Parliament's commerce select committee gave Public Trust a severe grilling after the state-owned entity made a combined loss of nearly $80 million in the last two financial years.
Labour MP Stuart Nash went as far as saying that the name Public Trust was an "oxymoron", and that its recent record gave it no reason to be trusted.
Public Trust investments took a battering during the financial crisis and successive governments have injected $50 million in equity to safeguard public confidence.
Public Trust currently has over one billion dollars on its investment book and people with deposits with Public Trusts are backed up by a crown guarantee.
Last year State Owned Enterprises Minister Simon Power signalled that the government would attempt to claw back some of the bail out money as markets improved.
However, after intense questioning, trust chief executive Grenville Gaskell said it would be several years before it would be in a situation where it could start repaying the government.
The financial crisis was to blame for the trust's poor record and restructuring would prevent situations like this repeating, said Gaskell.
"Interim results show shows some of these losses are reversing and we would expect this continue in future years."
This was shown with the $3.7 million profit seen in the six months up to December last year, he said.
Liane Dalziel said it was clear that the government was concerned about the trust's performance as it had asked it to reduce the risk levels of its investments.
The trust was aware of the need to make changes before the government told it to reduce risks and restructuring would mean that in future the company would no longer be so reliant on the common fund for its profits, Gaskell said.
It had seen some positive changes and was no longer losing market share and costs were no longer growing faster than revenues, said Gaskell.
Nash said the trust was making only meagre profits when the market was booming before the financial crisis.
If trust was a private company it would probably not be in business, he said
If there was not a turn around in the next 12 months it would face some very hard questions, Nash said.
