KEY POINTS:
How refreshing to hear a New Zealand leader finally "doing bold". Henry van der Heyden, the farmer who has set Fonterra on the path to becoming "a truly global dairy company, a huge asset for New Zealand and a national icon" is talking the talk we rarely hear from our national politicians.
The forward-thinking van der Heyden is spearheading is the outcome of an exhaustive reappraisal of the challenges facing Fonterra in the cut-throat competitive world that is the international dairy business.
Fonterra will not be floated on the New Zealand stock exchange until 2010 and only if a 75 per cent majority of the 11,000 farmer-shareholders in the Fonterra co-operative vote in favour of the proposal after a lengthy consultative phase.
Contrast Fonterra's approach with that of the inhabitants of the Beehive over the Electoral Finance Bill.
The Clark Government, whose members boast of their social democratic leanings, have been too immersed in preserving their precious political butts by trying to gerrymander the next election to focus on bold policies needed to arrest New Zealand's slide towards the status of "two Pacific Islands off the coast of the Australian continent".
Clark and her co-conspirators will no doubt have used their influence to remove some of the more egregious aspects of the Electoral Finance Bill by the time the select committee reports back to Parliament.
Cabinet ministers will argue the resultant amendments to this disgraceful legislation are the result of "democracy in action". That parliamentarians have taken on board the concerns of submitters therefore deflecting attention from the "Attack on Democracy" label the Herald has pinned on the bill.
National has fought the bill out of its own electoral self-interest. Unfortunately it is too spooked by Helen Clark, too immersed in me-tooism and too frightened of its own electoral shadow to announce bold policies that might inspire New Zealanders to believe an exciting future awaits them after Helengrad.
A case in point is climate change. Van der Heyden's Fonterra team initially faced strong opposition from Clark over their plans to list the dairy giant. The price of the Clark Government's approval appears to be a tacit understanding that Fonterra will not cavil at the impact of the Prime Minister's climate change agenda on the dairy industry.
Fonterra will do "what is right for New Zealand" says van der Heyden. Unfortunately that admirable stance seems to also cover publicly raising some valid concerns over details of the Government's proposed emissions trading regime which was announced in September.
The legislation for the emissions trading regime will be rushed in warts and all before the end of the current parliamentary session despite the fact that an exhaustive national impact study has yet to be carried out. And genuine concerns raised behind the scenes have been airbrushed over in the interests of speed.
Cabinet ministers have indicated the detail can be challenged in the select committee process. But that's not the right way to run a modern economy. The impact of this legislation will be so far-reaching the Government should ensure a complete consultative process takes place before it is introduced to Parliament.
Instead (as with the Electoral Finance Bill) it has chosen to run roughshod over some stakeholders in a series of behind-the-scenes machinations where significant voices have been excluded from consultation.
National leader John Key did an about-turn on climate change this year and pledged to reduce New Zealand's carbon emissions by 50 per cent by 2050. The Government's policy is roughly analogous. But a bipartisan approach does not absolve National from its responsibility to pressure the Government to get the detail right.
Leaving the select committee to (again) try and remedy sloppy, defective legislation is not leadership. A leader needs to be able to stake out a position, hold it against opponents while bringing a majority on board.
Key is failing on this score. The Fonterra play - with its privatisation model - does in fact provide a useful template for any future government contemplating a capital restructuring of state-owned enterprises. The current Government has stipulated it will approve legislation to allow the float to go ahead if national interest concerns are met.
Finance Minister Michael Cullen says this includes ensuring that New Zealand retains majority ownership, that the farmers' co-operative retains effective control, and that the headquarters and primary listing remains in New Zealand.
Cullen's national interest model could easily be used to protect the state's interests if some SOEs were partially privatised. Unfortunately National has yet to display courage on this score.
Key could learn some useful leadership lessons from van der Heyden this week on how to approach such issues. Is he listening?
