KEY POINTS:
Prime Minister Helen Clark led a blistering attack on National leader John Key yesterday in a bid to link him to a privatisation agenda in stark contrast to the Government's buy-back of the railways, but she got a key fact wrong.
The Opposition counter-attacked over her evident lack of knowledge of financial details of the $690 million deal and an error she made over spending advice on rolling stock, in the absence of her details man, Finance Minister Michael Cullen.
Helen Clark revealed that Mr Key was a director of Bankers Trust, a firm that helped the sale of New Zealand Rail in 1993, and made $39 million profit that year. "Members should ask themselves the questions: who benefited from the sale of TranzRail? Mr Key and his friends."
Mr Key said later he had played no part in the deal and that the profits had been largely generated by his own trading operations section of the firm, not from mergers and acquisitions.
The sharper end of Helen Clark's attack was a claim that Mr Key had an undisclosed conflict of interest because his family trust had 30,000 shares in TranzRail in 2003 when he was making comments about a privatised rail company.
Her attack was blunted by Mr Key's assurance to Parliament that the shares had been sold by then.
A spokesman for Helen Clark said last night that she accepted Mr Key's word on the matter but said "the wider point is that he has privatisation in his blood".
Dr Cullen's office pointed out that Mr Key had been asking questions relevant to TranzRail the year before when his family trust did hold shares.
In October 2002, Mr Key asked the Transport Minister in a written question: "What papers has he presented to Cabinet, or any Cabinet committee, regarding repurchase by the Government of rail tracks in New Zealand?"
Mr Key caught out the Prime Minister in an error when she claimed that Dr Cullen had said that an investment of $80 million a year would be needed to keep the rolling stock in a steady state - and she said that would be $300 over five years.
In fact, Dr Cullen said it would be $80 million over five years; he has not mentioned $300 million.
A spokesman for Dr Cullen said last night that the Prime Minister had "misspoke" with her figure of $80 million a year, but he said that the $300 million figure was an option in for making a medium-term investment.
Act leader Rodney Hide attacked Helen Clark, saying: "She does not know what it will cost taxpayers, she does not know what the premium was that was paid by the Government [for KiwiRail] and she does not know what the ongoing fiscal cost of rail is."
However, she had taken the trouble to research the various shareholdings of Mr Key.
"Does this not prove that this purchase is all about politics and not the good of the country."
Helen Clark responded by saying Act was ideologically opposed to public ownership. "That and nothing else explains Mr Hide's hysteria."
