Maori Authority calls for a stop to the offshore sale of Gull petroleum

Maori Authority calls for a stop to the offshore sale of Gull petroleum, rubbishes the Overseas Investment Office

The Chair of the National Maori Authority, Matthew Tukaki, has called on the Government to intervene and pause the sale of Gull to offshore interests and force the Office of Overseas Investment to return to the drawing board. Tukaki has also said the decision should be peer reviewed and has questioned if the sale is in the national interest. Tukaki has said it is ludicrous that the petrol sector continues to operate as a “petrolhead boys club” at a time when no work was done to test the sale to onshore interests – chief among them Maori interests.

“AMPOL promised the Commerce Commission that it would sell Gull to pursue its takeover of Z Energy – what we are really doing here is shifting a couple of deck chairs, a few people make tens of millions of dollars while we do next to nothing about the petrol price gauging at the pump. And to be frank the Commerce Commission again needs to be held to account when it comes to what has been a debacle of a fuel market review” Tukaki said

“The Commerce Commission found in its recent market study that fuel companies have been making persistently higher profits over the last decade than would be expected in a competitive market. So lets just be brutally honest about it this is not a competitive market – the sale of gull to offshore interests to provide convenience to another market operator is not effective competition policy – it’s a con job” Tukaki said

“This calls into question as to whether or not we need to have a larger look at the sale of assets to overseas interests and whether or not the national interest test is solid enough. Lets be really clear here – we have decades of allowing the building up of duopoly's in this country and we need to act with urgency to pull them down.” Tukaki said

“I would prefer to see these assets remain in New Zealand hands and of course would like to see Iwi investment vehicles partner with local entrepreneurs to build our own asset base up instead of seeing it hocked of overseas” Tukaki said