Eckhoff Gerrard: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — First Reading 
Eckhoff Gerrard: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:613;Page:9829] 
GERRARD ECKHOFF (ACT) 
: 
 I find myself in some real agreement on some aspects of the bill with Minister Cunliffe who talked about certainty. Indeed National has talked about that and Mr Brown from New Zealand First has talked about that. Certainty is absolutely essential. All of us would agree that certainty of continuity of supply is paramount in this industry. The real question and where the ACT party differs from many others is how we achieve that certainty. Is not the real question how we can achieve certainty in this essential industry? 
Do we achieve it by having more Government involvement? Let us think about it for a moment. If there is more Government involvement there are essentially more controls and more regulation. Where is the incentive for industry players for those involved in the industry in terms of the technologies that are developing regularly—almost weekly—in this field? Energy source throughout the world is becoming in the eyes of some more scarce. Others say at least 50 percent of the world’s oil reserves are as yet totally untapped. 
But that is not a question for New Zealand at this particular point in time; we are focusing on some of the problems that have occurred just recently in New Zealand in terms of electricity shortages because of a lack of storage in the southern lakes for one. There has been a surge in prices when the level of those lakes has fallen. The Government and the public are not happy with that and they believe that regulation of this industry is the answer. 
The ACT party unequivocally says that no it is not. In fact electricity or indeed gas is no different from any other raw material. One moves it to a manufacturing and distribution source and then one either wholesales or retails it. It is exactly the same with every other industry. For example take the food industry—one that I am involved in. I produce a raw material but I do not have to have controls and regulations. Goodness me I have gone through that phase as so many in the farming community have and it just does not work. It sends the wrong incentives. It will be the same with this bill which the Government seems to be urging through the House with some real haste. What we need in order to ensure continuity of supply is constant investment. 
People within the industry should be looking for new alternatives. Indeed I do not disagree with the Greens that we should be looking at solar sources wind and the whole host of opportunities that prevail. But the Government in its foolishness in ratifying the Kyoto Protocol has taken away absolute certainty of New Zealand’s electricity supply by essentially turning down the massive resource we have in New Zealand called coal. There is no shortage of energy source in this country whether it be hydro energy fossil fuels in the form of coal wind energy solar energy or some other source that we have not yet tapped or even thought about. There is no shortage. The problem is we have more Government more bureaucratic controls and less market determining the future of this industry. For example we have only to look at the Government monopolies—and they do have a virtual monopoly in this industry. It has Meridian Energy Genesis Energy and Mighty River Power. They are the major manufacturers. I ask the Minister why the dividends that the Government is taking from this industry are not going straight back into generation capacity. 
Again we have no shortage of even hydro capacity in this country. At least 36 sites throughout the North Island and the South Island have been identified where hydro development is still extremely viable. We are faced right now with developing the Waitaki River purely because Government controls preclude the ability to have smaller hydro schemes—and I can think of a number in the Otago area that could have taken place if the Resource Management Act did not preclude them. We are about to destroy one of the great braided rivers of New Zealand—possibly even the world. That is not because of private enterprise corporations or irrigators; that river will be destroyed because of regulation because of Government control. Not industry but the Government will determine the future of the Waitaki River and nobody else. Legislation is going through this House right now. Changes to the Resource Management Act will ensure that that happens. I emphasise the point that it is not the market that is destroying the environment destroying our great resources; it is Government control and regulation. 
 There are far better options. For example a far better option would have been the Dobson scheme on the West Coast. It would have been far better to use our coal resources and even—dare I say it—revisit the nuclear option. Those are the trade-offs that New Zealand ultimately will have to make. I do not believe that the people of this country will continue to allow this sort of thing to happen on rivers that are used for whatever purpose whether irrigation or recreational activities such as fishing. 
I ask where we will get our energy sources from if the Government is shutting down the options on us. It effectively has done so. I do not see that we have much option at all. We have to look at the transmission of power throughout New Zealand. I am told that no real investment has gone into Transpower for about 10 years yet our population is surging in growth—under the centre-right I might add not under this Government. I think of the huge surge in growth in Southland for example. The demand for power in Southland is precluded because we cannot find enough energy at this time. All of that has happened not by the free market but by the Government stepping in and saying: “These are the regulations. These are the controls.” We are facing power shortages over the next few years. The scribes around Wellington tell me we will have major power shortages in election year regardless of whether the lakes are full or empty. We cannot keep pace with the demand. If we are to grow our economy by 3 or 4 percent as we need to do we cannot keep pace with the demand. So we are faced with major problems into the future and indeed in the immediate future. 
The signal that the Government is sending to the industry is that it wants the industry to invest but it will control the industry. I ask members what happened in California. What happened when investment stopped as soon as regulations started? There were blackouts. I am not sure whether that will happen in New Zealand but if we continue down the path of belief that Governments controls and regulations are the best way to ensure investment in and development of the industry then I suspect we condemn ourselves to a pretty bleak and rather dark future.