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AGENDA Presented by Lisa Owen POWER FOR THE PEOPLE The cost of social responsibility
LISA Last weekend it was revealed that state owned enterprise Solid Energy had paid a student to spy on an environmental group which opposes their West Coast operation, then this week Mercury Energy the retailing arm of another SOE ordered the disconnection of a Mangere family's power because they were behind in their payments. Mrs Muliaga was reliant on an oxygen machine powered by electricity and she later died, the cause of her death is not yet known, however both of these events raise questions about whether SOEs are fulfilling their social responsibilities. I spoke to the Minister of State Owned Enterprises Trevor Mallard last night and began by asking him how are we better off because the state owns these companies?
TREVOR MALLARD – Minister of State Owned Enterprises Well there's meant to be a sense of social responsibility as well as a profit motive with the organisations, I think it's also really important for security of supply reasons. If we're doing planning going forward we're making sure that we do have both security and a good mix of renewables then it's easier to influence that with ownership as well as with general regulation. LISA Let's look at the aspect of social responsibility then, how far does that stretch?
TREVOR Well it stretches further – it should stretch further than it does for a regular energy supplier, so you’ve gotta be competitive, you’ve gotta be profitable but where there are marginal calls then the state owned enterprise should fall back on the Act which says they do have to be socially LISA Let's look at some of their corporate statements, so Solid Energy says that the company should exhibit social responsibility and have regard for the interests of relevant stakeholders, Mighty River that it should exhibit an informed sense of social responsibility. What does that mean in practical terms. TREVOR Well I think in practical terms where there are calls to be made between various options they think of what is the best thing for New Zealand as a whole rather than what is the best thing for Solid Energy or Might River Power. LISA So give me a hypothetical then, what do you mean? TREVOR Well I think in some areas for example Solid Energy would do some investment in research in renewables for coal and in gasification and carbon sequestration in a way that a private sector company wouldn’t. LISA What about on a day to day level though for New Zealanders who are struggling to pay for their power bill, what social responsibility is there towards them? TREVOR Well clearly they shouldn’t be market leaders as far as prices are concerned, they should also have some options for people who are low users and that’s something that they have got, so I think it is important that they do things that way and maybe as a result of that Mighty River Power's profits for example when compared to their assets are lower than either Contact or Trust Power's. LISA You say they have some guidelines in place but they are just guidelines, how are they held accountable for following those guidelines and following their statements of corporate intent, how do you hold them accountable? TREVOR Well there are reports that they do both to me and they're also brought before the Parliamentary Select Committee and generally the Commerce Committee picks particular state owned enterprises and gives them a review and that – you know it's a process that doesn’t happen out there in the private sector it's actually a much more intense grilling than happens for example at a board annual meeting of the directors where generally the resolutions are all sorted before you go there. LISA So how does that help say a pensioner sitting in a house that can't pay, can't afford to pay their power bill, how does a grilling help them? TREVOR Well what it means in that particular case over a period of time there's been developed a low usage option, what used to be the case was that people had sometimes very high fixed charges and almost nothing for the usage because their usage was low they might have been people living alone, they might have done good insulation, just they were low users but they were still paying quite high bills. One of the things that’s occurred has been for low users an options which is based much less on a supply charge and much more on the electricity that they use. So options like that have been developed. LISA But clearly people still can't afford to pay, so are these companies meeting their social responsibilities as well as they should be? TREVOR Well no of course they're not and what's clear to me is that the links with our welfare system are not working properly, I mean I don’t think people's power should be cut off for relatively small overdue bills at a particular point in time, I think that we've got to get a system going where there's a positive referral to WINZ or an appropriate authority where people are low income so that arrangements can be made if necessary for deductions over a period of time so that the people can get back on track. LISA So what are you going to do to make sure this happens? TREVOR Well as it happens over the last few months the Ministry for Economic Development and the Ministry for Social Development have been working together and have a paper which is very nearly ready to come through on this, because it is of concern. LISA So what's that paper going to say? Mandatory regulations to make sure they do refer to welfare agencies? TREVOR Well I think it's likely we will head to mandatory regulation, I haven’t seen the paper as yet. LISA Would you personally support mandatory regulation? TREVOR I think we are going to have to head in that direction, because it's clear to me that some of the companies working with poorer people and sicker people have not been doing what most thinking New Zealanders would require of them. LISA Well in keeping with that Helen Clark has said in relation to the case that’s currently running in South Auckland that there needs to be accountability. In your view as State Owned Enterprise Minister what is that accountability, do heads need to roll? TREVOR Well first of all we need to make sure that we have all the facts and if the facts establish that either a proper system was not in place or an error was made by an individual then there should be proper accountability and different sorts of accountability. The matter is still with the Police and I think we have to take care not to prejudge their investigations as far as either individuals or the companies concerned, but I think that what is clear is that there has been a systems failure. LISA But is that systems failure intolerable enough that someone needs to lose their job. Forget who is responsible or what caused the death they're not making any link there, the power was switched off, you're suggesting that it shouldn’t always happened that way, is that sufficient enough for someone to lose their job? TREVOR It depends on the result of the investigation and what the facts are around this particular circumstance, but in my opinion someone who cut the power off notwithstanding seeing a person with a tube out of their throat is someone who hasn’t got the proper training and judgement to do that job. LISA You this week though said you expect greater accountability from executives of SOEs. TREVOR That’s right and therefore investigations must indicate whether their contractors are properly trained, whether the systems are in place that should be there and again once we know the facts of this matter, and that’s something which is really important, that we do give the process a chance to work through you know where the culpability is. LISA If there is any culpability will you expect someone to resign? TREVOR Well clearly I will, yes. LISA Thank you very much Minister. LISA The electricity industry was restructured under the last National government which split the Electricity Corporation of New Zealand into the three SOEs we know today. Genesis Power, Meridian Energy and Mighty River Power. Gerry Brownlee is the National Party's spokesman on state owned enterprises, I spoke to him earlier this morning and began by asking him what National would do with state owned enterprises. STATE OWNED ENTERPRISES What would National do? GERRY BROWNLEE – National MP Oh we are very interested in some of the Minister's comments there particularly about the suggestion that state ownership is going to give you better control of some services that people naturally expect. I don’t think anybody who pays a power bill will think that they’ve got a tremendous value for the significant money that they have invested in those companies. We don’t see any great need to go and make radical changes but I do think that we should recognise that the SOE model is 20 years old now, the idea itself is 30 years old and I think we need to start considering how do we have the sort of accountabilities that Trevor Mallard seems to think he should have in SOEs. LISA So do you accept the premise that SOEs should have a degree of social responsibility? GERRY Well it's written in there and I think in areas where they have total monopoly for example Transpower, quite clearly that is a case where they do have to reflect that but they have to balance that of course against the fact that they are the only supplier of national grid capacity for the whole nation, so there is always going to be some difficulty in defining that and I think you hit the nail on the head when you pointed out or read those statements from the various SOEs and asked the Minister to explain what they mean, they're somewhat nebulous in my view. LISA So in your view then how far does social responsibility stretch for SOEs, what does it mean in practical terms in your view? GERRY Well I think if you go back and ask yourself the question why does the state own these various businesses and you’ve got a clear answer as to why that is then that itself will give you the sort of parameters for how you judge the social responsibility, for example the state does own the national grid because there is only one national grid, social responsibility should extend to making sure that delivery of electricity across that grid gets to all parts of New Zealand. LISA But there are multiple power retailers so what social responsibility do you expect at that end? GERRY Well that in turn comes back and asks the question what is the point and what is the purpose of the state being involved in those particular cases, social responsibility there I suppose is about delivery but I think it's extremely difficult to define that and you exposed that with the Minister. LISA So what's the balance then between making money and caring for people? GERRY Well that’s a question that perhaps the Minister should have answered I don’t think he did. LISA I'm asking you to answer it Mr Brownlee what is the balance?
GERRY Well don’t get too hard on me, this guy's sitting there pointing the finger hard at Mercury Energy and so is the Prime Minister they're the same two people who screamed their heads off in parliament calling for a ministerial resignation over Cave Creek, let's show a bit of leadership Mr Mallard and Mrs Clark. The reality is that the SOEs are there because the state in New Zealand was very very involved in a whole range of activities over a number of years, they were a transition place where the government of the day, a Labour government actually said maybe the state doesn’t have to be involved with all this stuff let's park them up for a few years and see what happens. It's been 20 years, no reconsideration of the model and no development of the model either, and one of the interesting things is Mr Mallard talked about the scrutiny of select committees and other such, I think we do our best but I don’t think we get the same scrutiny as you would if there was a series of large institutional shareholders and Mr Mallard should concede that. The parliamentary process is very brief as is in fact the ministerial oversight. LISA Well looking directly at the case involving Mercury at the moment what do you think should happen, do heads need to roll? GERRY This is a case that is totally tragic, no one can look at that with any degree of comfort at all, the funeral for the deceased hasn’t yet taken place and I think that creates some difficulty in going over the top about things. There is an investigation going on and I think let that run, but more importantly I haven’t heard the Minister say yet that he has given a direction for there to be protocols put in place by state owned retailers dealing with situations like this. if it had been a rule that should there be a medical issue brought into question then the contractor backs off then I think that would be helpful. Remember of course these people go round to places where there are very significant bills and there are you know a number of people in New Zealand who just routinely dodge paying their bills, so they have a difficulty on the ground I'm sure, the investigation will take place but I think it would have helped to have that ministerial directive out already. LISA Alright thank you very much for joining us this morning National MP Gerry Brownlee. LISA Let's see what our panel thinks of all of this. it seems that there's more than just one family who can't pay their power bills, yet we've supposedly got a Labour government booming on economy, low unemployment, what's going on? DAVID BEATSON - Columnist Well I'd like to know too because I thought that we had an agency called WINZ which was supposed to be looking after families who were in genuine need and I would classify people who have a life threatening medical condition as being in genuine need and if they're in financial hardship and can't keep the power on they need to live, where is the agency that’s supposed to be looking after them. It's all very well to say that the power company should ring up WINZ and find out what the status of these people is, why wasn’t WINZ in there in the first place. ANDREW HOLDEN – Deputy Editor, The Press You're assuming that the family's had any relationship with WINZ at all I mean you’ve got both parents who are working, if the mother wasn’t ill well there would be absolutely no need for them to go anywhere near an agency and I think that’s one of the facts that’s a little bit blurred at the moment. These sort of families don’t necessarily. DAVID I raised it as a question, and all I'm saying is here is another dimension to this story. At the moment the finger pointing is being done squarely on Mercury Energy, I think there's a heck of a lot of other factors that need to be taken into consideration in regard to what caused the death of this tragedy quite frankly.
LISA And perhaps that’s a downfall in communication is one thing. Well isn't there some responsibility to make sure those agencies are working together SOE and social agencies which is what both Mr Mallard and Gerry Brownlee brought up. DAVID Well I was interested in Trevor Mallard's comments that somehow or another a state owned power company compared to the commercial power companies is expected to exercise a superior degree of social responsibility i.e. because they're state backed perhaps they will actually be able to compete for low income families' business more effectively than the private sector competitors because they’ve got all the social responsibility to allow them to discount the bills which is fine, it it's explicitly stated which it isn't. You really you’ve gotta go back to that model and say this is just not working it's crazy. ANDREW It's an impossible tension isn't it? I mean here you’ve got Mallard saying that the company because it's state owned should be considering the best thing for New Zealand as a whole, is that what we expect a contract of a power company going in charged with deciding whether the power is cut off to take that moment to say oh I wonder if this is the best thing for New Zealand as a whole, it's an absurdity. It effectively means that Mallard needs to come back and say okay I'll set the profit for a state owned enterprise for the next 12 months, let's have some transparency around it, they are different to a commercial operation, I want 40 million dollars profit, that’s all I want for the next 12 months I want no more than that, you can set your prices accordingly and everybody knows what the price is going to be for the next 12 months. Well that’s not going to happen is it because if they can make more money the budget will love they want that money. LISA Well that’s your uneven playing field scenario again isn't it David? DAVID Yes it is but the other element to that is the alternative course of action is to make it mandatory for all retail power companies to apply exactly the same standards in their treatment of their customers, particularly those customers who are in financial hardship or in medical need. Now why hasn’t that been done? And the only piece of guideline – there's no direction, there's no regulation, the only guideline in existence is the Minister of Social Development and the Electricity Commission and those guidelines actually have a lovely proviso in them which say that they should not cause unreasonable credit risk for electricity retailers. Well excuse me – who makes that judgement, I don’t know. LISA Do you think there's a need for mandatory guidelines Andrew? ANDREW Well I think if they're gonna talk about these sort of protections for people then they need to have a look at it, or they’ve got to unbundled the model and have a good hard think about it, and that’s certainly an opportunity for National in the next 12 months if they want to be bold about the sort of policies they're going to take into the election they should do so, and then Brownlee was sort of hinting there, he kept talking about the ownership of the national grid, but he really didn’t want to get into the retailers so you get the sense that they may well reconsider what they would do there. DAVID Well it sounds to me like he's actually saying well we'll reconsider the model and there's a possibility that we'll sell them, the SOEs in this area, which is fine if he wants to, equally it could be possible for Labour to say well we are going to actually reassert state ownership over the electricity sector, and that may well be an attractive election policy, I don’t think it would be but it depends on where you're looking for votes really doesn’t it, and it might be they're looking for them in South Auckland. ANDREW You would have a clear cut choice at that point between the two parties and what people would prefer to see, and if there's concern around private ownership of the retailing of electricity and people don’t want that then they could go to the party that’s clearly saying we'll control it.
LISA So put your money where your mouth is? ANDREW Absolutely. FUTURE ALLIANCES Who will be the kingmaker? LISA Earlier this week United Future Leader Peter Dunne made it clear that if Labour courts the Greens at his expense then their political marriage may be over come the next election. United Future currently support the government on confidence and supply, he also expressed his interest in working with National after the next election but National Leader John Key said Dunne's approach was premature. Peter Dunne joins me now from Taupo. Mr Dunne we've had two polls that indicate National could win the next election and then all of a sudden you're given a speech questioning your relationship with Labour, what's your motivation? PETER DUNNE – Leader – United Future Well the two events are quite unrelated Lisa, the speech was actually written on Anzac Day so long before these polls came out, and really all I was doing was painting a mid term summary of the current political landscape. United Future's a centre party we've worked with both National and Labour led governments in the past for in fact eight of the last eleven years and all I was really doing was saying look that’s our roll but this is the time to be starting to build relationships for whatever might happen after the next election, you can't make the election result now you’ve got to actually wait till people vote, but you need to start building your relationships now that might lead to the formation of governments after the election and that was really the whole point of what I was saying. LISA Well what's Labour done recently to provoke this kind of reaction from you? PETER No it's not a question of provoking a reaction, I was giving a summary of how I see both Labour and National in terms of their relationships with other parties, and if you read the speech in full you'll see I was far more critical of National than I was of Labour, but Labour has been very good to work with, we've achieved a number of key policy objectives by working constructively with them. LISA Mr Dunne I have read the speech in full and in it you say that Labour needs to learn that loyalty is a two way street so have they been disloyal in some way to you? PETER What I was saying there Lisa was that it's a little frustrating at times and you get a sense that they'd rather be working with someone else but that’s their call. We will continue to work constructively with them for the balance of the agreement and we'll see what happens after that, but I think that in terms of how you forge relationships in an MMP environment, which is really what all this is about, is there needs to be a complete trust, there needs to be a reliance on both partners not a sense that well we're working with you now but we'll put you back on the shelf when we can. LISA So what has Labour done this term that it would not if you hadn’t been there on its shoulder? PETER Oh I think the business tax review is something that was a big achievement of ours, that was part of our post election agreement. I'm very very pleased that we've been able to deliver that an I think also the changes to the tax regime for charities, make it much easier for people to donate to charities, I think that’s something that’s a big positive, they're things we've been able to achieve by working constructively and by working hard with them and I hope that can continue. LISA And that’s it? That’s the list? PETER Well it's pretty big, the business tax review itself is 3.4 billion dollars over a four year period, that’s a mighty big – it's the biggest tax cut in New Zealand since 1988 and you say that’s it – I'm very happy to say that’s it, that’s mighty. LISA What more could you get done with a National government? PETER Well it depends on what the policies are, that’s the whole point of these, these relationships are based around policy compatibility and as a centre party it's natural that we can work with either the left or the right depending on the circumstances. Now as I said right at the beginning we're still 18 months probably from the election, what the form of the campaign will be, what the issues that are coming forward at that time will be it's early to reveal but we'll obviously be looking to see what common ground we've got with National and with other parties including Labour the Greens and everyone in terms of what happens post election. LISA So what would you expect from a working relationship with National would you expect a ministerial position? PETER Oh it's far too early to start to speculate on these things, I mean the election's gotta take place, the numbers have got to be determined, you’ve gotta see what the arrangements are. All I'm saying is that on the face of it there are certain compatibilities between National and Unite Future, if we are to be in any position after this election or a future election to work together then we need to start to build some relationships upon which that agreement can take place, that’s all I was saying nothing more threatening than that. LISA But hang on a minute Mr Dunne, National has already indicated that it would consider giving the Greens the environment portfolio so they don’t see it as too early to be talking about these things publicly. PETER Well that’s something you'd need to ask John Key, frankly I can't comment for him, I'm simply commenting from our perspective to say that we do have some degree of compatibility something that both Mr Key and Mr English have acknowledged this week, then at some stage long before the election we need to explore whether there's any other common ground. No big deal about that, that’s just commonsense.
LISA Alright well now that Gordon Copeland has defected are you still a Christian party? PETER We were never a Christian party, that was a canard spread by the media and those people who wanted to label us, we've always been a party that appealed to a broad range of New Zealanders whatever their religious beliefs or values, but people who believe in the value of parenting, the power of families and the strength of communities and who have a moderate centrist approach to politics, that’s what United Future's always been about. If anything the defection of some extremes within our party make it much more explicit that that’s what we are. LISA Well you actually referred to them as rigidly conservative members in your speech. PETER I did indeed, yes. LISA You said you’ve been freed by that, freed in what way, what difference is it going to make to this party? PETER Well precisely you won't now be able to throw the label at us that you just have. Precisely because we will be able to be much more genuinely centrist than I think has been the case previously, precisely because we won't have the distraction of trying to always see what next is going to be thrown at us so it's an ill wind as they say. LISA Mr Dunne we're going to bring our panel in on the conversation now, starting first with Andrew Holden. ANDREW Peter can I ask what's wrong with the Greens, they're nice people aren’t they? PETER We work actually very constructively with the Greens and I made the point in the speech that while we've had great sport in the past bagging them that stage is over but we're working constructively at the moment. You look at the multi party grouping that came together to urge the government to repeal the laws on sedition, that was Keith Lock and me spurred that, the work that’s being done now again between the Greens ourselves the Maori Party and Act on the government's changes to births deaths and marriage registration which is going to affect all the genealogists, that’s being led by the Greens and ourselves. There are some other issues which I don’t want to go into detail on at the moment where the Greens and ourselves are working very constructively together. ANDREW And yet it was a condition of your support for Labour in this thing that the Greens weren't part of the government. PETER That’s another lie. If you actually look at the numbers after the last election, we were in no position to impose any conditions on anyone, we didn’t have the numbers. What we said was that if the Labour Party negotiated an agreement with the Greens and it needed to get the Maori Party on side to do that, then we didn’t want to be part of it, it wasn’t a condition, but how the election result turned out the way it did, was when Labour said the Maori Party were the last cab off the rank, in effect it made it possible for only one coalition combination and that was the one that emerged with New Zealand First and United Future. We were not in a position to dictate any terms and we didn’t. DAVID Well excuse me Mr Dunne but surely when you say if the Labour Party forming a government enjoins the Greens and others in a coalition you're out of it, that sounds like a condition to me. PETER it's hardly dictating terms though David. DAVID I didn’t say it was, I said it sounds like it was a condition. PETER It's not even a condition, it's a statement of fact because if the Labour Party and the Greens and the Maori Party had concluded an arrangement they would have had 61 votes in parliament which is a majority, they wouldn’t have needed other support, so that was simply a fact, it wasn’t a statement or a condition or a demand or any of these sort of emotive labels, it was just a fact of pure simple mathematics. DAVID Well it might be mathematics but it's the mathematics of power and what you were saying was you can count on me, I'll support you, these others I'm not sure about them, if you go with them I won't support you. Now I'm sorry that actually sounds like bargaining and a fairly typical piece of political positioning to me. PETER Well it's extraordinary that politicians don’t get involved in bargaining, I thought that’s probably the essence of a multi party arrangement, I'd agree with you. Come back to what I said right at the beginning which maybe you didn’t hear. DAVID I did. PETER Well you don’t know because I haven’t said it yet but this is about policy compatibility, if you have agreement on a series of policies then you can put an arrangement together and where you have disagreements then clearly you have disagreements and it's difficult to work with people when you disagree with what they're trying to do, I mean that’s again commonsense, it's not threats, it's not positioning, it's just reality.
DAVID Well Mr Dunne I'd like to ask you about your might achievement on company tax, when did you first learn that the company tax reduction was going to be offset by a compulsory requirement on employers to subsidise their employee savings? PETER When Michael Cullen and I first started discussing that earlier this year.
DAVID So it was on the table? PETER It was absolutely on the table and I think that you'll find David most people are very very happy with the Kiwi Saver arrangement, and in fact the employer tax credit that takes effect from the 1st of April next year will substantially offset those costs, it's simply a fallacy to say that we've given a big reduction in terms of a three cent cut in the company tax rate on the one hand and then we're clawing it all back compulsory employer contributions on the other. DAVID I'm sorry, my question was when did you first learn that, and the reason I asked that question was because it seems to have come as a major surprise to employers who were involved in a process of consultation with the government of which you were a part prior to the budge announcement. PETER Look let's just go back and explain what happened. We released the business tax review document I think from memory in July of last year, we've been involved in consultation since that time right up until the point where final decisions were made, probably early March of this year. At that time if you go back and read the text of that document it said we'd look at any consequential implications for personal tax arrangements, at that time we turned our attention to those matters, we had the warnings ringing in our ears from the Governor of the Reserve Bank about the potential inflationary effect of too big a personal tax stimulus. We then started talking and it was Dr Cullen and me and a very small group of officials about what we might usefully do, that was where the issue of the Kiwi Save and how it should be enhanced first cropped up. it was worked on very tightly because we didn’t want to get a budget leak for obvious reasons and I'm very pleased with the way it turned out, and I think judging by the response – I've just been on the road for the last two weeks around the country – judging by the response from employers and employees most of them are very pleased too. I think it's a very positive step forward in terms of developing a long term savings culture in this country, something we haven’t had certainly since the 1970s. LISA Alright thank you very much for joining us this morning United Future Leader, Peter Dunne. FINAL THOUGHTS – GUEST COMMENTATORS LISA To our panel now for their final thought, going first to Andrew Holden. ANDREW We'll start with Mr Dunne if we may just because he was there first. I don’t know if I'm the only one who finds his whole Princess Diana complex slightly revolting. I mean let's not forget that at the last election it was the Greens who came out and very openly declared that they were prepared to work with a Labour government and on specific terms and they were effectively in bed together only to find after the election Winston and Peter sliding up through the satin sheets and before they knew it the Greens were out on the shag pile carpet, and now he's turning around and saying Helen's not twinkling her eyes at me any more, she's looking back over at those Greens, and I'm struggling to have any sympathy at this point. LISA I'm tempted to ask who Camilla is in all of this. DAVID Well we certainly know who Charles is and that’s perhaps a little bit unfair on Helen really isn't it, our Prime Minister? LISA What did you make of his crying foul? DAVID I think he's feeling unloved by anybody at the moment, and well he's appealing for our sympathy. Fair enough, um sorry I think it's you know probably judgement time. LISA And on the socalled power crisis, the SOEs? DAVID Mm, well I wonder if Mr Mallard has had the same cautionary words about rushing to judgement with his Prime Minister that he had in the course of your interview. No I thought what he said in the interview about waiting for an investigation to be concluded was a very wise thing and I think that that’s good advice and I just wonder if he's passed that on to the Prime Minister. ANDREW I mean the other issue too for the Minister is he's told us about you know there's been a couple of months of a paper being prepared around this issue it's almost ready he hasn’t seen it yet, he's on a plane to Valencia, he's gonna be on the back of the Americas Cup boat, I would have thought as the Minister responsible in a moment of such crisis that he would have cancelled the trip and on Tuesday morning he would have said to his departments I want that report by the end of the week and we're gonna move and take some action on this, that to me would have been very smart politics. LISA So he doesn’t care enough to stay home from the cup race? ANDREW Correct. LISA With Helen Clark are you suggesting she's prejudged this David? DAVID Well I hadn’t taken the Valencia factor into account and maybe that explains why the Prime Minister is asserting some leadership on the issue at this point because Trevor Mallard will be out of the country while this controversy continues to unfold, fair enough, somebody's got to lead from the government position, but I would have thought that there is – there are a couple of fundamental facts that have to be established, like what was the cause of this tragedy, what actually caused the death, we're not quite sure yet, I understand that the post mortem hasn’t been concluded and what have the Police found in their investigation. Around about that point I think it's the stage where every politician might want to get exercised about any issues that emerge but the evidence at the moment is a blur of confusion and a great deal of work has to be done before anyone starts saying this happened because so and so was a heartless brute, I don’t think people go round cutting off power knowing that they are going to kill the occupant of a house, I don’t think there's a remote show of that, and for goodness sake let's have some commonsense about it. There is a process in place, let it run and then make the judgements, no now, executions before trials - not a good idea. LISA Alright, thank you for joining us this morning. |
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