Air New Zealand

Thursday, October 4 2001 Stephen Franks Press Releases -- Commerce

The Government must now satisfy New Zealand taxpayers that the causes of the Air New Zealand debacle have been removed, ACT Commerce Spokesman Stephen Franks said.

"The statement from the Government today on the rescue is adequate only as a first announcement. It must be followed by much more information.

"We need to know that the directors have left who appeared to allow the airline to become a pawn in Brierley Investments' game. Some who have gone may have been innocents. Given that nobody has voluntarily admitted responsibility and done the honourable thing and resigned earlier we need to be sure that none are left.

"We need to know also how much of the $A310 million given to Ansett was directly attributable to the comments last week by the Prime Minister. Ms Clark's effective ruling out of statutory management torpedoed any bargaining power Air New Zealand had with Ansett over this disputed money.

"If Air NZ had gone into statutory management Ansett would have got nothing. Now with our Prime Minister's assistance it gets $A310 million.

"We also need to know why Brierley Investments and Singapore Airlines are still represented on the board when they were not prepared to inject more money into Air NZ.

"Some explanation is needed to say why it will benefit Air NZ as it restructures operations to have an executive from one of its competitors sitting on the board, privy to all our airline's future strategies.

"Taxpayers have had to stump up to save an airline driven into the ground by incompetence. We all need much more information to be sure it will get better," Stephen Franks said.

For more information visit ACT online at http://www.act.org.nz or contact the ACT Parliamentary Office at act@parliament.govt.nz.

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