Richard Prebble

"One of their trickiest challenges had been to contract out logging and routine work that under the old regime had been carried out by the Forest Service’s 5000 wage earners and contractors (a different category to the 2000 salaried staff). Gibbs had no doubt that contractors would be vastly more productive than employees. But how to move these foresters, all members of the New Zealand Workers’ Union, across to the private sector? Kirkland’s solution was to offer all the foresters a year’s work with the new corporation, with no guarantees beyond that, or a year’s pay as redundancy. Nearly everyone resigned with one year’s salary in hand. Schemes were devised to help many of them use the redundancy to buy logging equipment and get started as contractors. It was an unprecedented transformation of employment arrangements for former public servants in New Zealand.[46](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477308-556173400-46) Richard Prebble, later Minister of SOEs, was in no doubt as to its significance:"

"*It was supposed to be a clean auction — the highest bidder wins, simple. This was really important, because so many of the other privatisations had proved dirty, with the government negotiating afterwards. Treasury had assured us it would be clean this time. Richard Prebble, the SOE minister, was not supposed to get involved personally. But Preb being Preb, he set out to tweak our noses for some more. We were called down to the SOE offices to find the Treasury guys with Prebble, who told us that despite the fact we were the highest bidder with no conditions they wanted more. In the circumstances it was my job to do the beating up. I abused him for half an hour — telling him he was a unconscionable crook trying to change the deal, New Zealand’s reputation would be damaged by this double dealing approach, it was entirely unprofessional. The Treasury* *guys sat there squirming. After this I said we’ll talk to America and see.* *We rang up the two companies to tell them about this outrageous turn of events, that the government was cheating on what was supposed to be a clean auction. Everyone was bloody angry. The chairman of one of the companies had a former US Secretary of Defence with him, who immediately said that he would bomb the bastards for less than that. It was immoral conduct. We quoted all this back to Prebble, with some embellishment. So it went back and forth along these lines late into the night. In the end we worked out a deal: we’d give him $4.25 billion but defer the payment. The interest saved equalled the increase in price. It was a clean wash, but Prebble could show off a better price to his cabinet.*[18](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477273-050103421-18)"

"Gibbs had kept in touch with Roger Douglas since his exit from politics at the end of 1990. In 1992 he encouraged the former finance minister to write a book which tested his understanding that most of the money governments took in taxes was simply recycled back to the middle classes through the superannuation, education and health systems. The churning cost a lot but didn’t achieve much redistribution of income from rich to poor. Rodney Hide was dragooned to help with the book in the early months of 1993. Richard Prebble, who remained the Labour MP for Auckland Central until the 1993 election, helpfully asked a series of questions in the House. Treasury’s answers provided much of the research for Douglas’ book.[15](private://read/01jrsfvkjy84rkprtbz9amfvj8/#rw-num-note-477309-807254973-15)"