Q+A: Susan Wood interviews David Shearer
Sunday 7th April, 2013
Q+A: Susan Wood
interviews David Shearer
Labour
calls for full independent inquiry into intelligence
agencies:
Labour leader David Shearer has
called for a full independent inquiry into our intelligence
agencies citing poor public confidence following the Kim
Dotcom saga and the appointment of GCSB spy head Ian
Fletcher.
Shearer told TV One’s Q+A programme
that an inquiry was important to New Zealand’s
image.
“There is a real problem in New Zealand
now with the confidence that we have in our intelligence
agencies, and if I was coming into office, I would have a
full independent inquiry into our intelligence agencies to
restore that confidence, because if we don’t do that we
will not be able to hold ourselves up as the transparent
nation that we are.”
He said that he wanted the
inquiry to have a terms of reference agreed by parliament in
order for it to be something the public could have
confidence in.
“We have the SIS at the moment.
The SIS is about to look at its legislation, reform its
legislation, and I think that we need to have that
independent review before we get to that
point.”
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Q+A
SUSAN
WOOD INTERVIEWS DAVID
SHEARER
SUSAN WOOD
On
Friday we found out some of the details about the partial
sale of Mighty River Power. The price range for the shares
estimated to be between $2.35 and $2.80. That should bring
around $2 billion into the government coffers.
Good
morning, David Shearer.
DAVID SHEARER,
Good morning, Susan.
SUSAN
$2 billion on schools, on things
that are public good. Money well
spent?
DAVID
No, because you also miss out on the revenue over a
longer period than that, and as soon as you do that, 50 per
cent of your revenue goes, and over time, obviously,
that’s nonsensical. But the other thing about selling
these shares is that a small group are going to get
ownership of those
shares-
SUSAN
400,000 people is not a small group of New
Zealanders.
DAVID
Well, if you actually add it up, it’s going to be well
less than 10%. More than 90% of New Zealanders will not have
the opportunity to buy shares, and they will lose, in a
sense, what they already owned before, which is a national
asset.
SUSAN So
without selling assets, and we know you don’t want to, how
will you balance the books without
borrowing?
DAVID
Well, what we had been saying before is a whole programme of
economic development, capital gains tax, and in the short
term-
SUSAN So
tell me how you’ll raise $2 billion. This government’s
raising $2 billion doing it. How will you come up with $2
billion?
DAVID
Let’s start from the beginning, then. Do we need to have
exactly that $2 billion or not? The way the government’s
put its books in order, or not in order, is by putting
forward an argument that we need to sell our state-owned
assets. I don’t believe that that’s the way that we
should be going forward. There are other
alternatives.
SUSAN
Do you agree, though, that the government should be running
a surplus? They should not be in deficit? Households have to
tidy up their act. Do you agree that the government books
should be in
surplus?
DAVID
Well, of course we should be in surplus, and that’s what
the Labour government did for nine years while it was in
government, and that’s what it handed on to the National
government - government books that were in surplus.
SUSAN Yeah, but
to be fair, there’s been a
GFC.
DAVID
When you sell a state-owned asset like Mighty River Power
you forego the income that that brings
in.
SUSAN I
understand
that.
DAVID
So what you’re effectively doing- It’s like selling your
business, putting an extension on your house - you feel much
better for that, but you lose the income from the
sale.
SUSAN OK,
but they are getting the books back into surplus. They are
getting their house in order. Give me a few ideas of how
Labour would get the house in order without borrowing more
money.
DAVID Well,
at the moment we don’t have a growth agenda in New
Zealand. We are not growing our economy as we should.
SUSAN But give
me some specifics here of what you would do. We know what
this government is doing. How would you raise a couple of
billion to get the books back in
balance?
DAVID
Well, what I’m saying is that what we need to do is to
grow the economy in a way that it’s not growing at the
moment, and we’ll be talking about Tiwai Point in a little
while…one of the big problems about - no, no, let me
finish – one of the biggest problems about that is that
the exchange rate is so low that we’re seeing many of our
businesses actually going out of business because they’re
not being able to succeed. We’re not putting our money in
the profitable sector; it’s going into the property market
because we don’t have a capital gains tax that will help
us direct money into those areas. And if you’re wanting to
raise money, then at least put money into businesses- invest
in businesses through the incentives of capital gains, and
that brings, obviously, money into the government as
well.
SUSAN
Let’s talk about the GCSB spy boss, Ian Fletcher. Is he
the right man for the
job?
DAVID I
don’t know Ian Fletcher, but I can say that the way he has
been
appointed-
SUSAN
No, no, there is nothing negative about him, is there? There
is no suggestion that he is not the right man for the job.
Let me phrase it that way.
DAVID Well,
let’s put it another way. Just last year, when the whole
Dotcom issue was running, Ian Fletcher was the person who
went to the prime minister and said, ‘Sign this, because I
want to cover up the fact that we’ve been illegally spying
on Dotcom.’ That was the ministerial certificate that Ian
Fletcher took to the prime minister. Now, I don’t think
that was a good move. I don’t have an opinion of him per
se, but-
SUSAN
Well, you don’t like that.
DAVID Of
course I don’t. No, I’ve just said that. But what I
don’t like is the way that he was interviewed and the
process that went through. I don’t like the
idea-
SUSAN But
hang
on-
DAVID
Hang on, no, no, just let me finish- John Key has
shoulder-tapped one person, put him into that position. We
now have in our most secret agency in New Zealand a friend
of John Key’s who reports directly to him. John Key is the
only person who has democratic oversight over that
agency.
SUSAN
And it’s his right. It is his right to select whoever he
wants for that
job.
DAVID
There is a real problem in New Zealand now with the
confidence that we have in our intelligence agencies, and if
I was coming into office, I would have a full independent
inquiry into our intelligence agencies to restore that
confidence, because if we don’t do that we will not be
able to hold ourselves up as the transparent nation that we
are.
SUSAN
Rebecca Kitteridge has been looking into
it.
DAVID
That’s an internal report. I would want this to have a
terms of reference that would be agreed by parliament. It
would report back to parliament so that we all have
confidence in it. It’s something the Australians did a few
years ago when there was a crisis in their intelligence
agencies, and they’ve had regular independent outside
reviews going on. Now, we have the SIS at the moment. The
SIS is about to look at its legislation, reform its
legislation, and I think that we need to have that
independent review before we get to that point.
SUSAN Much made
this week of the Prime Minister’s memory loss. You, of
course, have had your own memory loss over that $50,000 US
or more, how much was
it?
DAVID
I’m not going to say. It’s my family business. I don’t
talk about my savings online, but I
do-
SUSAN Tony
Ryall said in the house it was a couple of hundred thousand
dollars US. Is that correct, or is it more than
that?
DAVID
I’m not going to say. It’s my family
business.
SUSAN
Didn’t you lose your right for privacy around it when you
forgot to declare it? When you broke the rules and did not
declare
it?
DAVID
No, I absolutely did not. I said that I made an error. I
myself came forward and corrected that error. I took it on
the chin and said ‘here it is’. And I expect that to be
the standard by which all politicians operate if they do
make a
mistake.
SUSAN
That’s what John Key did this week. He said he’d made a
mistake and he fessed up. Exactly the same
scenario.
DAVID
I think what John Key was doing this
week-
SUSAN He
came
forward.
DAVID
No-
SUSAN Yes,
he did. He came forward and he said, ‘Actually, I’ve
checked by records and I did call Ian Fletcher.’ He came
forward.
DAVID
What he was doing this week was that he was deliberately
trying to move opinion away from and deflect opinion away
from his friendship and relationship with Fletcher.
SUSAN Is your problem
with this money- Is your problem with this more than $50,000
US in the bank, is your problem that there is so much money
there that it would not resonate? You would not resonate? I
mean, Michael Cullen very famously called John Key a ‘rich
prick’. Are you, Mr Shearer, a rich
prick?
DAVID
Look, I worked for my money working for the United Nations
in Iraq. I put it in the bank. It’s my family’s savings.
I didn’t put it on my pecuniary interest. I declared that
and I came forward and I was honest about
it.
SUSAN And
you were very well paid in that job, sometimes up to half a
million Kiwi dollars a
year.
DAVID
No, I think you need to do your research on that, quite
frankly, Susan. But, look, working in Iraq, where we lost 25
people, there was a- people do get paid hazard money in
those
situations.
SUSAN
What’s the money sitting there
for?
DAVID
Look, it’s my family- Look, people put money in the bank
for any- Look, this is my private savings, my family’s
savings. Do you ask John Key what he does with $50 million
when he comes on to your
show?
SUSAN John
Key actually does have scrutiny over his money all the time.
There are reports about how much money he has; he’s on the
NBR Rich List - all those sorts of things. So, yes, he does
have the same sort of scrutiny.
DAVID Well,
I haven’t heard you asking the same sorts of
questions-
SUSAN
I haven’t had him on the programme yet, but when I do, I
will ask him. So, are reports that it’s around $1 million
correct or
incorrect?
DAVID
Look, I am not going to put a figure on it, and I resent the
fact that you are asking me to reveal how much is in my bank
account. Nobody needs to do that. I have
done-
SUSAN You
do need
to.
DAVID I
have done what I was obliged to do under parliamentary
rules, which is to declare any account that had more than
$50,000 in it. I did do that. I regret, obviously, not
putting that on my pecuniary interests, and that’s where
it stops.
SUSAN
So you’re not a rich
prick?
DAVID
I’m- Obviously, as a New Zealander, I’m fortunate, but
I’m not in the same league as our prime minster,
no.
SUSAN Tiwai
Point - what would you do if you were in government?
DAVID Oh,
look, Tiwai Point needs to be negotiated. It obviously needs
the government to have a look and see what it can
do.
SUSAN What
would you offer, though? Would you be offering Rio Tinto
some sort of extra funding to stay
here?
DAVID
Oh, look, I think what we would need to do is take a look at
what’s on the table, and I don’t know what’s on the
table.
SUSAN
Nothing’s on the table. The government’s pulled it off
the table, haven’t
they?
DAVID
We don’t know how far apart they are. We’ve only just
got indications about that. I think what we need to do,
though, is look at the national interests about what this
means to New Zealand, what it means to Southland, what it
means to jobs. And at the moment the government is not in
the business of creating jobs. There are jobs going and for
Southlanders obviously they are very, very
-
SUSAN I think
you could actually say that the government has played Rio
Tinto pretty well on this. And the numbers - let’s talk
about them. $250 million a year they pay for power. That’s
about a quarter of what you pay for power, of what all of
our viewers pay for power. They pay one quarter. They then
return about $150 million. Effectively, we’re giving them
a $750 million discount. Should they even be here? I mean,
what are they really adding?
DAVID Well,
that was what they were set up for, obviously, and they were
guaranteed that power for a long time. I mean, you have to
play out what does it mean for jobs, what does it mean for
the Southland economy, what does it mean for our current
account deficit? But the bottom line is you would try to,
obviously, secure a
deal-
SUSAN
Really? Because those numbers I’m looking at there, there
are other things you could do. The power could be in other
uses.
DAVID
But you wouldn’t be going into a negotiation with a blank
chequebook.
SUSAN
And the government hasn’t. They’ve walked
away.
DAVID
Well, the government, what it did, was it was trying
to-
SUSAN The
government put pressure on Rio
Tinto.
DAVID
What the government was trying to do was actually get the
sale of Mighty River Power across the line and reduce the
uncertainty around the electricity price. That’s what it
was trying to do, and that’s why it went into
negotiations. Now, it went into negotiations with Rio Tinto
aware that the government was wanting to do that. So it went
in with one hand tied behind its back.
SUSAN Well,
they haven’t paid it one cent, which I think would be the
public mood at the moment - no mood to give a lot of money
to a foreign multi-national. One final question - there is
some confusion around Labour, and I’ve been trying to
press you during this interview about what you would do
differently. So let me give you a specific example. You’re
a 26-year-old woman. You’re living in Auckland. You’re
earning $65,000 a year. You’re paying off your student
loan. You’re renting. What would Labour do for this woman
that National is not
doing?
DAVID
Well, two things - first of all, we would have a healthy
home guarantee to make sure that where she’s living, in
the rental accommodation that she’s living in, is actually
up to scratch; it’s both heated and it’s insulated. The
second thing that we would do is we’re building 10,000
houses, affordable homes, a year, and that would enable her
to have an opportunity to get on to the housing ladder. So
there are two specific things that I believe that would help
that case.
SUSAN
Thank you for your time this
morning.
DAVID
Thanks,
Susan.
ENDS