Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations,and State Enterprises — Television New Zealand Limited

We have in New Zealand a senseless TVNZ charter, which underpins the nonsense that is occurring at TVNZ. The charter, of course, is just an exercise in political correctness and cultural drivel, focused on ethnic programmes that are little more than social apartheid. It is part of this Government’s social engineering agenda, and we oppose it. The charter has also confused the commercial imperative outlined in the State-Owned Enterprises Act. The State-owned enterprise is to be either a public service broadcaster or it is to be, surely, a commercial entity. It needs to be one or the other, but it cannot be both. Nothing illustrates that point more than the debacle of Ross Armstrong—the former National Party vice-president who was, of course, appointed by the National Party to most jobs, but who is also one of Helen Clark’s current followers—who got away with fraud, double-dipping, and the serious misuse of taxpayers’ money. He got off scot-free, and no one was held accountable. I find it very unusual that when Māori people commit fraud, Don Brash, and National and ACT are down on them like a ton of bricks—but not in the case of Ross Armstrong! They would have given him a knighthood if they still had one.

I am really concerned that taxpayers’ dollars are being used to fly executives all over the world to stay in the best hotels, under the guise of dubious claims that by doing so they will somehow provide a better service. We say that taxpayers’ dollars would be better spent here in New Zealand, on promoting our already-proven film industry. What is really of concern, of course, is that TVNZ is a very, very high-priced label, and it lives under the dark shadows of the National Party’s no doubt intended policy plank of selling it the moment that National ever gets back into power. Well, we all know that is not going to happen, but nevertheless it cannot be easy for a television service to operate, having a public mandate, when it is to be put under the threat of sale.

But the real issue today is this: why have the TVNZ executives not come along to the Commerce Committee and given us an explanation for the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of unlimited personal credit card spending on behalf of 11 of the executives, and for a half hour being taken at the start of the year in a prime programme called Holmes to try to do in somebody’s political career?

I have news for those gentlemen, and it is all bad. We want them to come along and explain each credit card, detail by detail.

R Doug Woolerton: Oh, they won’t do that.

Well, they will have to, because in a fit of macho behaviour the man at the top promised that. He even asked me whether I wanted details of the make-up allowance account, too. I said yes, of course, if he wanted to give it to me, that would be fine.

I want to know what the clothing allowance of Paul Holmes is. I want to know what Susan Wood’s clothing allowance is. Is it $25,000, $35,000, or $55,000? Let us find that out. Those people made a big job of Tuku’s underpants. Now they have put all the clothes on the other body, and I want to know what their clothing account is—or is it just limitless? Do they spend what they like? Is it true that at the end of the year they divvy all the clothes up, and have a little auction amongst themselves? [Interruption] Not on the market, no—a very limited market.

R Doug Woolerton: Who’d want a gift of Holmes’ clothes?

That is true. Maybe Mark Peck would pop along and get a decent suit. Anyway, to cut a long story short, we want to know when TVNZ’s executives are going to turn up, and we want to be certain as a House that they do not treat Parliament and the Commerce Committee with contempt. In short, we want them to show us what has been going on. That must surely be in the interests of TVNZ, because we know what a huge believer it is in public accountability. It is the absolute paragon of virtue when it comes to public accountability, and we want to give it a chance to demonstrate just how much it means by that.

R Doug Woolerton: Is this a Tui’s ad?

Yeah, right. This is not another Tui’s advertisement.

💬 Hon Member: Don’t be cynical.

I am not being cynical. I just want to make it very clear to TVNZ that if it thinks it is going to stitch up somebody’s career with a tissue of lies and get people to perjure themselves, in not one affidavit but three, then there are consequences.

I want TVNZ to know it has picked on the wrong person here.

I want to pick up on the issue of credit cards, but before I do so I would like to touch on two other issues relating to TVNZ’s financial review. The first is that TVNZ assured us that the $10.7 million in taxpayer funding it received to implement the charter in 2002-03 was all spent on programmes that met the criteria spelt out by the charter. But when we actually looked at how it had spent the money, when it finally published that information retrospectively in its annual report, we discovered that it had spent more than a million dollars on buying in over 1,000 hours of BBC World Service programming and other foreign programming. I have no problem with TVNZ buying in BBC World Service programming, but I have to ask why it is spending taxpayers’ money—charter funding—on buying in thousands of hours of foreign current affairs programming when, for example, we have only 24 percent local content on TV2. In fact, most of that programming—the 1,000 hours—screens between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. How does that conform with the charter funding criteria, and why are we spending millions of dollars on that? The Minister said last week, in answer to a question in the House: “No charter funding is spent on any of the network’s major news and current affairs programmes.” Yet we learn from the annual report that more than 1,000 hours of charter funding was spent on buying those foreign current affairs programmes. Was the Minister misleading the House in his answer?

A second issue is this: how has current affairs been improved under the charter? We had a lot of rhetoric about what would happen, but what has been delivered? Firstly, 92 fewer hours of current affairs have been screened since the charter came in. Secondly, TVNZ has dropped the flagship current affairs programme Assignment, has sacked 14 current affairs staff—allegedly to save $4 million in its news and current affairs budget—and now we learn it is paying twice the market rate to buy in yet more foreign current affairs and news programmes. What on earth is going on there? And what about TV2, the channel that our children and young people watch? TVNZ acknowledged during the review that it did have a legal obligation to deliver the charter on both channels. But then we learnt that TVNZ is screening less than half of the local content on TV2, the programme our young people watch, that it is on Television One. In fact, it is screening a pitiful 24 percent on TV2. How can it be implementing the charter equally on TV2, when it is showing a mere 24 percent of local programmes on that channel? That is simply not good enough. Where are the performance criteria that we have been waiting for?

On the question of credit cards, which Winston Peters has now raised, that was an issue I raised during the financial review. Mr Peters has focused on the 11 executives who have unlimited spending. But, in fact, when one looks at the report, one sees there were far more than that. An extraordinary 462 staff in TVNZ have company credit cards, of whom an astonishing 89 staff have unlimited spending on their credit cards, and a further 66 have spending limits of up to $15,000. Why would we have almost 500 staff with credit cards, many of which have unlimited spending, in an organisation with a public service culture? We were told that there is no explicit policy relating to the number of credit cards allocated to staff. TVNZ refused to tell us about credit card usage by its senior executives. It did acknowledge that 11 senior staff had spent $316,000 last year, but basically TVNZ would not tell us about the rest. We have had to ask the TVNZ executives to come back to the Commerce Committee to try to answer those questions. It is almost unheard of that we have had to recall them to the committee, yet again, in order to try to understand why such an extraordinarily large number of staff have credit cards, and how they can be made accountable for that expenditure.

At the commencement of this debate two votes had not been reported back to the Committee, one of them being that for Industry New Zealand. The point made by the Hon Bill English was that that is the most important work that has to be done by the Committee. I have taken the opportunity to go back to my room and check my notes from the Commerce Committee meeting on Thursday last week, when the committee was to consider and deliberate on the Industry New Zealand report to Parliament. The National Party member requested that we did not deliberate in order that Mr Phil Heatley, the person who spoke on those particular estimates, had an opportunity—

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I need to interrupt the member. I believe that that is confidential information.

Oh no, that is not confidential information. That was the proceedings of the committee.

The CHAIRPERSON (Ann Hartley): I am taking advice from the Clerk. The proceedings in a select committee, other than the hearing of evidence, are confidential until they have been reported back. So I cannot allow the member to go on with that point of order.

It is no surprise that the Opposition has chosen to most spiritedly debate an area like Television New Zealand and not rise to debates on things like the guardianship fund, an overseas superannuation fund with a large fund of money, which we thought might have attracted the interest of people. But it has chosen to go for Television New Zealand. That has attracted the interest of Mr Peters, undoubtedly because a person scorned over dinner is someone that one should always expect to come back for dessert, and today he had a wee crack at them again. I am sure they are able to cope with that, so I will not dwell on him feeling bad about the dinner.

I want to say, though, that in terms of Mr Peters’ comments, I am in complete agreement on two points. One is that I agree with his drive for accountability. He spent most of his time talking about Ross Armstrong. I just want to remind Mr Peters that Ross Armstrong no longer is the chairperson of Television New Zealand. He did leave Television New Zealand because we asked him to. He agreed to do that. All of those things have been cleaned up, and there has been a long gap in between. But if Mr Peters has forgotten that, I thought I would just remind him that those things do matter to us, and we do act on them.

I also want to agree with him on the notion of public asset. He is right. If the National Party were to ever, under some kind of extraordinary circumstance, return to the Treasury benches, it would sell this asset. It would sell Television New Zealand. It would sell Radio New Zealand, as well. We know that because National members have said repeatedly that they can see no point in owning it. Now, whether one likes, or does not like, what goes on with the programming, Television New Zealand is part of the little left to us by the National Party of our nation’s infrastructure, and we will not be selling it. We will be hanging on to it. There is a clear point of difference between the National Party and ourselves.

Let me just talk quickly about credit cards. Can I tell members who do not seem to have read their notes very well that TVNZ confirms that all its credit cards now carry a credit limit, and that the number of credit cards on issue is strictly controlled, and has been reduced by 20 since January 2004. The use of credit cards enables low-value transactions to be processed efficiently while contributing to a rebate on expenditure for the credit card provider. So all the comments about limitless spending, everybody has one, and they have 12 in their back pockets are wrong— they do not, and under this Government they will not, because we ensure that people get the message that we want prudent spending.

Television New Zealand, of course, is now working under the charter towards New Zealand content being at least 50 percent of programmes shown. That will mean an enormous growth for independent producers of programmes. It will mean a real change on screen. The commitment to New Zealand programming is something that the Green Party may not have read either, but it is right there.

There was concern about current affairs on Television New Zealand. Yes, Television New Zealand has been reviewing news and current affairs, and yes, it has taken off some programmes and put others on. If members read their notes, once again they will find that more current affairs programmes are on now than there were last year. This year we are planning to increase current affairs and news. There are new kinds of programmes on television, because we really like to see debate about the kinds of issues in our country. We are very pleased to see the charter being fulfilled in that way, so if members have any concerns about New Zealand content and current affairs, they should please go back to the notes. They will find that there are even more.

Sue Kedgley asked the question about overseas programming being a proper area of expenditure under the charter. Well, of course it is. A charter does not just mean that New Zealanders, who do happen to live in a global society, want to watch programmes made by New Zealanders about New Zealanders entirely. They also need to know what goes on elsewhere, and they need other points of view coming in. It is an appropriate thing for a public broadcaster to spend some of the money it gets under the charter on programmes it might not otherwise be able to afford to bring into the country. That is an appropriate use of the money.

Television New Zealand is going through a large number of changes—there is no doubt about that. But right now it is maintaining audience share, as the House would want. It is maintaining a very high level of profitability, and it has had a very good year in relation to advertising. At the same time TVNZ is slowly but surely working out what it means to be a chartered organisation that has to return a commercial return to the Government. It is one of only three public broadcasters in the world—the Canadians, the Irish, and ourselves—where a commercial return is required by the shareholder, the Government. It is required to provide a larger return. A larger profit has to be made by TVNZ, so this is a big learning curve, but I can say right now that we are seeing major changes, and we are reasonably happy with the state of TVNZ’s finances.

I congratulate the Minister on his comments in the Chamber today. I join him in reminding those who are listening to the debate today that if National had the opportunity, it would sell off TVNZ, Radio New Zealand by lunchtime, and a heck of a lot more. National members do not believe in public assets. They think that the market delivers best. Indeed, Don Brash, even when talking about schools, said only a couple of years ago that for his part he did not care who owned the schools. He does not care who owns the Accident Compensation Corporation, or hospitals. He certainly does not care who owns broadcasting. He does not care whether Television New Zealand is in private ownership.

I just ask the people of New Zealand to think about that a little bit, because not everybody earns the same amount of money as Don Brash used to earn when he was on half a million bucks a year as the Governor of the Reserve Bank, and certainly not everybody has the same sort of assets that John Key has. Many people in New Zealand rely totally on the public broadcaster for their television news, information, and entertainment.

I just say to members opposite that if they want to sell Television New Zealand, bring it on! Let us take that particular debate into the election and have it. Let us put it on the table and have a debate about it, because I know that the Kiwi mums and dads around the country like their free-to-air television. I can say about the people whose houses I door knock on that not everybody has Sky, because they cannot afford the payments. In some parts of the country, not only do they not have Sky, they cannot get it unless they really go the whole hog and get the—

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: You can get Sky anywhere in New Zealand. It comes from a satellite.

The member should try to get it in some places in Southland and see how he gets on.

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Anywhere.

Anywhere?

💬 Hon Maurice Williamson: Done. There is the technology.

A done deal. That is very good.

💬 Darren Hughes: He’s got his salary back now.

He has his salary back and his position back. It is good to see him back in that seat, as he has given a bit of punch to the Opposition, which they were lacking for some time when he was No. 27. He was a bit like a Telecom advertisement—“Go 27”—but, of course, he did not go, he came back, and someone else along the way did go—

💬 Darren Hughes: He’s still going.

That is true, he is still going, and we know about that. I congratulate Television New Zealand on the work it does. It does an extremely good job of providing the news service and current affairs programmes. It also provides very good children’s programmes. I remember, when I was bringing my children up, the importance of children’s programmes on a Saturday morning as people were waking up and getting into their day. These programmes are top notch.

💬 Darren Hughes: Even 40 years ago?

It is a little bit less than 40 years ago, but almost. I am delighted that very soon I will be a grandfather, and will be able to enjoy those Saturday morning programmes with my grandson or granddaughter—who knows, but it will certainly be one of the two—and I am certainly looking forward to that.

There were some issues that we discussed with TVNZ, and we will have it back for a briefing on some of the matters that have been referred to in this debate, but that is as it should be. One of the things about financial reviews is that they give the select committee an opportunity to get behind the numbers, and that is an important thing to do. But at the end of the day that is not a reason to give the likes of the Opposition an opportunity to say that they would like to flog it off.

I can understand that point of view coming from ACT. All that ACT has ever believed is that we should sell everything, but I would have thought that if the National Opposition was looking to build a solid social infrastructure in this nation, it would have said that broadcasting was part of that, but, no, they remain silent on the other side. It took Winston Peters and Sue Kedgley to raise the issues in this Chamber, but National members will not raise them, because they know that Television New Zealand is a very good State-owned enterprise.

As Opposition members consider their proposals for the next few years, I tell them this: the State-owned enterprises in this country, of which TVNZ is one, have on their balance sheets $11 billion worth of assets. If members opposite are talking about getting rid of that, it is probably just under 10 percent of New Zealand’s gross domestic product. It is a significant amount to be putting on the market, and I think Opposition members should stand up and be accountable for that. I wish one of them would make some comments.

Reports noted.

Career Services

Early Childhood Development Board

Learning Media Ltd

New Zealand Qualifications Authority

Tertiary Education Commission

New Zealand Teachers Council