Goldsmith Paul: Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill — Second ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGoldsmith Paul: Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill — Second Reading[Sitting date: 07 May 2014. Volume:698;Page:17632. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]PAUL GOLDSMITH (National): Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker for this opportunity to speak on this bill the Resource Management (Restricted Duration of Certain Discharge and Coastal Permits) Amendment Bill for the second reading. I am afraid to say that I find this rather a strange bill because it purports to reduce the effect on the Tarawera River but of course it would not have any impact for at least 22 years because it is not retrospective. Tasman Pulp and Paper got a 25-year consent only recently so for 22 years it would not have any impact. A lot of the submitters whom we heard at the Local Government and Environment Committee seemed to think that if this bill was passed something substantial would change within 5 years and were confused. This bill sets out to do something in 22 years.The other thing is that ultimately the select committee was convinced that the bill was trying to provide a solution to a problem that does not really exist given the utility of section 107(2) already in the Resource Management Act. The advice we were given was certainly that the 5-year limit on consents granted under section 107(2) would not provide sufficient time for investment certainty for businesses especially in the situation where technology to reduce the pollution further does not yet exist such as in Tasman Pulp and Paper. The advice we received was that the current ability of the Environment Court to assess each consent on its merits and tailor the consent solutions accordingly is more flexible and fit for purpose than an arbitrary 5-year limit.It was interesting hearing some of the submissions. One of them was from Contact Energy. The committee was intrigued and very concerned because this bill does not relate just to the Tarawera River and Tasman Pulp and Paper; it would apply right throughout the country. We were interested that Contact Energy had relied on this provision in section 107(2) in the consent ofWairākei geothermal power developments. We asked Contact Energy what it would have done if it had not been able to use section 107(2) and the reply was very illuminating. It said that it had really only two other options. One was greater discharge into the Waikato River as a result of its geothermal power generation and given the environmental policy of reducing those discharges that would have been difficult to achieve and not really an option.So the only other practice was to increase its level of planned re-injection into the field. The problem with that is that it would have put the reservoir at risk of premature cooling because of the likely returns of coolerinjectate intersecting the hot production fluid before theinjectate had travelled a sufficient distance through the hot rock to reheat it. The net effect—and I will not go into the geothermal details of it—would be the risk that the productive life of theWairākeiTauhara geothermal system would have been shortened perhaps by many years had all theinjectate been required to go back into the field. Of course if that was the case then indeed the whole economics of the project would have been put into question.Similarly if this bill had been passed and there was a 5-year limit on any future consents we asked what impact that would have on geothermal developments. Again we got a pretty clear response that because each geothermal system is different and responds differently then it is very difficult in the undeveloped systems of theTaupō volcanic zone to have any great confidence that the elimination options to respond to the characteristics of particular systems would be able to be worked out within a 5-year period. The net result of that would be that a 5-year grace period would be insufficient to enable an alternative to be developed to reduce discharges so a 5-year limit would effectively be a decline of a consent.I go into this detail because I think it is very interesting. What we heard here today were speeches by New Zealand First and for the first time since I have been in Parliament I found myself enjoying listening to one of Andrew Williams’ speeches and I thought he spoke very well on this topic. New Zealand First members were quite strong in their conclusion that they could not support this bill because first the current regime was adequate and second they did not want to be stopping development in this country. But the surprising thing is that the Labour Party which generally—certainly in the past—was more mainstream in its thinking about these things seems to be chasing the Green Party further and further into the extremes of New Zealand politics in support of this bill. So it is not surprising to me that Shane Jones has left. Why would you want to be an economic development Minister in a coalition that does not believe in economic development?Then you have this extraordinary contradiction in what they are talking about. So we hear a great deal about the Labour Party policies for example around power. Memberssay they are very keen to reduce the cost of power and yet here we have them red-handed supporting a bill that would quite clearly increase the cost of power generation and make it far more difficult to come up with renewable electricity in the geothermal space because they want to follow everything that the Greens come up with. So I find it hard to reconcile those two sorts of things. On the one hand you are keen to have cheaper electricity but here again is another example of being willing to pass all sorts of legislation and regulation that increases the cost of power. They do not seem to see the contradiction in what they are saying there.National does not support this bill. We stand strongly behind good environmental regulation for New Zealand. The Resource Management Act is quite detailed in its law. It balances the protection of the environment with economic growth and streamlining and simplifying the Resource Management Act is important. But the most important thing in regulation is that businesses that are looking to create opportunities for jobs and economic growth in this country upon which we all rely have some measure of certainty and have some ability to cope with complex situations such as those that you face with geothermal developments. If politicians come in and pass laws that put a straitjacket around all potential development and reduce that flexibility then the consequence is obvious. It is going to be less investment fewer jobs more expensive electricity and fewer options for New Zealand workers. I do not support that in any way shape or form.I finish by just reminding everyone however that although this Government has made a huge amount of progress on water quality issues generally across the country through such initiatives as the Land and Water Forum and the National Policy Statement for Freshwater Management 2011 yes it takes a long time. These things do not happen overnight because there is a lot of talk and the issues are not easy to resolve but at least we are making some progress. Beyond our shores I would like to in the ocean’s sense—this is the party that brought in the exclusive economic zone legislation where there had been none and again we receive great lectures from the other side about oil and gas exploration. Well when other parties were previously in Government they had nothing in place when they were passing all sorts of exploration permits. So I think this Government has a very strong record to stand on in terms of environmental legislation and the contribution that we have made. But this bill unfortunately would not affect anything in the Tarawera area for 22 years. It would affect potential investment in geothermal power and we do not support it. Thank you.