Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Speaker. Well it's a pleasure to take a call in the general debate. I want to go back to the Hon Damien O'Connor who spent five minutes trying to back his way out of He Waka Eka Noa and explain it away. He did raise some very good points. The market definitely has great ambition and no one can actually deny that or actually knock it—that's fantastic. Unfortunately the ambition is moving ahead of the technology and that is the problem with the Government's response to tax farmers. They are actually ahead of the technology to measure things adequately and they're well ahead of our trading partners. And that is an issue that the National Party stands against but my colleague Nicola Grigg will speak more on that when she gets her call. I want to bring it back to the energy sector because those points are exactly what has happened in the energy sector and we only need to look to Europe and the UK. This is such a serious problem that many people will die this winter in Europe and in the UK because of the rising cost of energy. In most places their energy bills are five times what they were last year. People will have to make the terrible decision between whether to eat or to heat and that is—in a cold climate that is right around Europe and in the UK—effectively a life and death decision for some poor families. The reality is that affects low-income people the most. It is actually largely a problem of their own making. They tried to eliminate energy options ahead of the technology to cope without it. So wind and solar were going to be the nirvana the renewable energy that would be the key to net zero. Unfortunately they can't do it on their own. That's not to say wind and solar aren't good technologies; they are but you can't do it on your own Mr Speaker—not you of course. The Europeans and those in the UK are finding out to their cost now the folly of their ways. They tried to import their energy—to get someone else to sin for them. In this case it was the Russians. All of this problem had nothing to do with the Ukrainian situation. That has brought it to a head sooner than many expected but it was coming anyway and we are heading down the same track. We are fortunate that we're not connected to the international energy markets—particularly gas. We're isolated here. That has advantages but it has disadvantages as well. The UK is paying really high energy prices because their interconnectors connect them to the European market. They are paying the European price for their gas which is largely how they heat their homes. Here in New Zealand we are isolated. If we ran out of gas we would have to import liquefied natural gas. We couldn't do that overnight. I've been out and met with Methanex which is the largest user of gas in New Zealand. Without that one single big customer—either Methanex or someone else—the gas industry will fall over. Unless the gas industry invests in developing their wells continuously the wells decline quite quickly. They won't be able to raise money to do that if they don't have a large customer. The oil and gas ban had a massively perverse effect on our international reputation. It's trashed our sovereign risk rating significantly. I also met with Ballance Agri-Nutrients Ltd today who make fertilisers in New Zealand and they will be out of business in 2030 at the rate of change that we have with our emissions allocations for energy intensive export-trade exposed industries. They will go out of business. At this stage we are on track to decarbonise by deindustrialising. That doesn't just mean losing jobs; that means importing goods into New Zealand with higher emissions. How's that good for climate change? It's not. We have to face up to the reality that this is a long pathway and we can't go out on our own. We have to put New Zealand's interests ahead of personal ambition and actually face up to the fact that we can't move ahead of the rest of the world.