Barry Soper: Solid Energy's imperfect storm

Solid Energy staff learned their fate yesterday. Photo / NZPA

Solid Energy's seen the taxpayer taking the biggest bath ever, since the Beehive embarked on the state owned enterprise model almost 30 years ago.

The only energy being created by the company in recent years has been the taxpayers' dosh going down the plughole. And the only thing solid about the company was its ability to grow debt, with bad business decisions, and drive down the value of the company which not too long ago was valued at three and a half billion bucks.

Solid Energy's now worth nothing to the taxpayer, even the $130 million the Beehive burglars poured into it a couple of years ago, won't be recovered and neither will the sale of what remains of the company. Any money garnered from that will go to the banks who lent big time to Solid Energy, more than three hundred million bucks, with the encouragement of the Beehive.

They're at the front of the creditors' queue, the taxpayer's not even joining it.

The only time the former boss of the company Don Elder, who was on a seven figure salary package, fronted up to explain Solid Energy's woes was before a parliamentary select committee, where the MPs spent more time arguing among themselves. Elder was questioned by the media when he left the building but refused to answer them.

He parroted on about the company being in a perfect storm, falling coal prices and bad investments, although he wouldn't admit to the latter. In Parliament the then Minister of State Owned Enterprises Tony Ryall also talked about the perfect storm, so did the then company's chairman John Palmer.

They'd all been coached by the same media trainer who turned Martin Luther Cunliffe into a parrot before the last election. Clearly the advice was to ignore the question and stick to the meteorological message.

Caught in the middle of the imperfect storm though were the hundreds of workers who've lost their jobs and those who are now sheltering in the coalmines in the hope that someone will come along and buy the business.

And also caught in the bad weather is the taxpayer whose left wondering who is accountable and where does the buck stop?