Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): What the ACT Party has to put up with! What the former speaker the Hon Michael Wood clearly admits is that the ACT Party is an acronym that stands for the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers. We only have New Zealand's best interests at heart—the interests of consumers and taxpayers now and in the future. Hon Julie Anne Genter: That's not what Roger Douglas says.SIMON COURT: The member who's just entering the House the Hon Julie Anne Genter former associate finance Minister points out that the Hon Roger Douglas is also concerned with the wellbeing of New Zealanders. The ACT Party agrees with him. That is why we can't support this bill. The problem to solve is: is there enough fuel stored in New Zealand to deal with some kind of crisis? That's why the bill is called the Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Bill. This question came up after the closure of the Marsden Point oil refinery. That was a decision by the private sector to discontinue refining crude oil into petrol diesel and jet fuel in New Zealand. Why did they do that? Well every signal that a Labour-Green—whatever they were—New Zealand First coalition of chaos sent was that there would be an end to oil and gas in New Zealand and that sent a chilling effect through the willingness of our overseas investment partners and our international suppliers to invest in liquid fuels and resilience in New Zealand.The Government caused this problem; this bill does not solve that problem. Only the private sector can solve the problem. The New Zealand Government doesn't refine fuel. The New Zealand Government doesn't own an oil refinery. The New Zealand Government doesn't own any oil wells in the Middle East or even here in New Zealand. The Government can't solve the problem. What this bill does is it sets up a compliance regime for fuel companies that the Minister herself in the chair in the committee stage—just a few minutes ago—admitted had already been solved by the private sector. The Minister herself admitted that all of the infrastructure that sits at Marsden Point has been converted to onshore storage and that the storage obligation created by this bill will be met by the private sector without this bill even being passed. Imagine that: the private sector delivers what a Government can't—and ACT says shouldn't. The Minister could not say how much the additional regulatory compliance costs will add to a litre of petrol and diesel. That's what New Zealanders want to know. That's what the ACT Party—which stands for the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers—wants to know. How much will all this red tape and compliance add to a litre of petrol and diesel or a ton of jet fuel particularly for businesses who rely on exporting products out of New Zealand by air freight or importing them by air freight? The Minister couldn't answer how much it would cost. The Minister said Kiwis won't notice at the pump. They won't notice. They won't notice in the daily fluctuation of prices. That's because red tape regulation and compliance costs gets bedded into the baseline cost of supplying a good or a service. The Minister wouldn't notice. I bet the Minister doesn't even know how much a litre of petrol or diesel even costs.That's how out of touch this Labour Government has become. That's why New Zealanders are overwhelmingly going to vote for a change of Government and a change of Government that includes ACT sitting around the Cabinet tables so we can deliver real change.Glen Bennett: Back to the bill.SIMON COURT: Back to the bill" says the Hon Peeni Henare. Another former Minister Michael Wood. I'll tell you what New Zealanders will like: to send a bill to this Labour Government for all the wasted work of the last six years and failure to deliver. Look what have we heard? Aviation fuel supply to New Zealand potentially is at risk. How do you overcome that? Well a few years ago a digger put a hole in the supply pipeline from the Marsden Point facility down to the Wiri Oils Terminal in Auckland. Now building more storage is not going to stop a digger putting a hole in a pipe if some person driving a digger isn't careful.Hon Scott Simpson: Jacinda was going to build a new pipeline.SIMON COURT: Ah! Apparently according to the Hon Scott Simpson the former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was going to build a new pipeline. Now I'll tell you what the amount of stuff that this Labour Government has announced and failed to deliver the Hon Scott Simpson never ceases to amaze me. While the Labour MPs who still hold their seats are sitting there making fun of New Zealanders and their genuine concern about cost of living the cost of petrol and diesel ACT is listening to them. The aviation fuel industry through good testing through good quality assurance can identify whether fuel is suitable whether it should be landed onshore or sent back to refineries in Australia for re-processing. It's very simple. New Zealand is nine to 10 days away from refineries in Brisbane. Adding a few extra days of onshore stockholding is not going to improve fuel resilience for New Zealanders in any meaningful way. That's what this bill proposes to do.Then we have to consider all of the other incoherent policies of this Labour Government. While telling industry and telling New Zealanders they should drive less use less petrol and diesel—trying to shame them out of their private motor vehicles into walking cycling and catching buses—at the same time they say "Oh no no we have to store more petrol and diesel onshore because of national security or resilience reasons." Well the main risk to national security and resilience has been the Labour Government over the past six years—and don't worry Kiwis will soon have a choice about who they feel more comfortable with. So what are the options for New Zealand? Well there's a real issue with resilience but that actually is more related to natural hazards and to national security and to threats over the horizon than it is to how much diesel can be held at Marsden Point. The real risk to fuel resilience fuel security and the ongoing maintenance of core services—can New Zealand keeps the lights on in our regions after a major disaster? We have to think about the Alpine Fault. An Alpine Fault failure could be a magnitude 8 earthquake. It's predicted to be more likely than not in the next 50 years. If we're going to improve fuel resilience then the New Zealand Government of the future needs to consider how they encourage more liquid fuels to be held in more places around the country so that actually after a natural disaster the people of that region have access to diesel—in particular to stand up generators hospitals telecommunications waste-water and drinking-water treatment plants—and keep those basic core infrastructure services running. That is the issue with resilience and that is an issue that a future Government would need to address. Then we actually need to consider what the costs of that are. Well if it's about building more tankage what Minister Megan Woods told us shortly before is that the New Zealand Government is going to pay to build tanks to store up to seven days' additional diesel around the country. That may well be the right thing to do to keep the generators running after a natural disaster but that's not the case that's been made in this bill and that's not the case that the Government has made.It is disappointing today that only the ACT Party is voting against this bill unless the Green Party also decides that it's more important to stick to principle and vote against this bill because they don't believe in oil and gas in our future and liquid fuels like diesel and petrol in our future. Maybe the Green Party and the ACT Party can hold hands and actually stand up for what they believe in even while other parties sacrifice New Zealanders' standard of living affordability in the middle of a cost of living crisis.The ACT Party opposes this bill because it imposes unnecessary regulation and red tape. The cost to consumers is unjustified. As the Minister has stated the private sector has already solved it by building more storage and channel infrastructure at Marsden Point in Northland. There's no need for this bill; no need for it under urgency. ACT won't support it."