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

Of all the entities that the Labour Government completely knackered, none can have been more completely knackered than Television New Zealand (TVNZ). Talk about receiving a hospital pass. The Labour Government managed to run down the public equity in TVNZ from almost $1 billion to, 9 years later, a little more than $200 million. It would need some real financial mismanagement on the part of the Minister in charge to do that, but Labour managed it.

How did Labour do it? It shackled TVNZ with a completely ridiculous charter that had it answering two masters. Those guys opposite inherited a very profitable commercial television station with massive equity, but they tried to turn it into something it was not. Labour tried to turn back the clock and turn TVNZ into the old New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation. Labour tried to foist Steve Maharey’s charter on an organisation and, frankly, just about completely ruined it. By the time Labour had finished with it, TVNZ was hardly returning a dividend.

The good news is that under this Government we have turned round the performance of TVNZ. The commercial performance has increased considerably. Not only that, we are just about to remove that terrible TVNZ charter. Do members know what the real indictment of the charter was? In actual fact there was no difference in the content on TVNZ before the charter as compared with during the charter. There will be no difference after the charter either. Steve Maharey put all that effort into wrecking TVNZ by foisting that charter on it. He just about wrecked it, but TVNZ survived. What is even better is that the charter is just about to be removed for good.

Members opposite never realised that TVNZ—93 percent commercially funded—was never going to be the public broadcaster of old. Those members will also say that this Government should not be closing down TVNZ 7, but the fact is they left $79 million on the table for it for 6 years, with no plan as to how they were going to continue that funding. They just left it up to us. We are left with the hard decision of what will happen with TVNZ 7 and they expect us to find another $15 million to fund it.

If Clare Curran gets time to speak—I think there are 2 minutes left in this debate—I want her to promise the Committee that a Labour Government will fund TVNZ 7 and that it will find the $15 million a year to do it. I tell members that she will talk tough but I bet she will not find that money. I will quit this speech early, because there are 2 minutes left and I want to hear Clare Curran walk the talk and tell us that a Labour Government will fund TVNZ 7. So please, now is Ms Curran’s chance.

This Government talks a lot about step changes and every time it says “step changes”, I think of aerobics and of us all doing step classes—

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): I am sorry to interrupt the honourable member, but the time for this debate has expired.

I raise a point of order, Mr Chairperson. I do not wish to challenge the Chair, but I recorded that we started this debate at 4.35 p.m. and it is a 3-hour time-limited debate. We just hoped we would get that last 5-minute call.

The CHAIRPERSON (Lindsay Tisch): No, we started at 4.32 p.m. on the official record and we finished at 2 minutes past 9. That is why we have closed the debate.

The debate on the performance in 2009-10 and current operations of Crown entities, public organisations, and State enterprises has concluded. I will report this debate to the House.

Report adopted.