General Debate

I move, That the House take note of miscellaneous business. I would like to have time to dwell on the broken promises of the Government: the promised 170,000 new jobs—so far it has lost 30,000 since it made that promise—the drop in exports, especially outside of the primary sector; or the fact that despite its promises we have now clocked over 200,000 people deserting New Zealand for finer pastures in Australia. I would like to be able to illuminate to the public as to why it is that 4 years into this Government we have got a terrible current account deficit. It is terrible. It is the worst in the developed world. But I do not have time for that because I want to tell the New Zealand public something positive rather than something negative, and that is that under Labour, if we are elected, power prices will go down. They will go down by $230 to $330 a year for the average household and down by 5 to 7 percent for business. This is something that the Labour Party is proud of, and we will make it happen.

The National Government has made a fundamental mistake. It has said that you cannot trust Labour to deliver that. The public of New Zealand know that, yes, they can. They will trust us on that, and they are going to vote for it. That is why National has been so vociferous and over the top with its hysterical reaction to what we announced. “Markets are good.” is shorthand for “Competitive markets are good.” It is not shorthand for “Uncompetitive markets are good.”

There is a huge amount of evidence that the electricity market is uncompetitive, whether it is the Wolak report of $4.3 billion of overcharging; whether it is the Auckland University study, more recently, of over $3 billion of overcharging; or whether it is these ever-increasing prices that have increased for 15 years, at double the rate of inflation, since the Bradford reforms—which Simon Bridges said need more time to bed in. We have given up on that ridiculous argument.

The other problem is that under the current system over 50 percent of New Zealand’s power—close to 60 percent of it—comes from old hydro assets. They get jacked up in their values every year, put into the power prices of New Zealanders every year, more and more, on the basis of a pricing model that is wrong. Free water is being capitalised by the Government into these balance sheets of the State-owned enterprises that are being sold. So we warned people. What did the Government say? That it is sabotage. What would people have said if we had not warned them? Those people would have been appropriately aggrieved that we did not warn them of what was coming.

I want to reflect on what some of the commentary is saying. In the New Zealand Herald, Bernard Hickey said: “Power barons fail to fool the public this time around.” Around the same time, Anthony Hubbard in the Dominion Post said: “It’s enough to make you want to scream.” That was his description of the current situation in electricity. The New Zealand Herald, in an opinion piece by Chris Barton, said: “Power competition needs proper regulation.” He is not the only one saying that. We had Rob O’Neill, the business editor of the Sunday Star-Times, saying, around the same time, that leaving the market as it stands is not good sense. He says there is a need to further regulate the market.

The Labour Party is going to reduce power prices. This will have a benefit to the economy—this will have a benefit to the economy. Business and Economic Research Ltd suggests that the economic benefit is $450 million per annum in additional economic growth. In addition, there will be 5,000 to 10,000 more jobs. On the other side of the House, they look at the world through a merchant banking lens. On this side, we look at it through a production and industrial jobs lens. That is the difference between us and that lot on the other side. It is not Stalinism or Albania or North Korea. It is because of a failed experiment by Max Bradford under National that power prices are remorselessly going up.

What Kiwis know, Mr Parker—that Mr Parker clearly does not know—is that if it sounds too good to be true, well, it is. What is very clear and what we know about what the Labour Party is saying and the Greens are saying when it comes to power prices is that there will not be another bean in generation in this country under their policy. If there is, it will be from taxpayers, not consumers as it should be. They will undermine investment. We have seen very clearly the business community in this country rebel in horror at what it has heard from Labour and the Greens. So I say this to Mr Parker: why does he not just offer a couple of the easiest words to say in the dictionary—just say sorry? Just say sorry.

He says: “Well, it is not Albanian policy.”—he says that it is not Albanian policy. Well, let me give him a list of countries or states where the single buyer model is currently used: Poland—I have nothing against Poland; my wife is half Polish, and that is very nice—Ukraine, Honduras, Indonesia, Pakistan, Mongolia, Thailand, Morocco, and much of Latin America. Well, I have got nothing against those fine countries at all, but what is—

💬 Rt Hon Winston Peters: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. We are doing our best to follow this speech, but there must be something wrong with the sound system. I cannot understand a word he is saying.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: Well, I can certainly understand what he is saying, but there is some difficulty in hearing it because of the noise coming from the Opposition benches.

For the respected elder gentleman, I will talk more slowly. What is very clear in this House recently—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: Your voice is breaking, Simon.

Mr Cosgrove, I am going to speak about your good city. What is very clear is that there has very recently been a power list in Canterbury. A power list has come out, and we know that the Prime Minister is No. 1. That is understandable. Gerry Brownlee made, I think, No. 2 or 3. I did not see Mr Cosgrove’s name on it, but that is OK. Look, Lianne Dalziel, I think, did make it. That is all good. Well, I wonder, if the Green Party had a power list, who would be on that power list. Who would be—

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: “Cougar Bait”.

Well, I do not know whether there are cougars; I think they were looking for a panther down on the river at one stage, Mr Mallard. But if the Green Party did a power list, who would be on that list? Well, Nos 1, 2, and 3 would be one and the same, I think: “Hey, Clint”, take a bow. “Hey, Clint” would be running that party. And he does not just dictate the media lines for the Green Party; he is clearly running the numbers, the strategy, and everything else in the meetings that I have been at. So that is all good for Clint. But I say this to the Green Party: why is it trying to orchestrate democracy from the outside? If Clint is so good, why does he not stand for Parliament?

While we are speaking about orchestrating democracy, here is what we know about the Green Party: it spent around—wait for it—$400,000 of taxpayers’ money on the asset sales petition. Well, not even the Labour Party would do that. Not even the Labour—

💬 Hon Annette King: What about the million you spent on adverts on television?

Not even Annette King, in her worst vote-buying days, would spend $400,000 on an asset sales—

💬 Hon Annette King: I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. It is not acceptable for a member to accuse another member of vote buying.

Speaking to the point of order, I said that she did not.

💬 Mr SPEAKER: That is right. This is the general debate. It is a robust debate. Would the member please continue with his speech.

I say to the member Annette King to stop being so precious, sweetheart, because I do not think that you would vote-buy. But what I am saying clearly is that $400,000 was spent by the Green Party on an asset sales petition. What else did those members do when they did that? Well, we know that 26.9 percent of their 400,000-odd signatures—26.9 percent—did not count.

💬 Hon Trevor Mallard: They weren’t on the roll.

That leaves 292,000; 107,000 were wrong. So how did they do that? Well, if Mr Mallard is going to take a call, he can tell me. Did they sign up children? Is that what they did? Did they sign up people two, three, four, or five times? I would like to know how a population the size of Tauranga or Otago was signed up on this petition.

It is always a pleasure to follow such an erudite speaker as Simon Bridges, the previous member. He has obviously invested a great deal of time and effort in the research and understanding of his subject, and I wish him well in so far as the realising of the returns from that investment are concerned. I say “returns” because that is, of course, why anyone makes any investment—they expect a return from it. A good investment made wisely may return a handsome profit. The returns on the member’s investment may well be recognition, promotion, and a happier and more successful parliamentary life. I wish the member every success with that.

Perhaps he could even take a few moments to enlighten the Prime Minister as to an explanation of the word “investment”, because the Prime Minister does not appear to know what it actually means. It may strike some members as rather odd that I should make such a claim, because, as members know very well, “investment” is one of the Prime Minister’s favourite words, particularly when referring to his Government’s planned sell-off of New Zealand’s family silver and the actual and ongoing sell-off of our lands, forests, fisheries, businesses, and anything else that is not nailed down to foreign buyers. Investors, the Prime Minister calls these buyers. They are investing in New Zealand, and that, we are invited to believe, is a good thing. The investors to whom the Prime Minister refers are indeed wise to commit their money to the purchase of land and assets in New Zealand, to the purchase of farms and forests and power stations, because the returns in profits will be great indeed, for them.

For us, however, for the people of New Zealand—for the citizens and taxpayers of this country, which is being invested in—the results and the returns and the profits will not be so handsome. For us, this so-called investment—this foreign investment of which the Prime Minister speaks so often and so enthusiastically—in reality represents a loss. The profits taken by foreign buyers come at the expense of us, the seller. This is logic. In business one person’s profit can come only from another person’s expenditure. If that expenditure was itself an investment for us, the seller, from which we might expect a return, or if the expenditure was for a service or product not previously available that the investors’ investment had made available, then this would not be such a bad thing. But when the sale of our lands, forests, fisheries, and power stations involves no new, actual investment—in other words, when it involves only the transfer of ownership and the transfer of the wealth associated with that ownership—then it is to the nation’s detriment and it is not the desirable foreign investment that the Prime Minister appears to be so enamoured of.

If a foreign buyer comes to New Zealand and buys 1,000 acres of gorse-covered scrubland and turns it into a prime dairy farm, buys shares in Fonterra, and sets up home and lives here and becomes a citizen and sends his kids to the local school, then that is something that increases the wealth of this country. It could rightly be called an investment, which we should welcome. But when a foreign buyer snaps up 16 dairy farms from a receiver, that is not an investment for anyone other than the foreign buyer. There will be no more cows than there were before. There will be no additional jobs for dairy farm workers. There will be no increase in the volume of milk produced and processed. And when the new owners build their own processing facility and ship the powder it produces directly back to China, there will be a net loss of wealth from this country, because that will be the milk powder that Fonterra used to process and now does not, and the profits for the dairy industry that used to remain here in New Zealand will now go to China instead.

When a so-called business migrant comes to Auckland from Shanghai and buys 10 houses to rent out, pushing the market up and out of the reach of New Zealand families and first-home buyers, that is not investment. It is transfer of ownership, and that is all. There will not be 10 new houses built as a result, just 10 more rent payments going offshore.

When the Superannuation Fund sells New Zealand forests to the Chinese Government, that is not an investment we should welcome. It is the transfer of national wealth from New Zealand to China. The Chinese Government will not plant more trees here than would be planted if the forest remained in New Zealand ownership. It will not build more sawmills or particle board mills or newsprint mills or furniture factories. There will not be more jobs for factory workers or logging truck drivers than there were before. All that will happen is that the same number of raw logs that used to be exported to China will continue to be exported to China, except that because the Chinese Government now owns the entire forest, New Zealand will not even gain the benefit of the value of a log, which on its own is worth less than the same tree would be worth as firewood. I know this because I used to be a firewood contractor.

Unlike the Prime Minister, I have lived in the real world and I have had real jobs. The Prime Minister is a currency trader, or he was a currency trader, and he knows about making money and making a profit. If I buy 100 million—

The member’s time has expired.

I raise a point of order, Mr Speaker. My colleague was making so much sense that I move an extension of time.

You could seek leave to do so, obviously, and I do not even think the member is bothering to do that.

How humiliating it must be for them, must it not? Despite spending nearly half a million dollars, and involving the entire membership of the Labour Party and of the Green Party, and most of the unions, they were unable to get enough valid signatures on their little petition to try to stop the partial sale of State-owned enterprises. How humiliating for them. Do you know that the Greens spent $91,000 of their budget—that is their publicly funded budget; that is the budget allocated to them for parliamentary purposes—buying signatures? Labour allocated 30 hours a week. Labour allocated publicly funded hours of MP time and resources, and I would love to hear a more comprehensive list of the public money that Labour spent on this petition. And the unions paid a national coordinator for 3 months to run this petition. What else did they do? All this—

💬 Hon Clayton Cosgrove: So what?

“So what?”, says Clayton Cosgrove—so what? All this, to buy signatures. All this effort, and they were way, way short, with over 110,000 signatures counted to be invalid. There were people signing two and three times, people not on the electoral roll, people who never existed. It is kind of like they thought in their innocence—in their cute little happy innocence—that the Clerk of the House was not going to check. Well, the Clerk of the House did check.

The Labour-Greens have ripped off the New Zealand public. They have used public funds to buy signatures. They were so lazy, they were so arrogant, that they did not bother to check that one in four of those signatures—one in four of those signatures—was made up, was false, was duplicated, and was bogus. The Labour-Greens said they had massive support, but they did not have massive support. They had to buy that support. Even then—even then, with all that effort and all that public money—they have fallen well short of the public support that they needed.

Do you know what? The Labour-Greens should try playing within the rules. When the Labour-Greens issued a press release saying they had 393,000 genuine signatures, guess what? They were wrong. They have been exposed as playing fast and loose with the democratic process, and do you know what? They should just apologise. They should apologise to all those New Zealanders whom they tried to dupe. Do you know what? Support that has to be bought is not support that is freely given, and therefore is no support at all.

Do you know what? The National Government has always been upfront about the policy of partial sales of State-owned enterprises. We campaigned on the policy going into the 2011 election. We played by the rules. We took that policy to the country. What was Labour’s flagship 2011 election policy? What was it? No asset sales. Well, guess what? That won—

💬 Hon Member: Get GST off fruit.

And GST off fruit. That won it 27 percent of the vote. Our election commitment to the New Zealand public was to protect New Zealand’s economy through a programme of partial sales of energy State-owned enterprises. We went to the country—the National Party went to the country—with a plan to responsibly manage the nation’s finances and to build a more competitive and productive economy, and that is what we are doing.

Labour, on the other hand—well, it has kind of lost its way. Labour is opposed to all the initiatives that would create jobs and boost incomes. Labour is increasingly being known out there in the public as the anti-growth party. It is becoming a bit obvious that under the influence of Grant Robertson and Russel Norman the Labour-Greens are shifting ever further, ever further, ever further to the left. They want to do things like increase the impact of the emissions trading scheme on households to the tune of $500 a year. They want to discount the price of electricity by around $300 a year, with a net increase to households of $200 a year. With that kind of “freak-onomics”, it is no wonder they are getting increasingly desperate.

National’s policy is to responsibly manage the country’s finances and build a competitive and productive economy. It is what we said we would do, and it is what we are doing.

The only thing that could be said for that speaker, Jacqui Dean, is that she did not try to sing a song. Just when we thought that Paul Quinn’s arrival would lower the tone of the House, somewhere unfortunately concealed in the labyrinths of Parliament is an office with a Gilmore lock on it, a sturdy Samoan security guard outside, and that is the price you pay for abusing your status as an MP and not fronting up. The less said about that, the better. I am an expert in these matters, and you would be well advised to take the advice of someone who still actually shows the scars, but that is another matter.

I want to talk about the proxy for the National Party, given that its members are unwilling to go out and sell their own policies—that very small cabal who seem to think that the households of New Zealand do not deliver an improved cost of living equation. Under the leadership of David Shearer and the architecture of our senior finance spokesman, David Parker, we will be reforming the lazy, self-serving, unfair energy sector. We will be bringing in a Pharmac-like agency that will drive down the costs to the ordinary Kiwi household and improve their cost of living, enabling them to have more pūtea to do doctors visits, which are getting out of control under Mr Ryall, to buy sports shoes, and to actually have a wee bit more pūtea so that day-to-day living can be made easier. For businesses, they are already saying that if they stand and if they are identified by Steven Joyce, for example, as approving the direction of our policy, they will be hammered. In key industrial sectors people have told me very, very forcefully: “Do not back down on this policy. Do not listen to Phil O’Reilly. Do not listen to Mr Barnett.” I say to them that they have decided to don the garb of the current Government. From this day on, they will be treated appropriately.

It is reasonable to have a public policy debate and for advocates from that sector of society to come forward. But do not come back into the political ring on one day, presuming that you are even-handed, and the next day, trot out the diatribes of the Government. Where were they? It was $3.6 billion down the bog hole for finance companies. Never heard a single word from Barnett. Never heard a single word from Phil O’Reilly. Where were they when the $22 billion cost, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers, has been imposed on society in general for the debacle of leaky houses? Much of that responsibility lies within the stewardship of industry. Not a single word. We stand up for households, we stand up for equity, and we stand up for long-suffering Kiwis. And we get this avalanche of hostility, which is not based on fact. There is no wealth dissipation or destruction; there is distribution. That is what Governments do. That is what we are going to do. If it was good enough for John Key to deliver the largest percentage of the tax cuts to a narrow range of New Zealanders—if that is not distribution, what is? If it is good enough for you to manipulate the tax system through policy changes for those distributed purposes, watch this space, we will do exactly the same.

We are resolute about this. The business of looking after households is miles away from the mahogany-topped tables of merchant bankers and their Kohimārama bases. Get on with it, live your life, but do not live it on the backs of, and do not rip off, ordinary Kiwis who, by and large, are powerless. That is why they look to this side of the House, because at the essence of what we stand for is equity, reform, and improvement. That side is not a party of reformers. The reformers sit on this side: capital gains tax, massive reform; compulsory savings, massive reform; and changes to our monetary policy, massive reform. Getting rid of the self-serving, profit-seeking, and mean-spirited tsars of the energy sector and their merchant banking friends is a reform well overdue. We will not resile, irrespective of how many hired mouthpieces turn up. I accept, when the backbenchers come to participate in this debate, they need merchant bankers to talk for them because no one knows them.

A mere apology is not going to reinvent the man from the North. This is the man who saw an investment opportunity. He bought all the electricity houses in Meremere, all the old rundown houses, and then he shifted them to the North and he rented them to his own whānau. In fact, his own whānau said “No thanks, Shane, that’s a bit of a ramshackle house. I’d rather be in a State house.” That is the sort of slum landlord Shane Jones is, and that is what the Labour Party has invested in.

💬 Grant Robertson: Oh!

Oh, do not worry about that. There are plenty of people in the North who were offered those houses. So how dare he come into this House and say he is the new messiah, that he is the new man? He is nothing but an old man, and an old man who has said sorry for his appalling behaviour. Saying sorry does not actually cut it. Saying sorry does not actually mean you receive the baton from somebody like Parekura. Saying sorry is not going to get you anywhere near the leadership. I will tell you something else.

💬 Hon Annette King: You should know, Tau, No. 80 on the list.

I am proud to be No. 40—I am proud to be No. 40.

I will tell you something about the petition. It was an absolute rort, at half a million dollars. One in four signatures—it was basically signed by 2-year-olds, basically signed by other people who had already signed the petition. There needs to be an inquiry into that behaviour of the Greens. And let us not point the finger too much at the Greens, because who were their mates in this dastardly act? It was not New Zealand First. It just wants to steal property. It just wants to steal property—it wants to nationalise it. It was the Labour Party.

💬 Grant Robertson: Shameful, Tau.

What was that?

💬 Grant Robertson: It was Grey Power, so you’re abusing—

No, no, it was not Grey Power; it was the Greens and Labour who spent half a million dollars of taxpayers’ money. And here is the shameful thing: they could not even get the signatures that were required. They could not even get the signatures. They had months and months and months of getting out amongst the people and asking the people to sign a petition. How many signatures did they fall short of? Sixteen thousand—in fact, it was most probably more, but I think the Clerk of the House was being kind.

💬 Todd McClay: How many fakes?

How many fakes? Sixteen thousand, as far as I am concerned.

💬 Todd McClay: 100,000.

Sorry, I got my figures mixed up. It was 100,000—100,000 signatures. I could have understood there being 1,000 signatures that were a bit dodgy.

💬 Dr Cam Calder: Human error.

Yes, human error. But 100,000 people in this country? No, it cannot be. I cannot believe that a political party or two political parties would rort the system that much—that much. I think there should be an inquiry. In fact I will call now on the Auditor-General to get down here and make an inquiry into the performance of the Green Party and the Labour Party, because half a million dollars could have gone to feeding some children. Half a million dollars could have gone to buy some Weetbix for the children, so that those children could go to school with a couple of Weetbix in their belly.

You see how silly the Green Party and the Labour Party have been in trying to rort the system. One in four signatures was dodgy. One in four signatures was made up. One in four signatures was—well, I have to say this: it is criminal. It is criminal. If we were to find somebody double-voting, they would have the full force of the law come down upon them. But what about double signatures here? What about the people who rorted the system here? Let us have a look—

💬 Grant Robertson: Arrest David Farrar now then.

There is no need to say that we should arrest David Shearer. There is no need to say that.

If Mr Henare really cares about the starving children in this country, he could give back the massive tax cut that he gave himself—tax cuts that overwhelmingly went to people who needed them the least. So cry me a river, Mr Henare, about how much the National Party cares about poor children, because your record speaks otherwise.

I want to talk about the incredible announcement that was made by the Labour Party over a couple weeks ago, regarding New Zealand power—a real game-shifter in terms of how the electricity market will operate in New Zealand in the future. I want to know why the National Party does not want households to have cheaper power, does not want businesses to have cheaper power, and why it continues to defend a market that is not competitive. Does anyone in this country really believe that we have competition in our electricity market? The Minister of Energy and Resources says that he believes we do. Well, I can tell you that the voters in this country do not, because they are sick and tired of the rorting of the electricity system and the fact that it is the struggling New Zealand consumer who is constantly having to pick up the cost of ever-increasing power bills.

We have a surplus of generation at the moment. We have flattening demand for electricity. We have a collapsed carbon price, and yet every single household in this country saw its power go up on 1 April this year. The chief executive of Contact Energy indicated that further price increases were on the way. If, at a time of surplus generation, flattening demand, and a collapsed carbon price we do not see power bills go down, what will it take? I tell you what it will take. It will take a Labour-led Government to ensure that the market operates fairly for New Zealand consumers.

I was astonished at the hysterical overreaction that came from the Government. It is a hysterical overreaction that has continued to this day, because we still have not actually heard any kind of logical argument from Government as to why what Labour and the Greens are proposing would not work. We have not had any debate on the substance of the policy. All we have had is over-the-top rhetoric that this is like the Soviet Union. Well, it is not actually. It is like the United States of America, and I was not aware that the United States of America is now considered a communist country. This is a system that operates around the world. This is a system that will ensure that in the retail market we have innovation and increased competition—real competition.

Our proposal is not to regulate the retail market, as the Government is trying to claim, but we will see more competition. We will see more players able to offer newer products, newer options to consumers, because they are not going to be shut out in the way that they are now by the four big players—the generator-retailers—in the electricity market. What that means is a reduction in power bills in the order of hundreds of dollars for the average household. It also means a reduction in power bills for businesses, particularly small and medium businesses that do not have the negotiating power that some of our very big energy-using companies do.

💬 Colin King: Explaining is losing.

“Explaining is losing.” says Colin King. Well, we would like to have the debate with your Government, Mr King. I can say that hysterical overreaction and misrepresentation is definitely losing, Mr King, and that is exactly what your Government has been doing—flat-footed over this policy, because National says that New Zealanders are paying a fair price for their power bills. It does not think that in a time of recession, of flattening demand, and of surplus generation, power bills should go down. It is quite happy to see them continue to go upwards and upwards.

What did National say was the one big thing it had done? The What’s My Number campaign. Well, I would like to live in the world that National members live in, where they do not see the people coming through their offices every day, who are lucky if they can find one power company to take them on. The idea that they have a choice of power companies, given their credit histories because they cannot afford their bills, is ludicrous. It shows the kind of entitled, la-la land that the National Party lives in. Early payment discounts matter or work only if you can actually pay your bill, Mr King. For too long in this country it has been the poorest families who have not had any benefit from any of the measures that Governments with the best of intentions have tried to put in place.

Well, I want to ask a simple question of the National Party. Does it think that the Labour Party was wrong in regulating lines companies? Silence. Silence. I tell you this: we regulated them because they were monopolies. If you act like a monopoly, you can expect to be treated like a monopoly. If you exhibit monopolistic behaviour, which is what has happened in this country, then the Government should step in and regulate to ensure that New Zealand consumers and businesses are getting a fair deal, and under a Labour Government they will.

This Government has delivered a GDP that is amongst the highest in the developed world, at a time of long-term ongoing financial turmoil. Such a record is possible only because a National-led Government offers a safe pair of informed hands—a safe pair of hands, not the desperate clutches from two parties promising cheaper power but seeking power at any cost. Blasé, ignorant, or blithely unconcerned about their antics—they have already caused massive depreciation of the assets of hard-working New Zealanders, risked the drying up of international confidence in financial direct investment in our markets, and potentially been the direct cause of New Zealand having to borrow more to finance essential investment in our schools, in our hospitals, at ultimately greater cost to New Zealand Inc.

Far from saving New Zealanders money, this crypto-renationalisation of the electricity sector will lead to additional costs for every taxpayer, and we have not even factored in the avowed aim of the coalition of the left, which is to dramatically increase liabilities to all under their extended, expanded emissions trading scheme, which will bring in agriculture. From the party that gave us the Electoral Finance Act, perhaps we should not be surprised, but this takes the cake for barefaced effrontery. It is cocking a monumental snook, saying “pedicabo” to the carefully nurtured long-term consensus between the two main parties on economic policy, with its emphasis on the free market and competition.

Socialism had its moment in the sun over decades ago, but it has withered across the world with its few remaining outliers in Cuba and Tanzania, sustained only by the benevolence of others. Yet a desperate Labour Party has announced it will jump into bed with the money printers of a green-red hue, and excise a wedge of wealth from the taxpayers and shareholders in the energy companies and somehow supposedly transfer this wealth to businesses and householders by political decree. Central planning did not win much kudos for promoting competition in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and it is unlikely to be any more successful in Aotearoa. More likely, the dead hand of the State would deal up far less fizz in energy marketing, the touted savings will be found to be largely illusory, and the observed gains in energy efficiency and the development of new generational capacity we have enjoyed to date will be found to slow. The statists have made no mention of reining in the increase in costs of local and grid transmission—another reason to expect less from their policy than the political rhetoric promises. Having seriously eroded confidence in, and wiped hundreds of millions of dollars off, our capital markets, how else could this merry posse of political pranksters destabilise New Zealand Inc?

New Zealand is a trading nation. In another life, the Labour Party acknowledged that. Indeed, a Labour Government signed the free-trade agreement with China. This Government has fostered the first mover nature of the relationship assiduously. Trade, which in 2007 was running under $2 billion, last year reached $6.9 billion, an increase of almost 17 percent in the year. That is a huge success story for New Zealand Inc. Prime Minister John Key, in his recent talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, building on the bountiful opportunities becoming apparent in a multiple of sectors, including agriculture, tourism, forestry, science, education, and high tech, was seeking buy-in for a further development in our relationship: nothing less than New Zealand becoming China’s preferred partner in creating global supply chains to feed its population.

Contrast this with a hypothetical Russel Norman interchange with the Chinese President: “Can I have my flag back now please, sir?”. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is integral to this. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is nothing less than a wider Asia-Pacific free-trade agreement, which had its genesis in the strategic decision of New Zealand and Singapore to negotiate a bilateral free-trade agreement in the 1990s with the bigger picture in mind. Only last month, Japan was welcomed to join the US and 11 other countries at the negotiating table. The Trans-Pacific Partnership is about economic change of a manageable, useful, and ultimately essential nature if the New Zealand economy is to continue to be able to participate fully in the burgeoning and vibrant 21st century Asia-Pacific economy. Many visionaries see the Trans-Pacific Partnership as an essential building block for a future APEC-wide zone of trade and investment integration.

The Greens never cease their alarmist, carping opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. How could Labour resist the ceaseless importuning of its new bedmate? Labour’s slippery slide to the left will have red warning flags waving furiously among the thoughtful members of New Zealand society. The threat to the health of New Zealand Inc. is real and apparent. Should the unthinkable happen and the populist posturings result down the line in a future Labour-Green Government, then Fiji would look increasingly attractive, not just for a holiday but as a long-term destination. Economically we would feel right at home.

Kia ora, Mr Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. Talking about Fiji, if I look at some of the legislation we are seeing in this Chamber today, that is what makes me think of Fiji. It is not lower power prices, it is not lower housing prices, and it is not our economy going forward, which is not what we see from the Government benches. If we are talking about Fiji, let us look at some of the legislation, the spying legislation, that this Government is introducing and passing under urgency in this Chamber.

What a low standard of debate we have seen from the Government benches today. Government members are not focused on ideas and they are not focused on solutions; they are focused on the Opposition. Do you know why? I guess it gives us a bit of heart as well, because it is the Opposition that is coming up with the ideas. It is the Opposition coming up with solutions. All we hear from the National Government on power is 20 years of excuses. For 20 years all Kiwis have heard is excuse after excuse about why their power bills have to go up. While our power bills over the last 20 years have gone up 70 percent in real terms, across the OECD the average has dropped 6 percent. Under this Government we have seen power bills go up over $300 a year—under National—and there is no relief in sight, because all we hear is excuses, attacks, and rhetoric ignoring the real issues facing us.

That is why the Green Party and the Labour Party came out with our positive suggestion, our positive solution, for a Pharmac-style single buyer. We came up with the ideas of progressive pricing and greater energy efficiency. Those are going to have a huge impact for the economy. We have seen that with the Business and Economic Research Ltd report. We could see more than 5,000 jobs created. That is more than we can see in the Government’s agenda. Those members have lost 40,000 jobs in manufacturing over their term in Government. We could see the creation of 5,000 jobs from NZ Power. That is going to have a huge impact for households, because we know that Kiwis are shivering over winter. We know that Kiwis are going without energy just to eat. A quarter of our whānau are in energy poverty. They are spending 10 percent or more of their weekly budget just to stay warm.

NZ Power is going to have a huge impact for the environment as well. Progressive pricing is going to help, I think, two key parts of the country. The first is those people just going without power. They are going to use power to keep warm. They are going to use power to stay healthy. Also, NZ Power is going to drive efficiency, because if you have taken advantage of the Warm Up New Zealand healthy homes scheme, if you have got an efficient house, and if you have got efficient appliances, there is going to be a huge incentive to reduce your power bills to stay within that 300 kilowatt a month progressive-pricing threshold the Greens will introduce. NZ Power is going to drive energy efficiency. Having NZ Power is going to drive cleaner energy. The Government is failing in its target to try to get 90 percent renewable energy in the future—it is failing. There is no carbon price, and there is no signal from the Government. It is just picking winners in the oil, fracking, and mining sectors. NZ Power is going to drive clean energy, like solar, in households.

Like the Green plans to support our information and communications technology industry through a second internet cable, we also have plans to lower housing prices and give housing affordability to Kiwi families. It is the Green Party, not the National Government, that is coming up with real solutions for Kiwis. What we see from the National Government is just this irrational, hysterical approach. Its members said the plan was from the USSR. Steven Joyce said it was like North Korea. This is a guy who is fond of saying “jumping the shark”. I cannot think of anything more “jumping the shark” than Steven Joyce’s North Korea comments, because it is not North Korea but South Korea that has a single buyer like NZ Power, which Labour and the Greens propose, and it is South Korea that has seen its electricity prices drop 38 percent over the same period ours have been driven up 70 percent.

We saw Business New Zealand come out to try to defend the long-run marginal cost electricity generation pricing system, where, basically, all electricity, even if it is cheap, clean hydro paid for decades ago, is charged at the most expensive rate. We have seen accusations thrown around of economic vandalism. Economic vandalism is the $700 million that the Commerce Commission’s Wolak report said was coming out of our economy every year in excessive super-profits—that is the economic vandalism. It is the hundreds of dollars extra that Kiwi households are paying every year in their power bills, and excessive profits that we are going to see with the asset sales simply going offshore—that is the economic vandalism. It is the $200 million a year that Kiwi businesses are going to miss out on because the Government has got its head in the sand over rising electricity prices and no solutions—that is the real economic vandalism.

It is clear that the current market is not working. Simon Bridges reckons 20 years is not long enough for it to bed in. We do not see real competition. It is the same five generator-retailers that control the market. We have seen more than $300 million a year in assets’ upward valuations driving it. What we are doing is giving Kiwis a real choice on energy. Under National you are going to hear more excuses and more tinkering. You are going to see your assets flogged off. Under the Greens, Kiwis are going to save money. They are going to see cheaper power. They are going to see cleaner power. It is like the National Government is advocating for old Telecom. Why does it not advocate for re-bundling the network, if it supports old-fashioned, uncompetitive markets? We are giving Kiwis a real choice, and I think Kiwis like the idea of cheaper power.

I want to follow along the lines of something I heard on television a little while ago, from somebody few New Zealanders respect: “Hey, Clint, what do you think of that last speech? But are we pleased, Clint? Clint, are we pleased?”. Well, how am I going to explain this? You have heard of the “ghost chips” ad on TV. Well, that was the ghost Greens-Labour Minister: “Hey, Gareth. Clint thinks you’re dumb.” It is as simple as that.

I want, before I get into the meat of this speech, to pay a tribute to, and recognise, the Hon Parekura Horomia on his passing. I have not had an opportunity to speak in the House since yesterday. It was a very sad day for New Zealand. Yesterday, I think, in this House, the way members came together showed the great respect that we had for Mr Horomia and all that he did. I remember being down playing rugby with the Parliamentary Rugby Team a couple of years ago in his home district. The great hospitality he showed to all members of this House, but also, indeed, what the public showed to him, is a mark of the man. I want to recognise that and put it officially on record.

I come now to the issue of today’s debate. It is really about who is fit and able to govern this country. We have heard other speakers talk about this Government’s record over the last 4½ years, coming on 5 years. Indeed, after the first 3 years of our Government, New Zealanders looked at what was put before them and went to the election. They had a chance to vote, and we were returned to Government with a larger number of votes than was cast 3 years earlier. So through some of the most difficult economic times that New Zealand had faced in, certainly, a generation, after 3 years of the great difficulty that the rest of the world had faced, New Zealanders had faith in the job that John Key and Bill English were doing in a National Government, and they returned us.

A year and a half from now there will be another election and, again, the Opposition will come forward, and the same old rhetoric, the same messages of the previous 3 years and the re-election will be that the Government has not done a great job. New Zealanders will be able to judge, and we will be very happy to come forward on the campaign stumps and make our case. But what New Zealanders will also be able to do for the first time in the 6 years we will have been governing is have a real snapshot of what an alternative Government—the current Opposition—would be like. Whatever Opposition members said at the last election, New Zealanders did not believe them. They did not trust them. The Opposition will be able to come forward and talk about what they believe they will do for New Zealand.

It is very important that New Zealanders get to balance that, because what we have seen over the last few weeks and what we hear in this House today is about a Green-Labour coalition and the direction it will take New Zealand in. It has very extreme left-wing—extreme left-wing—policies around the economy, which I actually think the Green Party are driving more than the Labour Party. I know there are moderate members over there who are much more sensible than what has been brought forward in public, but we often know that, in Opposition, members of Parliament will do and say anything to get over to this side of the House, and that is what I think is happening here. So I think New Zealanders will accept what a lot of the Labour Party members are saying at the moment, but the direction that the Greens are driving them in is of great concern.

Let us have a little look at what it might be like under that Green-Labour Government of the future. Well, the first thing they would want to do is go out to New Zealanders and say: “We have the ability to manage affairs properly, to work out what policies we should have, and to put them in place. You can take our guarantee that these things will work.” So they could say, for instance: “Well, we’re going to go out and collect 400,000 signatures for something, and that’s the feeling of what New Zealanders want.” Then we would find, when they brought it back to this House, that all of a sudden, oh, no, it was not 400,000 signatures. They were a few wrong. As Mr Henare said earlier, 100,000 signatures were collected by the Green Party and the Labour Party, by many of the Labour Party’s hard-working volunteers, and by the Green Party—people they paid with parliamentary money, taxpayers’ money. They paid on behalf of the New Zealand taxpayers to collect signatures. And what did we find when they said “We’ve done a great job.”, and they brought the boxes to Parliament, and were so very, very proud? What did we find after their hard-working volunteers around the country had been out in the markets and the sunshine and the rain collecting these signatures? What did they find? They found they had got their numbers wrong and the job was not done properly.

So to every single New Zealander out there who voted for this Government in the last election and who will have a chance to weigh up the two sides in the next election, mark my words: they got it wrong there, and they will do and say anything to get over on this side. Question all of the promises that they make, and make sure that they can count properly when it comes to simple things like signatures.

Ko Tītīrangi te maunga, ko te Whau te awa, ko Ngāti Pākehā te iwi, ko Parekura Horomia nā Īhowa.

[The mountain is Tītīrangi, the river is Whau, the people are of European descent, and Parekura Horomia belongs to the Lord.]

This is the first opportunity to speak since Parekura Horomia’s passing, and I would like to add my short words to those of other colleagues who have spoken for him, and acknowledge you and other members of this House who have honoured our colleague and friend in his passing last week.

I wish to address the claims the member opposite, Todd McClay, has made. This is not Soviet Union economics; this exists in the United States. This is not North Korean economics; the single-buyer electricity model is handled in South Korea, currently one of the world’s most successful economies. It is not bizarre; it is common EU policy. It is followed in many of the world’s most successful developing tigers like Brazil—indeed, countries like South Africa. It is widespread around the world. And why is that? Because we have a problem: the electricity market is not working. It has not worked for a number of years. Successive Governments have tried to fix it since Max Bradford wrecked it, and it has not worked.

It does not work because it is declining gas and coal resources that are setting the price for the whole market. It has not worked because residential tariffs have skyrocketed while commercial and industrial tariffs have not. That has widened the gap and meant that ordinary Kiwis are being ripped off. It has not worked because there are huge problems in the so-called free market. The spot market is so thin because the generators and the retailers co-own each other and trade only internally, not on the spot market. So you have the bizarre thing where the marginal unit of coal sets the whole price for the whole country through a spot market that does not work, and that is closer to Albania and North Korea than what Labour is proposing.

The single-buyer model is one of three absolutely standard models around the world. The first one is a regulated market. Well, that is what we have tried, and it has not worked. The current Government does not have the foresight to see it. The second is a monopoly seller, or a single seller that is controlled. We had that in ECNZ; the previous Government wrecked it. The regulated market cannot now work because the Government is privatising half of the Crown’s power companies, meaning domestic price rises will be even more rampant in the future, and New Zealanders will be exposed. Why does that matter? Well, as our leader, David Shearer, has said, it is the little people who get it in the neck. I remember doorknocking a senior citizens village in Glen Eden in my first campaign in winter, and I remember seeing senior citizens with their eiderdowns pulled around their shoulders because they could not afford heating.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: That’s the last time you visited them, 12 years ago.

They could not afford to turn on an electric blanket. That member may have his own insulation, but many, many Kiwis do not, and they require decent power prices to stay warm in the winter.

It is very interesting what this debate is telling New Zealanders about the choices they will have next year. As people can see, they will have real choices: a choice between a bunch of cronies of the so-called free market who have spent the last years giving tax cuts to the wealthy and blessing the worst rorts we have seen for generations; and, on this side of the House, a team that is united behind the interests of ordinary New Zealanders—a team that is going to go forward, win Government, and deliver real change. This team is going to deliver lower prices, higher employment, greater social equity, fairer chances for New Zealanders, and prosperity for all for many years to come. Thank you.

It is rather sad, really, because when one listens to the stories coming from the other side of the House, we are not hearing the complete story. When we look at the Greens-Labour view of the world, power prices are set to continue to rise. The truth of the matter is that household prices will be affected enormously under the raft of intended policies that have already been put on the table by the Opposition. If you consider that house power prices were meant to drop by $300 and yet the entry into the emissions trading scheme will raise house power prices by $500, simple mathematics tells you that house power prices will continue to rise. It is very similar to that petition for a referendum that the Greens-Labour Opposition attempted to put together. Again, the figures do not add up. In actual fact, it is representative of a lot of the policies that Labour members are speaking about. One has to cast one’s mind back only about 3 months, and what they were talking about then is no longer included in their rhetoric.

Effectively, what we really want to do at this point in time is give New Zealanders a real shot of what the economy is looking like. During the most difficult times in 3 decades—or three generations—the living costs are at the lowest levels of increase since 1999. The interest rates are the lowest that they have been since 1965. The wages after tax have risen by 22 percent. That is what benefits all New Zealanders, and we can assure New Zealand that by 2014-15 the Government will be back into surplus. That may be a signal to the Labour-Greens Opposition to spend up large with reckless, gay abandon; we, however, have to maintain that situation to ensure that we make those gains, lock them in, and benefit New Zealanders entirely. So from that point of view it is important that we continue to look for growth. Unfortunately, over on the other side of the House all we hear is about rewriting history, and if that does not work, they pretend that the 9 years that that Opposition was in Government never, ever happened.

Let us not forget, New Zealand, that the Opposition that we have today put New Zealand into recession before any OECD country. That is something that needs to be remembered. When the Labour members were on the Treasury benches power prices went up by 72 percent. It is not rocket science; we have to bear those things in mind. It is all right to talk about spending money with gay abandon—it may even be on the side of the angels when Labour talks about this limited competition—but let us stop and think about some of the stuff that Labour has talked about that is very anti-growth. It wishes to introduce a capital gains tax. It sees that as being a sort of silver bullet, and yet the tax will not be on the family home and, therefore, will not address the issue that it is trying to deal to. But what it will do is morph into death duties through intergenerational assets being passed on, and that will affect growth within the farming industry.

I talked earlier about the introduction into the emissions trading scheme. The Opposition will bring agriculture into the emissions trading scheme. That in itself is an anti-growth agenda. There will be higher tax. There will be higher company tax. There will be charges on water, because we have heard that from the Greens. We know that the way the policies are at the moment there is a dramatic shift by Labour towards the left. We are told that they will do away with the 90-day new employment test for employers and employees, which we know has made 13,000 jobs available. This Government here is a pro-active, growth Government. It has got a great track record, and what we are hearing from the other side of the House, the Opposition, is only half of the facts.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.