Last stand for lone ranger

Paula Rebstock. Photo / Janna Dixon

To folk on the street, there is no better commendation for Paula Rebstock than the contempt with which she was held by business bigwigs.

Faceless corporates vilified her for stymying business, for an over-zealous pursuit of a "leftist agenda to redistribute wealth".

It started in 1993 when the Commerce Commission refused Air New Zealand and Qantas a transtasman merger because ordinary people would have to pay more.

It grew with an assault on energy giant Vector's pricing structures. And continued as the commission took on some of the biggest players, winning record multimillion-dollar fines for fair trading breaches, famously stinging Ribena for false claims about Vitamin C, stopping proposals like The Warehouse's proposed takeover by overseas supermarket giants and keeping a pricing clamp on companies like Telecom.

Till the appointment in March of Mark Berry as chairman, Rebstock had been pretty much a lone ranger at the commission. Former deputy chairman Donal Curtin had stood down over disclosure issues, Telecommunications Commissioner Ross Patterson took time off for "an alcohol-related health problem", and Electricity Commissioner David Caygill came under scrutiny from Business New Zealand.

Just before our interview, a woman stopped Rebstock in a health food shop and thanked her, which happens frequently. Thanks for putting those bastards in their place, is what they're trying to say. Thanks, essentially, for standing up for the little guys.

In nearly six years as Commerce Commission chairwoman, Rebstock propelled it into the consciousness of everyday New Zealanders - stepping on some big toes along the way.

It was simple maths, really: the chair herself grew too big for big business. Corporate leaders pressed the Government hard, and Rebstock fell on her sword and resigned.

Coincidence? Rebstock denies being pushed, or heroically pursuing the rich in defence of the poor.

In the commission's boardroom on the 19th floor of Auckland's ASB building, Rebstock is wearing a forest-green velvet coat her teenage daughter picked out for her that morning. But she says she is no Robin Hood.

For the 51-year-old career economist, stealing from the rich to give to the poor would be silly. It would only destabilise the market, the thing she really holds dear.

Did she resign because the pressure was too much?

"Well, no," says Rebstock in a soft corduroy American accent, as meticulous and measured as a metronome, giving no hint of the inquisitor who supposedly can make powerful businessmen quiver. "I'm not sure where that idea came from. I could have stayed on longer but I chose not to."

But that's not to say she will go without one last little fight.

It's widely suggested her departure, combined with a change of government and the appointment of Rodney Hide as minister, must herald a new "softly softly" approach.

But in a masterful coup de grace, Rebstock spends one of her last afternoons in a rare public interview. She lays down the gauntlet: the commission must stay hard.

Without suggesting her successor is a free-market softie, the subtext is clear. If you go soft, you fail.

Half a dozen times she insists the public must demand the commission "lift its game", "continue to lift its game", "lift its game further".

"People will demand that the organisation not only keep doing what it's done, but will do more," she says, clasping her manicured hands. "It's become bigger than one person."

IRONICALLY, IT was for a quieter life that she and German-born husband Ulf Schoefisch first came to New Zealand 20 years ago.

Both successful scholars - she was raised by a military father and teacher mother who taught her to "do things fully, or don't bother doing them" - they'd been studying at the London School of Economics and were set to take up big money jobs in New York but decided on New Zealand instead.

Though Auckland was perfect for their love of sailing, and to raise their two daughters, now 14 and 17, the quieter life didn't quite work out.

Rebstock took on intensely stressful jobs in government, becoming an advisor in prime minister Jim Bolger's office during an economic crisis.

Eleven years ago she was appointed to the Commerce Commission, and five years later offered the chair.

She remembers telling Schoefisch when she was offered the job how she desperately wanted to know what it was like to "be the person where the buck stops".

She smiles at the thought. "I don't want to do it for my whole life, but just once I want to see. What if I was the boss, if I was the chairman? Would it be different? Until you actually put yourself in that position and give it a go, you just don't know whether you really could make a difference."

And did she?

Business Roundtable boss Roger Kerr and other leaders say she overstepped the mark.

"The commission, in my view, has really gone overboard in recent years, chasing things that didn't constitute serious monopoly problems," Kerr says.

But, Rebstock retorts, if companies aren't at risk of breaching the law then they have nothing to worry about.

Fair Trading Act fines have gone from a maximum of $60,000, before she was chair, to topping $500,000.

"You can't get a fine like that unless you're doing things that have a lot of detriment associated with it."

That she is accused of being anti-market and bad for business leaves her bemused. Rebstock's advocacy for the underdog is evident only in her passion for the health of the free market that nourishes them. New Zealanders should expect to benefit from the market economy, she insists.

But Opposition finance spokesman David Cunliffe is not so sure that the commission will stay strong without Rebstock. "There is absolutely no way that you can say it's business as usual when you put Rodney Hide in charge of the Commerce Commission," he says. "That's like putting a fox in a chicken coop."

While Hide is circumspect, Commerce Minister Simon Power has promised to have a "fresh look" at the commission. There are strong indications the Government will rewrite the Commerce Act.

As for Rebstock, she finally leaves the commission in about two months, after finishing her last two projects - broadband loop unbundling and mobile phone termination charges. She is now chairing an expert panel on probation services, and serving as a director of NZ Rail.

In times like these when the economy is suffering, she says we need to be extra vigilant, rather than easing up. And she hopes that increased vigilance will be her legacy.

"Ultimately you can only be seen to have done a good job if the impact of it is enduring. And," she adds with a slight knowing smile, "I think there's a good chance that it could be."