No accountability for Solid Energy

Last month, we learned that Solid Energy was on the brink of bankruptcy. The management the public of New Zealand had entrusted to guard our asset had blown our money on empire building, while paying themselves enormous salaries and bonuses. The public deserves serious answers on how this happened: on why those decisions were made, on the effect of government pillage, and on the degree of oversight exercised by the shareholding Ministers. Sadly, we won't be getting them: the government majority on the Commerce Committee has voted against an inquiry:

There will be no full parliamentary inquiry into Solid Energy after government members of the Commerce Select Committee today blocked the move.

Labour's commerce spokesman Clayton Cosgrove, who stood in for committee chairman Jonathan Young today, said Labour made a request for a full inquiry but the ``National Party toadies have turned that down''.

"There will be miners sitting on the West Coast expecting us to do a job and look into this matter given the $389 million debt.''

He said Parliament was not doing its job by declining an inquiry.

This can only be seen as a cover-up. National doesn't want us to look at what happened with Solid Energy - presumably because they think it would reflect badly on them and their stewardship of the public's assets. This simply isn't good enough, and we deserve better.