Infrastructure Bill

Thank you, Mr Chair.

💬 Chris Tremain: He’s keen tonight.

I am very keen, I say to the chief Government whip. The Infrastructure Bill is an excellent bill. The Opposition feels as though it not only has to explain its difficulties with the bill but also has to explain what the bill actually does to the people who have been tuning in for the last 2 weeks to Parliament TV, only to see a green screen and music playing, with a message saying we would be back on 20 July. People have tuned in tonight, and they would not know from the Government what this bill is about, even though just a few months ago Bill English, the Minister in the chair, said this was an important bill for the Government’s economic programme.

But we know, on this day of all days, how quickly the Government is keen to abandon its long-held principles, as it did today on the mining of schedule 4 land, an issue that trickled and trickled right the way through.

💬 Hon Bill English: That upset you.

Mr English says that upset us, but we agree with the decision not to mine that land, because our principles had not changed on that issue. The only thing that is galling about it is that there is a back-down purely for political reasons, yet it is dressed up as being something to do with a letter from a mayor in Northland, who has asked the Government to look around there to see what it can find. That has then become the basis for a shift in the entire Government economic policy. But those issues are outside Part 3, so I turn to the issues that are in it.

So far we have debated and passed Part 1 with amendments, and we have done the same with Part 2. Here we are in Part 3, on which there will be agreement as well. It must be a very long time since Mr English has united so many people around him. I would have thought that he would be up every 5 minutes to speak about it and bask in that sort of glory, but obviously the penance he is still doing for his transgressions of earlier times is weighing too heavily on him to allow him to get out of the chair tonight.

The changes made in this part to the New Zealand Railways Corporation are reasonably minor, but I want to make a couple of points to the Minister. This is really a drafting issue, I suspect, but the Minister may be able to correct me. Clause 43(2) amends the New Zealand Railways Corporation Act by omitting the words “Minister of Railways” and substituting in each case “Minister”. The reason for that amendment is pretty obvious: there was a time when New Zealand Governments always had a Minister of Railways. I suspect that the last Minister to have a portfolio with that name might have been the Hon Richard Prebble. But that is enough of that, as my colleagues look at me askance. The amendment changes that wording so it is just a generic reference to the Minister. It does not say “Minister of Transport”; it just says “Minister”. That Minister will presumably be whichever Minister is designated by the Prime Minister to have responsibility for rail matters. That is all fine.

We then come to clause 44(2), which substitutes for the existing section 4(6) of the Act the following: “The Minister and the Minister of Finance may jointly, at any time and entirely at their discretion,”—that is slightly dangerous—“remove any director from office.” I am not sure whether that amendment was specifically put in as a form of utu so that Mr English could seek revenge on the Rt Hon Jim Bolger. We all know about Mr English’s famous temper; he was not at all pleased when Mr Bolger decided to serve New Zealand as chair of KiwiRail. That amendment could be there entirely for that reason. But that is not the point I wanted to raise, which is to ask why that amendment specifically names the Minister of Finance. If the bill is trying to get away from naming a portfolio Minister in clause 43(2) and (3), why in clause 44(2) does it specify a portfolio Minister?

This is not an esoteric point. It is an important point, because we went through a period in New Zealand when we had both a Minister of Finance and a Treasurer. The senior portfolio Minister in the economic area was called the Treasurer. That was another old Tory deal in order to get power, but, again, most of the Government members will not know about that.

💬 David Bennett: You carried it on, though.

No, that is not true.

💬 David Bennett: Yes, you did.

That is not correct.

💬 David Bennett: You did so.

When was that?

💬 David Bennett: When Winston was there.

He was not the Treasurer.

💬 David Bennett: No, but you gave him a deal, though.

Poor old David Bennett! I should not have even responded to his interjection. As always, it turned out to have been about absolutely nothing.

💬 Hon Bill English: You got Owen Glenn to make a donation to him.

Sorry? The Minister of Finance spoke, and I am keen to know what he said. He has changed his mind now. He was using the open mike, which was very, very bad of him. But I do not mind; that is at least one way of eliciting information. When National went for New Zealand First and had the position of Treasurer, that became the senior portfolio in the economic area. In fact, this Minister—

💬 Amy Adams: Is this going anywhere at all?

I am referring to clause 44 in Part 3, if Mr Tremain had deigned to read it. Mr English knows about this himself, because he has been both the Minister of Finance and Treasurer at a time when both portfolios existed. In fact, he was the Minister of Finance the last time that superannuation was cut in New Zealand—and I have no doubt that, given a chance, he would do that again.

I would like to know why the portfolio is named in clause 44(2). If there is a coalition deal in the future—this may easily happen—and the portfolio of Treasurer is created again, would that require new legislation to amend this legislation? If the whole bill, which the Minister was formerly very proud of, is such an important thing to bring together because there had been confusion, why does he allow that confusion to take place? Why does the bill not say the “Minister and the shareholding Minister”, for example? That could be a way of getting around it. Perhaps the Minister for Infrastructure could take up that point, because it seems to me that it could be easily addressed. He could change that, so that we do not hold ourselves up.

The other point concerns what is not in Part 3. There are clauses in respect of rail that should be in Part 3, given that this is an infrastructure bill. The Government has had the opportunity, within KiwiRail, to substantially build locomotives in New Zealand within the $500 million budget that the Government has set aside for the Auckland rolling stock. The Government put up $500 million, just as the previous Government did, and the economic study said those things could be built using New Zealand infrastructure— New Zealand producing and manufacturing infrastructure—in a way that would have actually assisted our country and kept the money put aside for that in our country, to be spent at the workshops at Woburn in the Hutt Valley, and at Hillside in Dunedin.

Progress reported.

Report adopted.

The House adjourned at 9.55 p.m.