Nash Stuart: Annual Review Debate — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Annual Review Debate — In Committee[Sitting date: 28 April 2015. Volume:704;Page:2985. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier):I must admit it was very rude of me to interrupt the Hon Ruth Dyson because she has a lot to say on this—on a very very important issue that affects all New Zealanders. But as she did not seek a further call I decided I had better stand up and make one.I would not mind talking for 5 minutes about the electricity sector. We had Transpower come and talk to the Finance and Expenditure Committee. They talked about how its revenue grew by over 9 percent to a billion dollars but its profits declined by 18 percent. So it delivered a dividend to the Government of about $151 million. As the Hon Ruth Dyson outlined just as an aside it is quite interesting to note that due to the sale of State assets over half a billion dollars in dividends that would have come in to the Government have actually gone out to the private sector. It would have been nice to have that at a time of fiscal restraint. But anyway that is where we are at.The other thing that is worth noting is that the North Island grid upgrade project actually exceeded the maximum allowable cost approved by the Electricity Commission by over $70 million. Again that seems like a bit of a theme. If it is not a database or if it is not a system then it is an upgrade. There is just so much under-budgeting and cost overruns going on here that it is of great concern. But having said that I am sure it is of great concern as well to the Minister of Finance. One of the things I would like to talk about which I know is dear to the Minister’s heart is that the World Energy Council does something called the Energy Trilemma Index and New Zealand came in at 10th. It sounds pretty good—10th in the world out of over 100 countries. But if you dig a little deeper into these figures what we will see is that the energy equity in our country dropped from 18th to 28th. Energy equity relates to the accessibility and the affordability of the energy supplied for the total population and this feeds into what is a growing problem in this country and that is fuel poverty. The definition of fuel poverty is the inability to afford to heat your home in the middle of winter. It is a real issue affecting New Zealand at the moment as poverty rates grow.As Mr Twyford well knows as our housing spokesperson and as he has told everyone who will listen—and those who will not listen as well; he has still told them—the state of our housing stock at the moment is deplorable. We need to do something about this and we really need to address this issue of fuel poverty. Mr Twyford and I as the housing and energy spokespeople have been working very closely to come up with solutions to this. But the thing that concerns me Mr Bridges is that you do not seem to care about this. You think it is all OK we are 10th in the world and who cares about the general population—you know if we have slipped to 26th in terms of energy equity it does not really matter. Well in fact it really does matter. This cuts to the heart of what we expect of a country. We do not like to think of citizens sitting in cold houses wrapping themselves up in blankets because they cannot afford power. There is a high degree of fuel poverty in this country.The other thing that happened in that World Energy Council’s Energy Trilemma Index is that our environmental sustainability dropped from 36th to 42nd position. This is of equal concern because we go out to the global market with a brand that is clean green and 100 percent pure. But the real concern I have is we are not living this brand. I do not think we have got very long to rectify the situation until that brand is eroded to such an extent that we become just another small economy selling commodities to an overcrowded global market. If we lose that clean green 100 percent brand we are in real trouble. An organisation tried to quantify this about 10 years ago. They reckoned it was worth about $30 billion a year to our global economy and it is being eroded. Megan Woods and I along with others on our environmental team are working on solutions that will actually allow us to live this brand. If we do not live it if we do not walk the walk then we are in real trouble as a country. The erosion of our global brand I think is a major major issue and something that this Government is just absolutely ignoring. We cannot continue to do that Mr Bridges. Even you Mr Bridges must admit that environmental sustainability from 36th down to 42nd is a real concern.The electricity generation sector has a pretty good story to tell. We are at around about 80 percent renewables at the moment and we are looking to go towards 90 percent. We both agree on that target. It is a very good target. But what we have also got to do is make sure that good hard-working Kiwis can afford to heat their homes and that we are living the “clean green” brand. Thank you very much.