NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Chairperson, we should advise the hon Ellis that jealousy about our powers of anticipation will get him nowhere. [Laughter.]
Madam Chair, the hon Trevor Manuel has just written me a letter asking me about my powers.
Hon Ellis, please take your seat. You may continue, hon Minister.
NATIONAL PLANNING COMMISSION: Chairperson, I would like to give a few brief responses. The first is to Dr George. This Parliament has done its utmost to protect investors, and key amongst this would be the Financial Advisory and Intermediary Services Act. The role of the Financial Services Board is, in fact, to ensure that intermediaries are registered and compliant with the rules. You cannot protect people against greed, and, in most instances, where people choose an intermediary or somebody who holds him or herself out as an intermediary but who is not registered and not recognised, then there is very little that the FSB or the state can or should do.
There was a matter recently. In fact, there is an organisation that now calls itself the Society for the Protection of our Constitution, that says it has gone to court to prevent Ms Gill Marcus from becoming Governor of the Reserve Bank. It says that it is acting on behalf of people who have refused to pay tax and who paid their money from under their mattresses to some individual - and now the state is expected to support these people who publicly boasted about the way in which they have violated the law. We shouldn't support that. I think that we must ask the FSB to shore up the system that the FAIS provides. More than that, I think it is exceedingly difficult and dangerous for the fiscus to undertake such a matter.
The hon member from the ID raised issues about the prevention campaign and H1N1 and, if I had anticipated this as well as Deputy Minister Oosthuizen had, I would have brought him the print ads or the transcripts of both the commercial and community radio advertisements. They are out there; they are not just letters to Members of Parliament. There is a wider campaign. In fact, the campaign features quite coyly the Minister of Health himself in various poses as part of the prevention campaign. So, I encourage you, hon member, to read and listen to the radio and observe the television and thereby be educated.
The hon Van Dyk, as per usual, is attempting to mislead all of us. Eskom cannot be held responsible for the independent power producers, IPPs, and the hon member should know that the big issue that keeps the IPPs out is the fact that pricing of electricity per unit is still the lowest in the world - and Eskom's prices are low. Either you are saying that consumers of electricity must now, through Eskom, subsidise IPPs or this contradiction will present itself. But to come to this House and suggest that the IPPs are being kept out by Eskom is, I submit, an endeavour to mislead this House, and the hon Van Dyk should desist therefrom. Thank you very much.