Woods MeganGAS (INFORMATION DISCLOSURE AND PENALTIES) AMENDMENT BILLThird ReadingHon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I seek leave to present a legislative statement on the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave has been sought for that course of action. Is there any objection? There is none. That legislative statement is published under the authority of the House and can be found on the parliamentary website.Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS: I move That the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. I want to thank all the members of this House who've contributed to the debate on this very important but very technical piece of legislation. I want to thank the members of the select committee that heard this legislation. This bill is very technical in nature as I said. It amends the Gas Act of 1992 which is the principal legislation for the governance of New Zealand's gas industry. It amends that legislation so that we have an information and disclosure regime that provides the transparency and information that we require for a properly functioning market. It expands the scope of regulation-making powers under the Act to ensure that the regulated arrangements can be made and to ensure the disclosure and information about matters that may have a significant downstream impact or may contribute to the risk of a critical gas shortage. These risks are not theoretical. We have seen a situation in New Zealand in the very recent past where there simply was not enough information that was flowing through and that is what has driven the need for this legislation. It is important for ensuring that the appropriate regulatory requirements can be put in place for supporting security of supply and to improve outcomes for energy consumers because it is those energy consumers that need to be the focus for us. The co-regulator the Gas Industry Company will first be required to make a recommendation to the Government before regulations can be made. This is consistent with the co-regulatory approach. The bill's transitional provisions also ensure that the work that the Gas Industry Company has done to investigate information disclosure will be considered valid for making a recommendation under this piece of legislation. The bill also makes important changes to ensure the Act's penalty regime is robust. It increases the maximum penalty for industry participants from $20000 to $200000 and addresses concerns about the low level of civil pecuniary penalty able to be currently issued by the Gas Rulings Panel. It also creates a new civil penalty instead of a criminal penalty for consumers who are not industry participants. This will align the penalty regimes for industry participants and non-industry participants and it will be used to deter breaches of regulations by those consumers which include some of the larger consumers of natural gas. That penalty aligning with the other penalties will be a maximum of $200000 and will not apply to residential consumers.The Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee made some valuable recommendations to this legislation which we have discussed in other stages of this bill to add a specific criminal penalty for breaches of a Gas Rulings Panel order by industry participants. The penalty is currently contained in regulations but it will be repealed due to the repeal of the regulatory-making provisions for it and this addition will add the penalty into the Act itself. So I want to thank the select committee for the work they did in that. That will help to ensure that appropriate incentives are in place for compliance with these rulings panel's orders and that is vitally important. This bill does represent a major step forward in improving how information that may indicate critical gas shortages or significant price impacts is released to the market which should help to improve our overall security of energy supply. It is an important move in New Zealand starting to think of an energy system rather than separate electricity and gas systems and how we bring these together and think more in an energy systems approach. It also helps to address the industry's concerns about how their information is disclosed and helps to ensure that the appropriate incentives are in place for consumers and for industry to follow the rules. I commend the bill to the House.