Zealand investors will be given first priority in any issues. There is substantial capacity between the KiwiSaver funds, other managed funds …” blah, blah, blah. The next question and answer are: “Will foreigners be able to buy shares? Majority government ownership means that control will always rest in New Zealand hands.” The press release says it will always rest in New Zealand hands. “If companies were listed on the NZX, then private New Zealand owners would be able to sell and foreign investors could buy. However, we expect that most New Zealand investors would be long term holders. This has been the experience of previous floats, such as Contact Energy. It is therefore likely that foreign ownership would be limited.”

Nowhere in this bill—nowhere in clause 16 of this bill—does it limit the size of foreign ownership. It might limit the size of a parcel of shares that you can hold to 10 percent, but nowhere in this bill—and I am looking at clause 16—does it put into effect any of the words that Mr John Key, the Prime Minister of this country, said in his press release on 26 January 2011.

So I want to have a look at a Supplementary Order Paper that has been put forward by our State-owned assets spokesperson, my colleague in front of me, Mr Clayton Cosgrove. It is Supplementary Order Paper 49, which would change section 45P(2) to—

Hon Simon Bridges: This is just silly.

KRIS FAAFOI: Mr Bridges might want to listen because it would change the amount of ownership from 10 percent to 1 percent. I would urge members right around the Chamber to back Supplementary Order Paper 49 from Clayton Cosgrove to ensure that as many of these shares as possible—and let me make it clear that we do not want these shares sold at all—stay in New Zealand hands. I would expect the member for Tauranga to try to meet the needs of his constituents to make sure that these shares stay in New Zealanders’ hands.

There is another Supplementary Order Paper also, in my name.

Darien Fenton: An excellent Supplementary Order Paper.

KRIS FAAFOI: An excellent Supplementary Order Paper—thank you very much, Darien Fenton. It is Supplementary Order Paper 51, which would also look to amend clause 16 by inserting section 45Y, which is titled “Kiwis at front of queue”. My Supplementary Order Paper 51 would restrict the sale of the shares in these State-owned enterprises to people who hold a current New Zealand passport. I am trying to put into effect in this bill what the Prime Minister promised but has not actually delivered in this bill. As we heard before, the Prime Minister of this country said that the majority of the shares that will be floated would stay in New Zealand hands, but has not effected this in the legislation that is before us in Part 2. If we are looking at those who currently hold New Zealand passports, I can tell those at home that that would mean that 3,225,000 New Zealanders with passports at the moment would be eligible, and only eligible, to buy our shares in this share float. If you put that together with Mr Cosgrove’s Supplementary Order Paper, and the fact that the maximum amount of shareholding you can have is 1 percent, we would not concentrate a lot of the value of State-owned enterprises either overseas or with one individual holding too much power. I think, in tangent, those Supplementary Order Papers and a number of other Supplementary Order Papers that have been put forward from this side of the Chamber to Part 2 would be very wise—

Andrew Little: Very sensible.

KRIS FAAFOI: —very sensible for this Committee to adopt. I also want to look at section 45T in clause 16. This is very interesting. It covers—[Interruption] Thank you, I was just going to get on to it; I saw you giving me the evils. Section 45T talks about the penalties of exceeding the 10 percent limit, which is currently in this bill around section 45S. Section 45T(1)(a), (b), and (c) outlines the penalties if we did happen to go over the 10 percent limit. It gives those who transgress in this way 60 days, I believe, to make good, but that would also give them 60 days to make a profit off those shares, then hock them off and get back down to that 10 percent limit. In terms of section 45T, we have some problems there and also with section 45T(1)(c). It says that for the person who contravenes that section, they cannot “exercise or control voting rights that exceed the 10% limit.” That is actually common sense, and we would support that. We do not look at making any amendment there. I believe there is an amendment to section 45T in the name of my colleague Clare Curran—45T? I will continue while my colleague tracks that down, but I do believe there is a Supplementary Order Paper under Clare Curran’s name to make sure there is a penalty for anyone who exceeds that 10 percent limit. Clare Curran’s Supplementary Order Paper 50 would institute a financial penalty for breaching the ownership limit applied to the mixed-ownership model, which at the moment stands at 10 percent.

I did want to say that despite the musings from the Prime Minister a year and a half ago that he would protect assets from foreign ownership, he has in no way—in no way—enacted this in the legislation before us. I think that is sad. I would ask this Committee that it adopt the Supplementary Order Papers from me, from the Hon Clayton Cosgrove, and from Clare Curran to make sure that if these assets are sold, as many of them as possible can stay in New Zealand in the ownership of Kiwis—I do not want to use “mums and dads”—and the ownership of New Zealanders, and that we do not let the limit of 10 percent stand as it is in section 45S at the moment. We need to make sure that the value is spread right around those Kiwis who want to own their shares—they do not want to; they prefer they would not be sold. If they are going to be sold, then maybe we should look at my Supplementary Order Paper and restrict the sale of these shares to current holders of New Zealand passports. I think it is a common-sense measure to bring in such a Supplementary Order Paper, and I would hope, as I look around the Chamber this evening, that members, at least on this side of the Chamber, would support my Supplementary Order Paper. Perhaps there may be a few members across the Chamber who can see that this is a common-sense measure too.

Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) : I move, That the question be now put.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : It is a pleasure to take a quick call on Part 2 of the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. For those who are watching, the Committee stage of the debate is, of course, where Parliament wrestles with the detail, and where we get down and debate the individual clauses.

Right at the start of amended section 2 of the Public Finance Act, in clause 14, we have the definition of what a mixed-ownership model company is—and, of course, the key word is “company”. We turn to new section 45P in clause 16, and it says: “In this Act, mixed ownership model company means a company listed in Schedule 5.” They are not State-owned enterprises. This is the end of those companies being State-owned enterprises under the State-Owned Enterprises Act. Does that matter? It sure does, because a State-owned enterprise is required to be a good corporate citizen; a company is not. A State-owned enterprise is specifically required to be a good employer; a normal company, outside standard labour law, is not. A State-owned enterprise has full-scale Treaty obligations; these companies do not, except to the extent that the half owned by the taxpayer subsidises the risk for the private party that owns the other half. That is the risk. Of course, they are not State-owned enterprises, so they do not have the reserve power of the Crown to direct them should they be in the situation where some grave danger to the public interest exists.

When we move down we see the 51 percent control provisions. New section 45R(1) in clause 16 says that nothing should result in the Crown holding less than 51 percent of the voting rights. That word “voting” is very important because, as others have pointed out, there would be nothing under that provision to stop less than 51 percent of the equity rights being held. We acknowledge that there has been some discussion—desperate discussion—between the Government and Mr Dunne, who has a very small fig leaf to cover his betrayal of the electorate. It is the amendment, I understand, according to media reports, of the words “voting rights” to the word “equity”. It is about time, because there are several ways that the equity can be diluted. One of them is non-voting shares, which would have got around new section 45R(1).

The next, which was confirmed by Mr John Palmer, Chairman of Air New Zealand, to the Commerce Committee when we did Air New Zealand’s review, is that subsidiaries can be created and can be divested or sold by the parent without transgressing this section. So a subsidiary could be sold off without breaking this section. That means that the supposed protection here of the 51 percent majority control is not worth the paper it is written on, and that means that the Government has not upheld its election promise to New Zealanders that it will retain majority ownership and control, because it is passing a law where it can quietly shuffle subsidiaries off the balance sheet.

Why would the Government do that? Well, a problem the Government has got is that a private partner—the 49 percent shareholder—could insist on their rights to the board to carry out an investment in a highly profitable future investment—

Hon Dr Nick Smith: This is the policy the member advocated.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —giving the Government what we call the dilution problem, Dr Smith—the dilution problem. The dilution problem is a new project that was highly profitable but which the Crown did not want to pursue, because, for example, Mr English has a complete fetish about not spending any money. So he would not want to invest any capital off the Government’s balance sheet into even a highly profitable investment, and the Government could be forced to and could be sued by the private party if it refused. That is why the Government is very concerned about having loose language here, because it gives the Government one way of protecting itself from that dilution risk.

New section 45S in clause 16 is the now famous provision about the 10 percent ownership cap. You know, I was looking in this bill for some definition of “Kiwi mums and dads”. Was it going to be the case that if you had not had children, you could not buy a share? There is no definition of “mums and dads”, because that was always public relations spin. The Government and the people of New Zealand know that the New Zealand shares—

PAUL GOLDSMITH (National) : I move, That the question be now put.

PHIL TWYFORD (Labour—Te Atatū) : There are many reasons to feel angry about this Mixed Ownership Model Bill—there are many reasons. It amounts to a massive transfer of resources from ordinary New Zealanders, as taxpayers, to the relatively small number of people who can afford to buy shares when these companies are floated. Power prices will go up; we know that. We know that New Zealanders will suffer. People who can barely afford to pay their electricity bills now will suffer, and we know that this privatisation programme makes no financial sense for New Zealand.

I want to talk about Supplementary Order Paper 60. It basically adds new clause 16A, which states: “Any proceeds generated for the Crown as a result of the sale or disposal of shares in a mixed ownership model company must be paid to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund established under the New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Income Act 2001.” One of the most galling things about this Government’s privatisation policy is the rather pathetic attempt to dress up the whole exercise in a thing that this Government calls the Future Investment Fund. It is a transparent attempt to sugar-coat what is a very bitter pill for almost all New Zealanders. National, for some reason, thinks that the two-thirds, or maybe it is 80 percent, of New Zealanders who were opposed to this policy will somehow be mollified by the idea that it is going to put the proceeds of this privatisation into some kind of notional—some kind of fictional—Future Investment Fund.

The only thing that is possibly more galling than this is that today we have had to sit in the Chamber through Tony Ryall, the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, speaking in hushed tones about the European financial crisis and suggesting to the nation that if the Government does not privatise all these assets, then somehow New Zealand is going to tumble into a global financial crisis and the world will come to an end. That is totally overlooking the fact that the Government’s fiscal problems are largely a result of, firstly, its unaffordable tax cuts and, secondly, its utter failure to get growth going in the economy.

What is it going to spend the proceeds of the sales on? This is what it says: schools—a lick of paint here and there—hospitals, irrigation, and, according to the Budget, it is going to put $250 million into KiwiRail. Well, as many commentators have pointed out, this is all normal Government capital expenditure, and it is a nonsense to dress it up as if it is some extra Future Investment Fund. I want to quote Paul Callow from Deloitte, who said that “Tagging the proceeds in this way doesn’t really fool anyone: money is money and the fact that the Government has just sold a stake in an SOE simply means it has more of it to spend or needs to borrow less.”

It is an absolute nonsense that in an energy-constrained world we are now selling energy assets—these four precious electricity companies—to fund repairs on schools and hospitals. We are selling an income-earning asset to fund the maintenance on a non-earning asset. That, I think, exposes the total poverty of thinking and of economic development behind this Government’s policy.

The Future Investment Fund is a cruel hoax. It is a notional fund. It has no existence in reality, and all the items that the Government has mentioned in recent months that it is going to spend the proceeds on are standard items of capital expenditure. I urge members of this Committee to support my Supplementary Order Paper 60, which, instead of putting the money into this notional fund, would redirect it at least to the New Zealand Superannuation Fund—the Cullen fund—which at least would not fritter away the proceeds of these precious assets on the repair and maintenance of standard items of capital expenditure. Every New Zealander knows that that should not be what happens anyway. What should happen is that this Government should cancel this privatisation programme, hold on to these assets for future generations of New Zealand, and hold on to them for the financial health of our nation and so that this country has the strategic assets—the energy companies—that we need to guarantee that the nation has a secure supply of sustainable and affordable energy for future generations.

If this Government had a clue about economic development it would not be selling these assets. If you look at the example of Norway, it is the textbook study of a country that got the most out of its natural resource. Norway’s State-owned petroleum company ensured that Norway’s assets—Norway’s natural resources—were exploited for the good of the Norwegian people. New Zealand is a leader in renewable energy, and what is this Government doing? What is this Government doing? We are a leader in renewable energy and it is selling off the very assets that we own that will develop sources of renewable energy.

Even if you consider our State energy company Solid Energy and you think about the massive reserves of coal that this country has that one day may be able to be exploited in a sustainable way—it could be a huge resource for this country in years to come for future generations—what are we doing? We are privatising the very company that would ensure that the benefits from those resources are enjoyed here, and the only revenue stream for a future Government is a 1 percent royalty. I cannot believe how stupid this policy is in that respect.

If you consider Mighty River Power, it is one of the world’s 10 largest developers and operators of geothermal energy. Mighty River Power is a fantastic success story in the New Zealand energy industry. Geothermal energy is only 0.3 percent of generation internationally, but it is one of the parts of the global energy industry that is growing fast. It has huge prospects. Mighty River Power is developing new plants at Ngātamariki, at Puketoi wind farm, and another one north-east of Rotorua. It has also got a stake in the GeoGlobal Partners Fund, a US company that is developing a 50-megawatt geothermal plant in California. Mighty River Power is a treasure—it is a national treasure—that we should be proud of. We should be keeping it in New Zealand hands so that it is owned by all New Zealanders, and so that the benefits of this innovative company are kept in New Zealand and are there for generations of New Zealanders to enjoy. But what is this Government doing? It is privatising those assets. It is giving away the future potential of some of our most strategic assets. This Government has no qualms about privatising them.

What could be more strategic in the 21st century than energy companies and water companies? Instead, this Government is selling them off for a short-term sugar fix to give it a little bit of debt reduction in a fiscal crisis of its own making, and it is going to use the proceeds to put a lick of paint on schools and hospitals. It dresses up that phoney financial transaction with this ridiculous Future Investment Fund as if this would sugar-coat what is a very bitter pill for all New Zealanders.

The Future Investment Fund is a sham. It is a phoney fund. I urge members of this Committee to vote for my Supplementary Order Paper 60. Instead of wasting the proceeds of this privatisation on the maintenance of standard items of capital expenditure, what my Supplementary Order Paper would do is shift those funds into the Cullen fund—the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. At least then the resources, instead of being wasted by this Government, would be kept for the benefit of future generations.

Dr PAUL HUTCHISON (National—Hunua) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The question is that the question be now put. Those who are of that opinion—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Before you put the question I would like an assurance from you. You will be aware that we have submitted a large number of amendments. We had some chat about this, you will recall, last night. I just want an assurance that you have personally perused those and checked them over if we are going to move to a vote. It is a fair question, especially if you are going to make any rulings in respect of them.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Let me, firstly, make this point. When the Chair makes a call for the Committee to determine whether it wants the question put, the Chair has given considerable consideration to all factors, and to start challenging the Chair at that point is actually a reflection on the Chair. It is a reflection on the Chair and members ought to do that with some caution. I assure all members that I have given consideration to every possible aspect, and that I think is appropriate for, at this moment, the Committee to determine whether it wants the closure. Accordingly, I put—

Dr Russel Norman: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Can you tell us which factors you have taken into account?

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is entirely out of order. I have said I have taken all factors into consideration. The question is—

Dr David Clark: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I ask this with due respect as a new member who is not sure of the remedies available to me. As somebody who did not have the opportunity in Part 1 of the debate to speak to my Supplementary Order Paper, and raise some germane points, which I do not believe were raised in the debate, as someone who has not had a chance to speak in Part 2, and as somebody who listened to more submissions to the select committee than anyone else, what remedy is available to me to be able to speak to this debate?

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The remedy the member has now is to vote against the closure. I have considered, as I say, all factors.

• A party vote was called for on the question that the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Order! Votes will be taken in silence and that will be upheld. No member will vote under duress in this Chamber, and it is difficult enough to hear the votes as they are.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Members, a number of amendments have been tabled by various members of the Labour Party. The amendments mirror those talked about yesterday. They seek to change words that are similar or change words that are an expression. A great number are vague, in that it is very difficult to know where they fit or where they should appear. There is, however, one exception—and we have diligently looked at all of the amendments—and that is the vote that we are going to put now. It is in the name—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I am not making a reflection on the Chair, but you have used rather graphic language—as you have a right to do—to describe those amendments. When those amendments were placed on the Table, you were the presiding officer, and to the best of my knowledge you have not retired from the Chamber. Given the description that you have used about those amendments, I would like to know whether you have looked through all those amendments. Given that you have used those rather colourful phrases—and I would have to question whether some of those might be in order, but that is your right—I would like an assurance that you have perused all those amendments, because you have not left this Chamber.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Yes, I have. So the question is—

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The member needs to be very careful about where he proceeds with these points of order.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I am entitled to make a point of order. I am not being facetious when I say this. You answered: “Yes, I have.” I take it that you mean you have perused them. Because there were two questions.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Correct.

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of Clare Curran to clause 13 be agreed to:

in new section 1A(2)(ea), replace “ownership” with “control”.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The remaining amendments that were tabled at 7.32 p.m. are ruled out of order for the same reasons as last night, under Speakers’ rulings 115/4 and 115/5.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 42 in the name of the Hon Tony Ryall to Part 2 be agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Dr Russel Norman’s amendment to amend new section 45Q(2) set out on Supplementary Order Paper 71 is ruled out of order as inconsistent with a previous decision of the Committee.

• The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 57 in the name of the Hon David Parker to clause 16 be agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The Hon Phil Goff has an amendment relating to a new section 45Y, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 52. That is now withdrawn.

• The question was put that the amendment set out on Supplementary Order Paper 59 in the name of Grant Robertson to clause 16 be agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): My sincere apologies. I have misread the previous amendment in the name of the Hon Phil Goff. I will read it and then we will put that amendment. The Hon Phil Goff’s typescript amendment inserting a new section 45Y to retrict an interest in securities in mixed-ownership model companies to persons who are tax resident in New Zealand—Supplementary Order Paper 52 is withdrawn and that replaces it.

• The question was put that the following amendment in the name of the Hon Phil Goff to clause 16 be agreed to:

New Zealand ownership

45YNew Zealand ownership

(1)No person (other than the Crown) may have an interest in shares or securities of a mixed ownership model company unless they are tax resident within New Zealand.

(2)No company, trust, or other organisation capable of owning property (other than the Crown) may have an interest in shares or securities of a mixed ownership model company unless they are tax resident within New Zealand.

(3)Any ownership of shares or securities of a mixed ownership model company that does not comply with subsections (1) and (2) is invalid and of no legal effect.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Members, there have been two new parts tabled, both in the name of the Hon Trevor Mallard. I have to inform the Committee that the Hon Trevor Mallard’s amendment to insert a new Part 3, as set out on Supplementary Order Paper 56, is out of order, as that amendment pertained to Part 2 and should have been associated with and debated at that point. The second amendment to insert a new Part 3, a typescript amendment providing that sections 3 to 18 have no effect until a citizens initiated referendum is dealt with, and providing for a power to suspend sections 3 to 18, depending on the outcome of the citizens initiated referendum, is out of order, because that amendment should have been voted on and associated with Parts 1 and 2 at that time. So the question now is—

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I think you have missed one of the sets of amendments that were tabled in my name, which also inserted a new Part 3. I appreciate that there have been a number of amendments. I have got copies here, if you want to have them, but they certainly have been tabled.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I have to inform the member that the clerk has informed me that it has not been lodged.

Chris Hipkins: Well, it was placed on the Table. I have got additional copies.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): The member, I think, knows that six copies have to be presented to the clerk.

Chris Hipkins: And I can certainly assure the Committee that the copies have been tabled.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Just to clarify, when you say “tabled”, were six copies presented to the clerk?

Chris Hipkins: I understand that they were certainly part of the various bundles that have been tabled.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): We have been very, very carful to not make any mistakes. I have already made one, which I went back on tonight, in relation to the reading. I have no record of the amendment.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I was the person who put the bundle of amendments with the clerk, and they have been checked. I am not questioning the clerk’s word at all. There is nothing underhand in that respect, but I am very sure that they were contained—the Minister in the chair, the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, can shake his head, but I am addressing the Chair—within that bundle. So it was somewhere between their being presented and coming back into the Chamber. That is my honest view. I was the one who placed them on the Table.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Can members take a moment while we just check that.

Chris Hipkins: One of the things we did, in addition to presenting a whole lot of amendments to the clerk, was I then presented a summary bundle of all of those amendments to the clerk to help them, basically, in their compilation of them, which is that one. It may be that the amendment to insert additional Part 3 was not in the bundle I gave them.

Hon Dr Nick Smith: Oh!

Chris Hipkins: Well, I did not have to give them the bundle. I gave them the bundle to be helpful. But I can assure you that it would have been in the large bundle that was presented.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): I accept the member’s word that he has tabled them.

Chris Hipkins: I have got copies if you would like to see them.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): Could I just have a quick look, please. I have had a brief look, and my assessment is that the amendment does pertain to Part 1 of the bill, and in that regard it is out of order. If there has been some mess-up in what have been a few reams of paper, I do apologise. I accept the member’s word that he did table it, but it is out of order in that regard.

Chris Hipkins: I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. Can I acknowledge that, and can I also acknowledge the work of the clerks. There is certainly not a criticism of the clerks or of you. I am sure there was a mistake somewhere, but it was unintentional on all sides. So there is certainly no suggestion that there has been any inappropriate behaviour.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is fine, and that is why I accept the member’s word. So we move to the debate on schedule 1, and the question is that schedule 1 stand part. Is some member seeking the call? [Interruption] There is no debate. Sorry. We are on the schedule. My apologies—

Hon Member: The olden days.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): That is the olden days. Let me just refresh your minds, for new members, that when we debated the parts, that included schedules 1 and 2. So now that we have got that straight, I will put the question.

The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy): There is an amendment in the name of Jacinda Ardern to replace “mixed ownership model company” with “privatisation of public property company”, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 44. That is out of order as it is inconsistent with an earlier decision of the Committee.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) : In this, again, swift process that we are embarking on, we move to the title and the commencement. In this debate colleagues of mine will propose a number of amendments.

Grant Robertson: Excellent amendments.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Excellent amendments. I know that Mr Clark has proposed Supplementary Order Paper 45 to rename the Mixed Ownership Model Bill the “State Asset Privatisation Act 2012”. In respect of the commencement, we know, of course, that the Government has tried to expedite or, in plain language, ram through—

Hon Parekura Horomia: With the support of the Māori Party.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —with the support of the Māori Party, of course, as my colleague Parekura Horomia says—this whole process. We know that the Governor-General’s pen will have hardly touched the parchment before the Government tries to move this bill through in the vain hope that the people of New Zealand might sort of say “Right, that’s it.”, hoist the white flag of surrender, and forget about it, which they will not.

To that end we have a number of amendments in my colleagues’ names. Mr Parker has lodged Supplementary Order Paper 47 to change the enactment date to 2016, which will be a period, as colleagues will realise, after the next general election. Chris Hipkins has Supplementary Order Paper 53, which is a very good amendment that prevents enactment unless there is a 75 percent majority of this House, effectively providing for an entrenchment provision to ensure that this legislation does not come into existence unless it has the overwhelming support of the House. Grant Robertson has Supplementary Order Paper 58, which prevents enactment until the Finance and Expenditure Committee reviews and approves the legislation. This is a very important amendment, and one that is close to the hearts of a number of us, including Mr Parker and Mr Clark, who had to sit through one of the most disgraceful select committee processes that in my 13 years in Parliament I have ever been a part of.

Andrew Little: What was Maggie Barry’s role?

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Well, Maggie Barry’s role, to answer Mr Little’s question, was simply to attempt to subdue any submitter who came along in respect of being anti the privatisation of assets. It was a disgraceful moment in the committee, one that I would not have thought we would see from any side of the House. I know that Mr Brownlee is Leader of the House—oh no, this is not, mate. Have a read of the amendments, I say to the senior Government whip. He is doing his sort of callisthenics over there, flapping his arms in the breeze. I suggest he might want to read Supplementary Order Paper 58 in Mr Robertson’s name. While he is trying to, sort of, levitate or whatever, through flapping his arms, he might actually want to read what is on the Table. As I was saying, I am sure that Mr Brownlee, a learned member and Leader of the House in this Parliament, would agree that intimidating voters by asking in a select committee them how they vote, or demanding to know how they vote, would be a disgrace. Even though Mr Brownlee is a political opponent, I know he is a bit of a traditionalist in the parliamentary and the culinary sense, and I am sure he would agree with me. It was a disgraceful process, a process where submitters were treated, in many respects, like dirt. They were abused, in some respects, ignored, and basically laughed at by Government members, especially by—I know that he is here somewhere—Dr Nick Smith.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Come back to relevance.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Mr Brownlee says “Come back to relevance.” Well, had Mr Brownlee actually been on the committee, he would know. He has been on the odd select committee; I think he was on, what is the one, the Government Administration Committee, which deals with the catering or something, perhaps, in Parliament. He has been on select committees, and he knows that an important part of select committees is to actually listen to submissions. Whether or not you agree with them, the process is to listen. If you are really cynical as a politician, you sort of act out the part that you are going to listen to submitters.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Come on—clause 1.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: No, no, clause 2. Read the Supplementary Order Paper. I know, Mr Brownlee, that it is not published by Golden Books or Dr Seuss, but try reading Supplementary Order Paper 58 in the name of Mr Robertson, because that amendment prevents this legislation from coming into enactment until it goes back to the select committee, the Finance and Expenditure Committee, for a full review of the legislation.

If that was to happen, we would actually have submitters being given more than 5 minutes, and we would not have the chairman of the committee turn to the committee and say that the committee as a whole—this is the select committee—can have one question. One question, right? That is all we were allowed for many of those submitters, and many of those submitters were rubbished. So I think this amendment is particularly good, because, putting all politics aside, part of the job of select committees is to at least get the legislation into an appropriate form so that at least it can be dealt with in the House. That is what people expect of us. But when you have 1,400, nearly 1,500, submitters rock up to a select committee—

Grant Robertson: Queuing up.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: —they were queuing up, indeed—to put their point of view forward, and you get what borders on intimidation from some members, that is not on.

Then we have, of course, the absurd case—and one that I think has made history in this place—where on instruction from the Minister, on instruction from the chair of the select committee, Todd McClay, Treasury officials were told to write their report on the submissions and to submit it to the select committee prior to the submitters actually completing the hearing of evidence. That is—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Give us a new one.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: Give us a what?

Hon Gerry Brownlee: A new one. Not the same old rubbish.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: No, no. You see, Gerry Brownlee does not like it. He does not like it when we repeat these points, because they happen to be true—that is why—and because the people of New Zealand and the 1,400, nearly 1,500, organisations and individuals who came to that select committee will remember the conduct that was visited upon them by the National members. They will remember that—the dismissive nature of the National Party. I know that Mr Brownlee hates it when we remind him of these things, but, sadly, it is the truth. That is what happened. I will be seeking support for that amendment because that actually treats submitters with respect.

If we look at the title of the bill and the naming of it—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh, finally.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: I was not going to call it the “Big Fella Bill”, I will tell you that. The title of the bill could well go down in reference to Mr Dunne, of course. This could be “The Day Peter Dunne Gave the Government the One Vote It Needed to Sell Out Kiwis Bill”. We could call it that, perhaps. We could name it that. I invite Mr Dunne to break new ground in this debate and actually get up and take a call. That would be helpful. We know he has had several positions on things like water, and other things that we will not go into. But I would have thought that, given that it is the “Dunne deal” and he will go down in history as New Zealand’s biggest auctioneer, if it turns on his vote, he will want to get on the record as to why he sold New Zealanders out. So this could be the “Dunne Deal Bill”—the day Peter Dunne gave the Government the one vote it needed to sell New Zealanders out. We wait and we hope that Peter Dunne will do so. He would not turn up on radio today. He would not turn up at any forum. Submitters told us before the select committee that he refused to meet with them. He refused to meet with his own constituents, to even discuss this bill. It is OK for an MP to say: “Look, I disagree with you.”

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Come on. Say something serious.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: “Plonker”—there is a title for that member. Mr Dunne would not meet with his constituents—he would not meet with them. It is OK for members of Parliament to say: “I disagree with you.”, but they should have the decency to invite them to their offices and actually sit down and listen to them. That is what I say to the big fella over there. That is what I say to him. I know that that member does not meet with his constituents, because he does not give a damn about them. He does not meet with them, of course. But I think Peter Dunne has the one vote that could turn this, the one vote that could stop this bill. There is a redeeming feature. There is redemption for Mr Dunne, if he was to vote against this.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Come on. Talk to the title. Try hard.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: The “Redemption Bill” indeed—there is a good title. Mr Brownlee would remember that from his Catholic Sunday school classes at St Bede’s College, between other activities. But, yes, it could be the “Peter Dunne Redemption Bill”. It could be the one time that Peter Dunne could come into this House and say: “Actually, I got it wrong, the people have got it right, and I am going to vote against the Government.” If I were a betting man I do not know what the TAB odds on that would be, but I believe that Peter Dunne does owe a duty of care. He does have a moral responsibility to stand up, take a call, and explain to the people of Ōhāriu, the people of New Zealand, why it could be his vote—although we do not know where the Māori Party members sit on this, of course; they are all over the place, like the proverbial—that either sells New Zealanders out or redeems this Parliament and holds our assets in Kiwi hands.

As to the Māori Party, well, I cannot refer to that, but, you know, I would love those members to take a call on anything in respect of this—on anything in respect of this. We could call this the “Where is the Māori Party on State-owned Assets Bill”. I would love them to actually take a call and give us a position. They went around the marae, of course, and said: “We’ve done a deal with New Zealand. We’ve sewn up land rights, property rights, and Treaty rights for Māori.” Then Tūwharetoa came to us and said “Nah, it hasn’t happened.”—and they were armed with legal advice. Those members have voted, I think, with the Government on everything—

Dr DAVID CLARK (Labour—Dunedin North) : I have waited a long time and I am very, very pleased to finally have my say, although I remain disappointed that many of the issues that I feel are germane to this debate have not been discussed because Government members have been so keen to rush the Mixed Ownership Model Bill through without full scrutiny by Parliament, without a full debate, because they do not like it, and they know that people out there, in the street, are marching against this. Mr Brownlee knows that they are marching against this in the street.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: When?

Dr DAVID CLARK: They were marching in Dunedin, Mr Brownlee. They were marching in Dunedin. They were marching elsewhere around the country. [Interruption] Mr Woodhouse was not there. He was invited but he did not turn up. People hate this. They do not like this legislation, and that is why I particularly want to support Mr Robertson’s amendment that calls for this bill to go back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, because the process was rushed there too. The process in the select committee was rushed. The people who spoke were limited to 5 minutes. The people around the table asking questions on behalf of Parliament were frequently limited to one question—

Andrew Little: You’re joking!

Dr DAVID CLARK: No, I am not joking at all. This is a very serious matter. This is not proper democracy. Mr Little is right. This feels wrong. This is one of the most controversial pieces of legislation to go through this House, and I fear it has not had a proper select committee process. That is why Mr Robertson’s amendment makes a lot of sense. This bill should go back to the select committee, to make sure that it has a full and thorough process. I know that there were submitters who were not heard because they could not make teleconference calls arranged at short notice. We know, those of us who sat around the table and heard 150-odd submissions, that there were more who wanted to speak against this. Some of them may have wanted to speak in favour—we do not know. There were 0.6 percent of the written submissions in favour of the bill. There may have been some germane ideas amongst those. Goodness knows, the National Government could do with one or two arguments in support of its bill, but we did not hear them; nor did we hear from those many people who submitted but could not make the teleconference calls that were arranged at short notice. Mr Robertson’s amendment is one well worth supporting.

In Treasury, on the top floor, there used to hang a cartoon. It was a cartoon by Tom Scott. I am not sure whether it is still there, but it is germane to the amendment I wish to move about privatisation—renaming the bill. In this Tom Scott cartoon stand two Treasury officials, obviously furious with one another. It sits, I am sure, up on the top floor of Treasury as a reminder not to be stuck in ideological blinkers but to take pragmatic solutions as the way forward through to the future. The Treasury officials in this cartoon are arguing. They are arguing about the ECNZ split-up—this goes a long way back. One Treasury official says to the other: “I know it works in practice, but it does not work in theory.”

Treasury, I think, has learnt from that. Treasury now provides advice that says we should take the wider picture into account. We should not have our ideological blinkers on, our privatisation blinkers. We need to take the facts into account. That is why Treasury has provided advice that shows that there are lost dividends that are greater than the proceeds from these sales. These privatisation sales will take the country backwards. The Government will be out of pocket as a result of these sales. I am with Brian Fallow, who sees this legislation as a solution in search of a problem. I think this bill should be renamed the “State Asset Privatisation Bill”, and that is why I have moved the amendment in my name, to be very clear about what this bill is doing.

We heard from a submitter at the select committee—one of the ones who was allowed to speak, although he was kept pretty brief and within the constraints, the unreasonable constraints, placed by the chair of the select committee—who gave an explanation of what had happened in one of the regions in India where a partial privatisation had proceeded. At a given point, when the region was cash-strapped, the private investors came forward and said: “We will invest further in this company if, and only if, the whole thing is privatised.”

It is a slippery slope. That is the position that this bill puts us in. It puts us in a position where the people who are in charge of these companies, we are told, will still be the Government, at 51 percent, but it is suddenly in a very vulnerable position for any future capitalising. It is also tied in to raising any debt that is required to fund future capital developments. This legislation puts the Government on the back foot. Why would we do that? These companies currently provide dividends that fund our schools and hospitals. We are talking about privatising them so we can fund schools and hospitals overseas. We already own these assets. Why on earth would we want to sell them to other people—those who have got the money, and who have only benefited from National’s tax cuts—and then allow them to sell them offshore so that those dividends flow offshore, and so that they undermine our balance of payments yet further and get us into more of a hole than we are already in?

Andrew Little: It doesn’t make sense.

Dr DAVID CLARK: It does not make sense. Private interests will control these assets in a way that they should not. Energy infrastructure is essential to this country. It is essential to our industries that rely on electricity for manufacturing. It is essential to our people down in the south, certainly, who are at risk of freezing in their homes if there are blackouts. We need to control these assets, because that is the role of the State. The role of the State is to look after its people. We in the Labour Party are afraid that the appropriate measures are not contained in this bill to make sure that the appropriate Crown control is retained, so that these assets can be properly managed in the interests of the whole of New Zealand, not in the interests of the bottom line of a minority—at this stage—of private shareholders.

I am arguing vehemently that the name of this bill should be changed to the “State Asset Privatisation Bill”, because that is what it is. Anything else is a mealy-mouthed attempt to divert away from the real issues here. The mixed-ownership model, as it has been called, is not a popular vernacular term. It is not a term that everyday mum and dad New Zealanders understand—if there is such a mythical beast.

So the bill should have this name, and then it should be sent back to the select committee. As I began at the beginning of my speech to say, Mr Robertson’s amendment is one that I will be thoroughly and fully supporting because it would see these issues debated fully and properly, not in a rushed process that reports back to the House 5 weeks ahead of schedule—5 weeks, 5 full weeks ahead of schedule—for one of the most controversial pieces of legislation likely to go through. This was a rushed process; teleconference submitters missed out, we had 5-minute limits on the submitters, and the select committee reported back 5 weeks early. There was no need for that rush.

There were plenty of questions that were not answered in the select committee. These are the kinds of questions that we could ask for further advice on. We could ask for further advice on the risks in the Tūwharetoa case. We could ask for further advice from Treasury on what would happen in the management of the Manapōuri dam, where, we understand, there may be an increased cost to the Crown of doing business as a result of these changes. But we did not get the opportunity to ask advice from the officials, because the chair of the committee, Mr Todd McClay, was in such a hurry to bring these issues back to the House.

I would be interested if Mr Todd McClay wished to take a call on these title and commencement clauses, but we have not heard anything from him. He has been keeping his head down since doing his part of this dirty deal and bringing this bill back to the House in short order, because he does not want the debate to flourish. He does not want the debate to be held fully in this House, and nor does the Minister in the chair, Tony Ryall. I challenge the Minister also to take a call on this part of the bill, to argue as to why it should not be called the “Privatisation Bill”, and to argue also why it should not go back to the select committee for a proper and full hearing, Mr Ryall. Mr Ryall, I think you understand the processes of this House. You have been around long enough. I would like to see it go back to the select committee, as Mr Robertson recommends in his amendment.

Other issues that could be debated in the select committee and upon which we could seek advice are the discount rate choice done in the modelling, and the replacement costs of these assets—could they actually be replaced? These were questions we did not have advice on. We know that those are difficult questions. We know that the Government does not want to face those questions, but it can, and it should. It has advisers for a reason. We have a select committee process so that we can argue fully these issues and understand them fully, so the public can fully understand them, and so this House can reach proper and good decisions. When the process is rushed, the House is at risk of not making the best decisions on behalf of the country. And that is what we are here for—we are charged, as parliamentarians, to have this debate fully and properly. As the Opposition, Labour members know we are not always going to win the debate, but we actually want to make sure—

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) : I rise to speak in the title and commencement clauses debate on this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. I think the title of this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill, is actually an interesting concept that is worth discussing. For that reason, in the election campaign where this was being discussed, we took the view that we were not at all opposed to the State-owned enterprises forming partnerships with private sector partners. I think the previous Government took the same view. There is not a problem with the State-owned enterprises partnering with private sector corporations in order to make progress for whatever the particular field is that they are involved in in the energy sector.

So we, particularly looking at the electricity companies, saw the electricity companies as part of New Zealand’s economic future. These companies have the ability to use the expertise that they have in renewable energy generation in order to export that technology and that expertise around the world. By partnering with private sector companies, they could actually facilitate that process. We were not at all opposed to maintaining the State-owned enterprises as State-owned enterprises, in full public ownership, but getting them to partner with some other entrepreneurs who may have some great ideas in the renewable energy sector and energy efficiency sector, which then could be exported to the rest of the world, so New Zealand could get its part of the dramatic growth in the renewable energy sector internationally.

Those of you who read The Economist—and I am sure there are none in the Government benches—will see that the front cover of The Economist this week is all about what is going on in the Arctic. Of course, linked to that is the rise of the renewable energy sector. This is New Zealand’s great economic opportunity. These companies—these State-owned enterprises—provide an opportunity for us to actually get an in to that market, as has been referred to elsewhere in this debate.

The problem is that the path that the Government is going down, which is to privatise these companies, means that instead of maintaining the headquarters, the research and development, and the core of the companies in New Zealand, we will see a slow drift of these companies, as more and more control falls into overseas ownership and the companies lose a strategy that is attached to advancing the best interests of New Zealand. That is the danger with the strategy that this Government is pursuing. If we see these companies simply as “another company” that the Government can partially privatise or privatise in order to fill a hole in their Budget this year or next year as a result of their tax cuts for upper-income earners—if we take that view, we misunderstand the significance of the renewable energy sector to New Zealand.

New Zealand is a world leader in renewable energy technology, particularly in geothermal, and hopefully, in the future, in tidal technology. That gives us a strategic opportunity to place ourselves in the global energy market. What we need in energy is what Fonterra has done in the dairy sector. We need a global-scale New Zealand company or set of companies that are working together that can actually become major global leaders in the renewable energy sector. That is why, rather than partial privatisation through this Mixed Ownership Model Bill, we saw the advantage in a partnership with these companies with private sector entrepreneurs. They could get the best the private sector has to offer New Zealand in terms of its ideas and in terms of its capital, but without losing control of the companies and without the companies falling under overseas control as the headquarters moves overseas, the research and development moves overseas, and so forth.

We have seen what happens in other sectors of our economy when they fall under foreign ownership. You have to look only at Contact Energy—another energy company that has now fallen under Australian ownership. It does not see New Zealand as a major platform. It is not an export base to the rest of the world. The banking sector has exactly the same approach, and telecommunications is the same. When we lose control of major parts of our economy into overseas ownership, they no longer become platforms for advancing New Zealand interests to the world; they simply become profit centres for a multinational corporation.

The danger with the Mixed Ownership Model Bill is that we will see the same thing happening to the electricity sector that has happened to the other infrastructure sectors in our country. Then the electricity sector simply becomes a drain on the New Zealand economy in the same way that the banking sector is simply a drain on the New Zealand economy. Instead of being a platform from which we export to the world—[Bell rung] So it is for that reason that we think that this is a missed opportunity. You could call it the “Missed Opportunity Bill”.

For New Zealand, we have only so many missed opportunities that we can actually have. There is not an unlimited ability for us to make a mess of our economy and for successive Governments to make a mess of the economy. So if the Government takes us down this path, we miss the opportunity to actually take advantage of the global green economic revolution, which is happening right in front of us at the moment, for anyone who happens to read The Economist or any other mainstream economic paper. You will see that this is a “Missed Opportunity Bill” rather than a Mixed Ownership Model Bill, because it is a missed opportunity for New Zealand to take its place in the world and develop another global-scale company like Fonterra, which is what we need to do.

The Government’s approach is: “Well, we just turn them into mixed-ownership model companies, regular kinds of companies, and they just do whatever companies do. They just make profits or they do not, and they provide us with electricity or they do not, but it is none of the Government’s business.” That is the Government’s approach. It is just another market. But if you take that approach, then you systematically and slowly start to lose control of your economy.

That is the history of New Zealand. As we have headed down this privatisation path, and this Mixed Ownership Model Bill takes us further down that path, sector by sector we have lost control of key sectors of the New Zealand economy, whether it is telecommunications, whether it is banking, and now it is going to be electricity and energy. As we do that, we start to narrow our economic opportunities and the kinds of things we can do.

If you think about the comparison with Fonterra, Fonterra did not just come into being because someone decided we would just let the free market rip. Fonterra is the antithesis of the free market. When you think about it, it is a producer cooperative. It came into being through an Act of Parliament. It essentially operates as a monopoly in New Zealand. It has used that platform to export to the rest of the world, yet in every other sector, including, now, the electricity sector, as in this Mixed Ownership Model Bill, we are taking an attitude that says “Oh, just let the market sort it out. We will be fine.”

Actually, we will not be fine. If we keep going down these paths and losing control of key sectors of our economy, we will continue to go backwards, as indicated by the most recent current account deficit figures. Under this Government the current account deficit is getting worse and is projected to get worse. Each time we sell off some of our key assets, that means some of those profits go overseas. We add to our current account deficit. We add to the economic impoverishment of our country if we do not take our strategic opportunities. Other small countries that operate in the global market have taken a much more strategic approach to what economic opportunities are available to them. They have taken an approach that is more like a Fonterra and less like a Mixed Ownership Model Bill.

For that reason, in order to provide some kinds of opportunities, we have moved an amendment to this part of the bill, which is about having a referendum before the bill is given the Royal assent. Obviously, that is about the fact that we are very clearly aware that the people of New Zealand are resolutely opposed to the privatisation programme of this Government, because they have a vision of their country that is much more long term, they have a vision of their country that is about investing in their future, and they have a very different vision about the future of New Zealand than this current Government. That is why we have moved a Supplementary Order Paper to this part in order to give people the ability to have a referendum so that they can decide whether this bill should progress—whether the privatisation programme that National is so keen on should progress.

National has talked a lot about its mandate, but, of course, when people go to the vote in an election, they have might have voted for John Key but that does not mean that they supported privatisation. That is why we think there should be an amendment moved to this section—

Hon Tony Ryall: Part 2 is finished.

Dr RUSSEL NORMAN: —that would give people the ability to have a referendum before this bill receives the Royal assent. That is the amendment we are moving. We are moving an amendment to this part, to the commencement and title. The Supplementary Order Paper that we have in front of us, Supplementary Order Paper 70, is actually an amendment to the commencement and title clauses of this bill, and that is why I am talking about the right of people to have a referendum to have a say about whether these assets are privatised.

MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (Senior Whip—National) : I move, That the question be now put.

DENIS O’ROURKE (NZ First) : I rise to speak on behalf of New Zealand First concerning the title and commencement of the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. First of all, I would have to say that the title proposed by the Government is most inappropriate—so, by the way, is the title for the Māori Party, which has taken no part in this debate whatsoever, yet has supported the Government on each and every, I think, amendment to each part of this bill. I think, actually, the Māori Party should be renamed. It should be renamed the “Ghost Party”—something that you never see and never hear of, yet it has an effect. The “Ghost Party”, I think, is what the Māori Party should call itself. It should rename itself, as well. This bill should be renamed, as well, because it does not reflect the real nature of the bill, and it does not reflect the deep unpopularity of this bill with the people of New Zealand, so well expressed in a number of ways—emails, letters, and the referendum petition currently being circulated.

I want to tell the Committee that on one very cold and windy day in Christchurch, in the city mall in Christchurch with demolition happening around me, I presented this petition to as many of the people of Christchurch as possible—and, by the way, to a number of tourists who walked through the mall on that day—and it was very, very easy to get signatures for that petition, because that petition is one that reflects the will of the people. People were queuing up to sign it. I could not find enough copies of the petition to get signatures on. That is how unpopular this bill and this proposal are.

This particular title is extremely inappropriate, and New Zealand First has many suggestions of much, much more appropriate and reflective titles for this bill. First of all, we think it could well be called the “Unpopular SOEs Amendment Bill”. We think that would really reflect the mood of the nation and would be a much more appropriate title for this bill. We also think that it could be called the “Inevitable Full Privatisation of New Zealand’s Most Valuable Assets Bill”, because that reflects the true nature of what this bill will really mean. Another suggestion we have is the “Higher Power Prices Bill”, because that is the fundamental meaning of this bill, and every New Zealander knows that that is going to be the inevitable outcome of it. We think another good title would be the “Alienation of Water Rights for Power Generation Bill”. That is a bit of a mouthful but actually it says very well what is happening with this particular piece of legislation.

I have another suggestion, and it is one that the leader of United Future should consider. It is the “Dunne Dishonestly Bill”, because that particular member of Parliament has fudged on his commitment not to alienate water rights. I listened with interest to the most pathetic excuse I have ever heard when he gave an interview on television recently.

But there are more suggestions. Any of these would be satisfactory to New Zealand First. Another one of these is the “Economic Lunacy Bill”, because that is exactly what it is—economic lunacy to sell valuable assets that are returning a very good rate of return, and instead to repay debt when that debt has a low interest rate. It is just economic lunacy. Another one that would appeal to many New Zealanders is the “Lights Out New Zealand Bill”, because for many people that is exactly what is going to happen when they find that their electricity bill becomes unaffordable in future years—another fundamental result from this legislation.

Yet another suggestion is the “Forget Economic Sovereignty Bill”, because you would have to forget it if this particular legislation is passed. The economic security and sovereignty of New Zealand is going to be seriously compromised by this legislation. I have a final suggestion for the title of this bill—

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—

Dr CAM CALDER (National) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): No, I do not think so.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL (Labour—Christchurch East) : I have been looking forward to making my contribution on this important debate, because I have not had the opportunity to do so thus far, but I am pleased that I can on this part of the debate. I have an amendment to clause 1 of this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. The Government also has a Supplementary Order Paper to divide into two bills the bill that is being dealt with here. The first particular amendment on that Supplementary Order Paper, actually, is correct, and that is changing Part 1 of the bill to: “This Act is the State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Act 2012”. That is correct, because what it does is it takes four State-owned enterprises out of the State-Owned Enterprises Act and moves them to the Public Finance Act, only the public finance Act that they are moving to is the Act that is now going to be called, under this particular provision, the Public Finance (Mixed Ownership Model) Amendment Act 2012.

I think there is a very serious reason why that particular language is incorrect. I believe that it is covering up for what the public know, and that is that this is the privatisation of public property. That is what it is. It is nothing less than that. Those members use the language of the mixed-ownership model—the “MOM”. You know, they are talking about the ownership of these companies going to ma and pa investors, or mom and pop investors. Well, I am suggesting that we change the name from “MOM” to “POP”—privatisation of public property. That is exactly what is going on here.

My colleague Jacinda Ardern actually put forward on Supplementary Order Paper 44 this amendment to a number of other parts of this bill, but this part of the bill, clause 1, was not included, because she had become, I think, quite disquieted by the fact that the Government had used its—

Jacinda Ardern: Disillusioned.

Hon LIANNE DALZIEL: In fact, Jacinda Ardern is right here and she is offering her contribution to the debate from her chair. She is saying that she was disillusioned by the Government’s response to her very sensible amendment. The reason that she is disillusioned is that she felt that it was not being completely upfront with the language of this mixed-ownership model, which really hid the essence of what was going on. So she gave up when it came to clause 1, the title, but I have decided that it is actually worthy of debate here because the public have a right to know that their wishes are not being respected by this Government. It is trying to hide the reality of what it is doing behind the language of the mixed-ownership model when, in fact, the very act of this legislation removing four State-owned enterprises from the coverage of the State-Owned Enterprises Act shows that this is the privatisation of public property. It is the “POP” of the mom and pop legislation that we have been considering in this Chamber over the last few days.

There are other amendments that colleagues have moved, and I notice that Dr David Clark, my colleague, has also moved an alternative title, which is the “State Asset Privatisation Act”, or “SAP”. I think that is what the Government thinks the general public are—a bunch of saps. It is not taking them seriously. It knows that there is a citizens initiated referendum petition out there with Grey Power and the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions joining hand in hand, walking, marching up and down this country gathering signatures. Those signatures are gathering, and that is why this Committee is debating the bill a long time before the Finance and Expenditure Committee was even due to report back. That is the truth of it, and the reason that the Government does not want this bill sitting on the Order Paper any longer than it is is that it does not want the people to have spoken their mind. It does not want to be forced into a referendum situation and to be voting for this legislation in the face of public opinion. But I can tell this Committee that the people will not forget that the Government proceeded with this legislation before they had a chance to speak.

The other amendments that this side of the Committee is moving actually address that opportunity for the public to truly have a say. The one that I really like is the one in the name of my colleague the Hon David Parker. He says that we should change the date of the coming into force of this bill to 1 April 2016. What is relevant about that date? Apart from the fact that it is April Fool’s Day in 2016, the reason is that it would give an incoming Government the chance to actually listen to the people—

TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) : I move, That the question be now put.

GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) : I really want to just carry on, in many ways, from where my colleague Lianne Dalziel left off, because I think the debate about the title of this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill, is important. I want to refer—in my first opportunity in this particular part of the debate—to Supplementary Order Paper 58, which is in my own name.

Just before I do that I want to go back to Chris Hipkins’ Supplementary Order Paper 53, which prevents enactment unless there is a 75 percent majority. I think this is a very important Supplementary Order Paper, because time and again over the last few weeks we have heard from the National Government about its mandate to pass this legislation. I want to make absolutely clear to that party opposite that, in fact, in the general election there were more people who voted for parties that oppose asset sales than there were for parties that favour them—40,000 more people, in fact, right across New Zealand. They actually voted for parties that oppose asset sales.

Jacinda Ardern: Tony Ryall is laughing.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Tony Ryall does not care about the mandate issue. He is laughing at the fact that there actually is no electoral mandate on this issue. In this Parliament, what we have is a situation where the majority—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Third in the party vote in Wellington Central.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Chris Finlayson is chipping in. Has that member won a seat? Has Chris Finlayson won a seat? No. Chris Finlayson has never won a seat. He has never won a seat. He has never even got close to winning a seat—never even got close to winning a seat. The majority for this legislation in this House comes from Peter Dunne. He represents a party that got less than 1 percent of the party vote, and it is his vote that is pushing this bill across the line.

There is no mandate. Chris Hipkins’ amendment is, in fact, a very good amendment, because what it says is that this Government, for something as fundamental as the sale of assets, needs to actually have a greater mandate than being on the losing side of the issue in the last election—on the losing side of the issue. There is no mandate over that side. Those members like to crow and claim they do because they are the largest party in Parliament. Well, this is a democracy. This is MMP. More people voted against asset sales than did for them. This amendment from Chris Hipkins actually means that the Government would have to come up with the kind of majority that should be in place for a matter of this order.

The other Supplementary Order Paper I want to refer to is the one in my name. It makes sure that the Royal assent is not granted until the Finance and Expenditure Committee re-examines the bill in satisfactory detail and recommends to the House that it be passed. I sat on the Finance and Expenditure Committee for a brief time during this consideration, and I simply could not believe the attitude—

Dr David Clark: The whole time.

GRANT ROBERTSON: Dr Clark, who has not had enough air time in this debate, sat on the committee many, many more times than I did. The committee meeting that I saw that I particularly could not believe was the one where the Government decided that it would not get officials to go away and find out whether power prices are, in fact, higher in private companies than they are in State-owned enterprises. That was put before the committee, officials were asked to look at it, and the Government would not give those officials the time they needed to go away and do that work. They gave such a limited time to be able to consider issues like that. They rushed through the debate. We have all heard the stories in this House of how select committee submitters were treated. They were given incredibly short periods of time, were patronised by Government members, and were asked by Government members like Maggie Barry whom they voted for and whom they supported. That is outrageous. It should not be part of our select committee process. This select committee, which had over 1,500 submissions, was not able to hear those submissions in any kind of detail. It was not able to hear proper arguments.

The Government, in this case, really, truly showed its colours, because it backed the 1 percent. It backed the 1 percent of submitters who came to the committee and said they support this bill. That is whom the Government backs, just like it does in every other walk of life; it backs the 1 percent. The 99 percent of submitters who came to the select committee and said that they want to make sure that this is stopped and that they want a proper say about this have been ignored by this Government. That is why my Supplementary Order Paper has been put up, to tell this Government to show some democracy and show some commitment to the process of having people come in front of a committee and have their say. Instead, people were attacked, people were not given enough time, and the process by the officials, who I am sure were working very hard through this process, was truncated by members opposite.

DAVID BENNETT (National—Hamilton East) : I move, That the question be now put.

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR (Labour—West Coast - Tasman) : I have not spoken in this debate before, because my colleagues have been doing such a very good job, but I had to take the opportunity to come down and speak in this Chamber for two reasons. Firstly, this is so important for my electorate. Solid Energy is one of our assets that that Government is going to sell to its mates, so it is important that I speak out on behalf of my electorate. Secondly, I have also taken the liberty of the democratic process to submit an amendment, a very minor one, which adds one word to the title of this bill. It adds the word “up” to the title of Mixed Ownership Model Bill, because this is, indeed, mixed-up ownership.

You can take two perspectives on that. If the Government is right in the fact that it is offering opportunities to a wide range of mums and dads in this country, then, I guess, mixed-up will be the ownership model that it is referring to. More accurate, though, is the mixed-up management approach that each and every one of these State-owned enterprises will take in the interim period to their final sale. As a fine example of that—and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises over there will know—Solid Energy, through the late 1990s and through the period when it was getting ready for sale under the previous National Government, in fact ran an outrageous regime of management that saw shortcuts taken and, in my view, contributed in no small way to what we saw at Pike River, unfortunately. That mixed-up ownership model, which would be a more accurate title for this bill, in my view, was a mixed-up management model for each and every one of these State-owned enterprises, which have a vital role to play in the infrastructure and development of this country. That mixed-up ownership and management will lead to, in my view, inferior outcomes for us as a country and superior outcomes for all those people who might want to invest in it.

This debate is about sovereignty in this country. The title and commencement of the bill are absolutely crucial, because in my view they do not accurately reflect what is going on here. This is the sell-out of New Zealand. This is the right to control our destiny through our ability to manage our infrastructure into the future. This National Government is going to hand over to a mixed bunch of owners, it says, or mixed-up bunch of owners, the rights to extract monopolistic dividends, in many cases, because, in my view, the problem with electricity, of course—and anyone who studies the market will know—is that the less investment that occurs in the electricity sector, the more the owners can extract from their existing investments. And so that will see the rundown of our infrastructure up and down this country and excessive profits put into the hands of Mr Brownlee and his wealthy mates, who can afford to come along and purchase the shares. Those mixed-up owners will not be there in the best interests of New Zealand, and that is why I have put forward my amendment that adds the word “up” to clause 1—not in a flippant way but in an accurate way that, in simple terms, more accurately reflects what will happen with these companies. The unfortunate outcome will be that this country will suffer in the long term.

This is about our ability to own and control our destiny into the future. That Government is prepared to put that destiny into the hands of people who will extract as much money as they can from the assets that my father, my grandfather, and the people before them contributed to, sometimes with their lives, and with their hearts and souls to build a better country. The National Government is now prepared to hand that to people who have the privilege of more money, when at this very point each and every New Zealander owns those assets. This is an outrageous act of treachery and in any other country it would be called treason.

Hon Gerry Brownlee: Is that acceptable, Mr Chair?

Hon DAMIEN O’CONNOR: In any other country that is what it would be called. Although the Minister for Canterbury Earthquake Recovery over there is somewhat sensitive to it, that is the truth of what is happening in this Chamber this evening and he very well knows that.

SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel) : I move, That the question be now put.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) : I must say I do appreciate receiving the call. It has been a considerable amount of time since I have had an opportunity to speak in the Committee stage on this bill, the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. I am very pleased to be able to talk about the title and commencement clauses of this bill. The title, as has been traversed, is an extremely misleading title—the Mixed Ownership Model Bill. I prefer Damien O’Connor’s submission that it should be the “Mixed Up Ownership Model Bill”. That would be a far more appropriate title for the bill.

But, actually, I want to talk to the amendment that the Minister for State Owned Enterprises wants to make to the title of the bill. Not only does the Minister want to split the bill into two bills but Supplementary Order Paper 41 in his name would see the title of one of the pieces of legislation amended to the “State-Owned Enterprises Amendment Act”. Well, that is an even more misleading title than the one we started with. This is not an amendment to our State-owned enterprises; this is the gutting of our State-owned enterprises. This is taking away State-owned enterprises from public ownership. This is taking from the many and giving to the 1 percent. That is what this bill is all about.

This is not some small, technical amendment to our State-owned enterprises; this is a fundamental change to our public assets and the public good that they can be used for. That is what—

Dr Cam Calder: We’re keeping them. You sold them all off.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Sorry, what was that?

Dr Cam Calder: We’re keeping them.

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: Cam Calder says that the Government is keeping the assets. Well, I tell you what, if Cam Calder wanted the Government to keep the assets he would support some of the other Supplementary Order Papers on this part. He would support the 75 percent supermajority amendment in the name of Chris Hipkins if he really wanted the Government to actually hold on to these assets. But coming back to Mr Ryall’s—[Interruption] Say that again. Say that again, Mr Calder. No, he still does not want it on the record.

I come back to Mr Ryall’s Supplementary Order Paper 41 to split the bill into two and also to have the ability for the Governor-General, by Order in Council, to commence the Acts on different dates. This is actually something that could be supported by the Labour Opposition, because we want to see how big the public backlash is against the sale of assets when the first asset is sold. We want the Government to feel the burn of the public backlash against the sale of that first asset and for the Government to have the opportunity to see the error of its ways and to stop the process right there. It should stop the process right now. It does not have a majority. It does not have a mandate. It does not have support for this, but it will really see—

Hon Christopher Finlayson: Who won the party vote in Palmerston North?

IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY: I am interested to hear what Chris Finlayson says about the party vote in Palmerston North. Chris Finlayson said: “What about the party vote in Palmerston North?”. Well, I am glad that that member has raised that issue, because I have run the numbers. I have run the numbers, and 55 percent of people in Palmerston North voted for parties that were opposed to selling off our State-owned assets—55 percent of people in Palmerston North opposed selling off our State assets at the election. So I know that my electorate, Mr Finlayson—who does not have an electorate; could never win an electorate—the people whom I represent are opposed to selling off State-owned assets. I am glad, I am pleased, I thank Mr Finlayson for raising that issue, because I am very pleased to tell the Committee about that.

I would also like to address the amendment in the name of Grant Robertson, and that is to take this bill back to the Finance and Expenditure Committee, because this Government ran roughshod over the political process, the democratic process. It belittled members. Maggie Barry acted like she was on a talkback show, bullying people who submitted to the committee and asking people what party they voted for. That was the way this was handled. National members cut the process short. They brought the bill back to the House 5 weeks early. People are saying that this is because the Government does not want to see what the result of the referendum is.

I know why the Government brought the bill back early. It is because its majority in the House is so wafer-thin that it does not want to lose John Banks. It does not want to lose John Banks, because it knows it is in deep, deep trouble if it does not have even that one-vote majority. That is what the rush is about. This Government knows that if the police inquiry finds anything wrong with John Banks’ donations, its majority is gone—that is how thin its majority is in this House—and it has no mandate to sell off these assets. So I personally support part of Tony Ryall’s amendment, because it will give this Government the opportunity to see how deeply, deeply unpopular this policy is.

MAGGIE BARRY (National—North Shore) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): It is getting close, but I am going to call Holly Walker.

HOLLY WALKER (Green) : Thank you very much, Mr Chair, and thank you to those honourable members for supporting me in taking a call on the title and commencement of this bill. I tried to take a call in Part 1, and I tried to take a call in Part 2, and I am very pleased that I finally get to take one on the title and commencement. And what is the title of this bill? The Mixed Ownership Model Bill—“MOM”. Is it not appropriate: motherhood and apple pie? What a lovely euphemistic title the Government has come up with for this bill. And is it not appropriate that that euphemistic title, that misleading title, which disguises the true purpose of this bill, which is the sale of public assets, should have the word “mom” in it, when we have heard so much about the mum and dad investors—those mythical mum and dad investors who are going to benefit from the sale of State assets that will result from this bill? Apparently, they are the ones who are going to benefit. But we know that this will not be the case. We know two things. We know that 95 percent of New Zealanders will not be purchasing shares in these assets when they are sold. And we also know that 100 percent of New Zealanders already own these assets. They are public assets and they are owned by every mum and dad, and also every mum and mum, every dad and dad, and every other kind of New Zealander. They already own these assets.

So I think a better title for the bill would be the “Privatisation of Public Assets Bill”, because that is what it does. It is nothing to do with mums and dads, or moms, or Americanisms, or euphemistic, misleading titles; it is simply the privatisation of public assets. But speaking of mums and dads, and speaking of families, I want to bring a young person’s perspective into this debate—something that has been somewhat lacking, I feel, so far. I want to talk about the intergenerational impacts of this bill, because it is not just about mums and dads, it is also about children, and it is about grandparents—it is about the intergenerational impacts of this bill. For that reason, I suggest another alternative title, which is the “Intergenerational Inequity Bill”.

I want to speak briefly to a Supplementary Order Paper that is on the Table in the name of my co-leader here Russel Norman. Supplementary Order Paper 70 talks about the commencement: delaying the commencement of this bill and making it ineligible to receive the Royal assent until such time as the country has held an indicative referendum on the question of whether the public supports the sale of State assets. I have been out collecting signatures for this petition for this citizens initiated referendum and I can tell you some very interesting intergenerational trends in the people who have been stopping to sign that petition. I have found in my experience out on the streets of Wellington collecting those signatures that there are two types of people who are very likely to stop and sign. Those are older people and they are young people. I think that that shows and demonstrates the intergenerational impacts of this bill and the fact that opposition to the sale of State assets bridges the gap of generations. Indeed, you can see that in the fact that both Grey Power and the New Zealand University Students Association are two of the core coalition members who are organising and campaigning for this petition.

When I talk to the older generation when they stop to sign this petition, they talk about having seen the mistakes of the 1980 and 1990s, having seen the damaging consequences of the sale of State assets for the whole country—economically, socially, for consumers at the household level, and for the nation at the Government level and at the country level. They say to me: “Don’t make the same mistake again. Don’t make the same mistake twice.” That is what the older New Zealanders are saying to us and to the parliamentarians in this House and to the Government: “Don’t make the same mistake again.” That is why the bill should be called the “Intergenerational Inequity Bill”.

Then I talk to younger New Zealanders, people like me. I was born in 1982. I grew up in a New Zealand that was fundamentally shaped and changed by the sale of State assets in the 1980s and 1990s and the neo-liberal economic policies of that time. My generation and the generations younger than me are daring to imagine that, in fact, we might not have to make the same mistakes again, that we might be able to do it differently, and that we might be able to put up an alternative vision.

TIM MACINDOE (National—Hamilton West) : I move, That the question be now put.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The question is that the question be now put. As many are of that opinion will please say Aye, to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I want to raise several points with you. The first is that I think it is almost unprecedented that when the Leader of the Opposition seeks a call in this sort of a debate, you accept a closure motion. That is highly unusual. The second point that I want to raise is that we have several members here who have been here for several hours, over several parts of the bill, and who have not had a single call on any part of the bill. It is therefore outrageous that you are accepting a closure motion in those circumstances.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I first of all say I never saw the Leader of the Opposition rise. Can I point out to the member Speaker’s ruling 10/4: Once the chairperson has accepted a closure motion and commenced to put the question, it does not matter how far the chairperson gets; under [Standing Order 51] the time to report progress is deferred until the closure and any consequential questions are determined.” So whenever a question is being put to the Committee, the interruption of business is deferred until the question is determined—Standing Order 51. I have to say I am sorry, I did not see the Leader of the Opposition stand. Had I done so, I would have called him. But the reality is that I have called that the question be now put, and the question is that the question be now put. As many are of that opinion will please say Aye, to the contrary, No. The Ayes have it.

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. It is incumbent upon you to look at who is seeking the call before you choose—[Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! There is a point of order on the floor. There is no sound.

CHRIS HIPKINS: —to accept a closure motion. To say that you did not see the Leader of the Opposition, who is sitting immediately in front of you, is simply unbelievable. The Leader of the Opposition was seeking the call. It is very unusual for you to reject that call and then claim that you did not see him when he was sitting right there.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): The reality is that I had made the determination, because we have had 20 speeches on this part. Everybody who had a Supplementary Order Paper has spoken. I have made that decision to take the closure. I apologise to the Leader of the Opposition because, as I said, had I seen him I would have acknowledged him—most certainly. But I did not. So the question is that the question be now put.

Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Point of order.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have already put the question. I have called the vote and that has to be taken as under Speaker’s ruling 10/4.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. In your first response to Chris Hipkins, you set out the rationale as to why you did not call the Leader of the Opposition. In your second response to him, you changed the goalposts and you used another rationale for that. We are in your hands. It is your responsibility. The Leader of the Opposition is not 3 feet high. He is a pretty tall bloke. He sits adjacent to you. He did seek the call. I would point this out to you: before you put the vote, there were at least two members, the chief whip on our side and me, attempting to gain points of order. We are not shrinking violets; we do have reasonable lungs. For some reason, you did not take those points of order; you proceeded directly to the vote. So I put it to you with respect that you have erred on three counts: first, that points of order were being raised by two members; second, that you did not call the Leader of the Opposition. As you have quite rightly said, and there is precedent for this—

Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, there’s not.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order!

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE: There is precedent for not interjecting during a point of order. Third, you have given two differing explanations as to why you did not call a point of order. We are the minority. We rely on you to ensure that our rights are preserved, and we are in a very difficult position that is not through our making.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) : You have called on, I think quite rightly, Speaker’s ruling 10/4. I note here that it was actually a ruling from Mr Hunt in 2003, and if my memory serves me correctly, it was in response to similar types of points of order that I raised at the time when the new Leader of the Opposition, Dr Don Brash, was seeking a call, and if I think for a little bit longer, I will be able to recall the debate. The ruling came about because we went down the process of calling the Speaker back and having the Speaker make a ruling from the Chair. You have acted totally appropriately. Any suggestion that there is a precedent for the Leader of the Opposition getting a preference in a call would be valid only if it were in fact a precedent. The idea that it might have been a courtesy for the Leader of the Opposition taking the call would have been stronger from the Labour Party members had there been not so many others of them standing trying to seek the call ahead of their leader at the time. [Interruption]

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Order! There is a point of order on the floor and it is to be heard in silence. It is to be terse and to the point.

Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: That is a very salient point. If you were unable to sight Mr Shearer at the time, it comes as no surprise to me because most of his own party were trying to take the call ahead of him. So any idea that you were supposed to say: “Oh no, on a precedent, although I have now determined that this debate should be concluded, I must go to the Leader of the Opposition.”, I think is an extremely unreasonable point, and I want to support fully the fact that you have not only decided to terminate the debate but in fact called the vote and held the vote.

Hon CLAYTON COSGROVE (Labour) : The problem the Leader of the Opposition has is that, I recall, it was you, not me, who indicated that in the normal course of events it is, if not a precedent, a protocol that when the Leader of the Opposition calls, you would call him. In fact, it was not me, it was you who admitted that and said that had you seen him—you managed to see Mr Brownlee, I take it, when he rose for a point of order—had you seen the Leader of the Opposition, you would have called him out of tradition or precedent or whatever.

The second point I would raise with you is that it is the case now—and it is the case of every Committee stage, as you will be aware—that members en masse from various political parties seek the call. If I am correct, it is normally the Chairperson who determines who gets the call, and often that is done on seniority. I have seen you call members and indicate that you have called a member perhaps because they are close to the front or in the second row. But certainly that is a precedent in this Chamber, and if it is the case that we should sit down and not seek a call, that would indicate that the closure could be put. So Mr Brownlee fails there as well.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): Can I just point out to members on both sides of the Chamber Speaker’s ruling 79/1, which means that members are not in order in reflecting on the actions of the Chair. I also want to point members to Speaker’s ruling 66/4, which I was referring to indirectly in Speaker’s ruling 10/4, which says: “Once a vote has commenced, it has to be completed.”

The question is that the motion be agreed to. [Interruption] No, I have ruled. The vote must be taken according to the Speaker’s ruling 66/4. [Interruption] New point of order?

CHRIS HIPKINS (Senior Whip—Labour) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. The point of order that I wish to raise is whether it is a requirement for the Chair to deal with a point of order before they begin a vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): All I can say is to refer the member to Speaker’s ruling 10/4—that whenever a question has been put to the House the interruption of business is deferred until the question is determined. And that means it should be done now. Secondly, I come back to Speaker’s ruling 66/4: “Once a vote has commenced, it has to be completed.” As the Chair of the Committee I am guided by Speakers’ rulings, and the Speaker’s ruling is quite specific.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) : I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I would like to draw your attention to the specific wording in Speaker’s ruling 10/3, to which you have referred, which says: “appointed for the interruption of business, any further motion”—it is talking about a motion, not a point of order—and in Speaker’s ruling 10/4 it talks about the closure motion: “the time to report progress is deferred”. Again, it is not about a point of order, and it is a standing convention in this House that the points of order take precedence over other matters of House business. In this case you had not, in fact, started to put the vote; you had merely started to call for a vote, ignoring two points of order that were before you, including from the senior Government whip. I would respectfully submit that it is within the ambit of Speaker’s rulings 10/3—

Hon Ruth Dyson: Opposition whip.

Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE: —sorry, I meant the Opposition whip—and 10/4 that you should legitimately have considered those points of order and given your ruling on the point of order before attempting to put the vote.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I have heard enough. I am going to refer the members again to the following: whenever a question has been put, the interruption of business is deferred until the question is determined. I have put the question, and the vote will be taken.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): We have an amendment in the name of the honourable member Grant Robertson, which was an amendment requiring referral to the Finance and Expenditure Committee prior to the commencement, set out on Supplementary Order Paper 58. That is out of order, for lack of certainty regarding the commencement date. The proposed amendment relies on an indeterminate event—Speaker’s ruling 117/2. The next amendment is in the name of the honourable member Hone Harawira. It is a typescript amendment to insert a new subclause (1AA), making the commencement contingent on the support of the Waitangi Tribunal. That also is out of order, for lack of certainty regarding the commencement date. The proposed amendment relies on an indeterminate event, and that is covered under Speaker’s ruling 117/2.

• The question was put that the amendments set out on Supplementary Order Paper 47 in the name of the Hon David Parker to clause 2 be agreed to.

The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson): I move, That the report be adopted.