Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Madam Speaker thank you and thank you to that previous speaker the Hon Dr David Clark. I understand that he has also indicated that he will be retiring at the end of this term of Parliament and we wish him well in his future career. But I sincerely hope he doesn't end up in an academic role teaching young New Zealanders about economics or maths because he's demonstrated again that the Labour Party does not understand markets competition and economics. But now what I want to come to is the problems with this bill. This is the Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Bill. Well why does the Government insist we need to improve fuel resilience? It's because people are afraid that at some point in time their city or their region might run out of fuel and what we saw during Cyclone Gabrielle was that when businesses and households run short of fuel people become desperate very very quickly. You can't charge your cellphone if there's no electricity. If the lines are down the only option is a diesel-powered generator. Hon Julie Anne Genter: Not if you have solar panels. SIMON COURT: Oh apparently unless we have solar panels. But of course on a cold dark night in winter there is no energy coming from your solar panel. The issue that this bill intends to solve is one that is existential which is that without energy in readily available liquid fuels our society will grind to a screaming halt. We know that and we know it's existential because it wasn't that long ago when I was a kid that the movie Mad Max came out. Mad Max was all about a war for oil—that's right the first Mad Max movie starring that great Australian actor Mel Gibson was all about a war for oil. Now in the general policy statement the Minister of Energy and Resources cited amongst some of the other problems that the Marsden Point oil refinery is closed. Well that raises some issues such as why would an industry or a group of companies who think New Zealand is worth investing in close their refinery and leave the country? Could it have anything to do with this Government's energy policy or with threatening New Zealanders that they shouldn't be allowed to drive petrol and diesel vehicles on pain of taxation? Well that could have something to do with it. We've heard the Minister cite wars and conflicts. Well there have always been wars and conflicts so what should New Zealand do about that? Well we could invest maybe 2 percent of our GDP in defence and be a trusted participant in security alliances rather than take the She'll be right mate. Nothing to see here." approach that this Government has taken with defence. Maybe that might help secure shipping lanes and actually encourage our alliance partners to want to come to our aid and protect our supply lines in the event of a conflict in the North Pacific. What this bill does do is highlight how incoherent the Government's approach to energy policy is. They point out that the minimum stockholding requirement will have to be 28 days for petrol 24 days' worth of jet fuel and 21 days for diesel on average and yet we've heard that actually the average stockholding in New Zealand is already double that. So what is the point of this legislation if it's not actually adding to the resilience in New Zealand's fuel supply and energy supply chain? Well maybe the Government should look at itself: by banning oil and gas exploration that may well have contributed to the lack of resilience in the energy sector in New Zealand it could have.The former Minister of Transport Michael Wood claimed that New Zealand should reduce vehicle kilometres travelled by 20 percent. Now I'm not sure if he's aware that the city he's the Minister for called "Auckland" in its unitary plan forecasts that another 900000 people will come to Auckland alone between now and 2050. That indicates that maybe 300000 to 400000 dwellings will be needed and I can pretty much guarantee that every one of those families or homes will have at least one vehicle. Currently it's about 2½ vehicles per household. If they only had one—in some kind of nirvana—we'd still have another 300000 to 400000 private vehicles just coming to Auckland alone. So the Government's policy around energy and around fuels has been incoherent and damaging. It has undermined confidence in the sector and undermined willingness to invest in New Zealand. The Government's only got itself to blame and this bill is but a fig leaf over its poor policy. The real problem with resilience is in the event of physical and natural disasters like we saw in Hawke's Bay and in Auckland recently because when the big one happens—and if you're a Christchurch resident who was affected by the terrible series of earthquakes down there in 2010 and 2011 then you know that massive damage can be done in just a few minutes to the infrastructure of a city. What we saw during Cyclone Gabrielle in January-February this year was that a huge amount of damage can be done to roads bridges and ports even which means that the fuel tankers—the liquid energy—as well as the power lines that supply electricity are interrupted and what we saw was that this Government couldn't even get drinking water to the region even though the navy tried to deliver it because apparently it wasn't good enough or hadn't passed some kind of test. Taumata Arowai the water regulator insisted there was some red tape that the navy wasn't going to be able to cut through so they wouldn't allow its delivery of drinking water to the Port of Napier. So maybe the issue here is really poor regulation and too much red tape. That means that actually New Zealand is not as resilient as it could be if only businesses and the private sector and local government were allowed to build their way out of it because the real problem with resilience when it comes to fuel supply is not whether a ship can get here in two or three days from Brisbane—which is actually quite doable for a ship full of fuel—but when it gets to New Zealand will the port be available to unload it or will the port be damaged beyond repair? Will the roads the bridges and the other infrastructure be in working order so that truck and trailers and fuel tankers can get from the ports out to the places where fuel is needed like service stations and hospitals for example and other public infrastructure that depends on generators? So in summary ACT will support this bill to first reading—Hon Members: Yay!SIMON COURT: —to first reading only—at this stage. We want to hear from people who have good suggestions for the Government—good suggestions submitters—and we hope the Government will listen. But if this bill doesn't pass before the end of this parliamentary term that's OK. ACT will be part of a future Government and we will be listening. People are feeling brittle they are feeling nervous and they're feeling afraid and giving them some confidence about fuel security is one way to address it. Two-thirds of New Zealanders say that New Zealand is going in the wrong direction. At public meetings people regularly raise the issue with ACT MPs that they're worried that since the Marsden Point oil refinery closed New Zealand is more exposed to the risk of fuel insecurity. Then we point out to them that yes that's potentially true but if your Government has said to reduce the vehicle kilometres travelled and says that we're going to eventually ban petrol and diesel vehicles or at least try and tax them out of existence and it's going to ban gas stoves in new homes and so on then actually you should be worried because your Government is not caring about your resilience your future or your security. What they're doing is paying homage to their ideological dreams of actually turning New Zealand back to a time when we didn't have sufficient energy to enjoy warm healthy homes and when we were too poor and we didn't even have our own oil and gas. ACT wants them to have the confidence—the confidence—that they can stay in New Zealand. They don't have to leave and a Government that involves ACT will make sure that the lights stay on and you can always fill up your Hilux at a reasonable price. Thank you Madam Speaker."