Yule LawrenceLAWRENCE YULE (National—Tukituki): It's with great pleasure that I speak to this bill. I hadn't intended to today but as I reflected on my first year in Parliament I have to say that this is the worst piece of process and legislation that I've seen in this House—the worst process the rush and the lack of any proper analysis. Minister with the greatest respect to you and your position there is no pathway from an energy perspective in this decision.We've been hearing questions in this House today even about peak electricity prices. The Minister Megan Woods answers those by saying there is a problem with the infrastructure. Well there will be a problem in New Zealand all right when there is no gas whatsoever. It won't matter what the infrastructure is. What we've got today is just a small example of what could happen in the future. When we have no gas—and I hear the Minister saying there is plenty of prospecting—New Zealanders will face a choice: blackouts or importing more coal. So far from this current Government I haven't heard that there is a ban on coal importation into the future or that somehow we're going to stop all the exploration of coal because what we have in this country is on best evidence 10 years of gas supply at its current usage. Yes there may be permits and there may be exploration but it takes a long time for that to come on stream.In my view this process has been corrupt. On this side of the committee—CHAIRPERSON (Poto Williams): I caution the member.LAWRENCE YULE: My apologies Madam Chair. On this side of the committee we are willingly and with the best of intent seeking to get an accommodation and agreement with the current Government on a climate change commission. My colleague Mr Todd Muller is working hard to achieve that with the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. If this process had any integrity this very decision would have waited and gone through the climate change commission. It could've probably been looked at by the technical experts that are going to be put into this commission. If at that point the commission had then said it made sense to ban oil and gas from a time in the future that was agreed then this side of the committee would not be having this argument.The problem is in this very instance the Prime Minister went overseas made a decision pretty much the night before which even shocked the Hon Shane Jones—which is quite a difficult thing to do but it even shocked the Hon Shane Jones—and now we know: no Cabinet paper and the analysis from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment simply says that in the medium to short term this could be worse for the environment than the status quo. So in my view all this is about is blind ideology.The Minister did not like what I said about the process and it might be on the margins and I apologise for that unparliamentary language. But my point is this: when there is no integrity in the process then you end up with a result that is not in the best interests for New Zealand. It is my view that that's exactly where we're going. That is the path we're going down. We are going to ban oil and gas exploration in this bill. At some future time when this bill kicks in when all the investment has been scared off and when we run out of gas guess what's going to happen. The New Zealand public is going to have to deal with a very difficult choice: do we import more coal or do we turn the lights out?Gas particularly from my perspective is a great and fundamental transitional tool. Yet we've lost an opportunity to use that in seeking out our energy futures and quite frankly the answers that the Minister in the chair has given today have given me no confidence whatsoever that this has been thought out. This side of the committee is thinking about the future of New Zealand—the future of New Zealand—where that very difficult trade-off will have to be made between turning the lights out and importing more coal.