Fitzsimons Jeanette: General Debates 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: General Debates 
[Volume:608;Page:5187] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 In the last week or so several chickens hatched by the Parliaments of the last 30 years have come home to roost. To those with very short memories it might appear that those chickens flew in from nowhere so I want to place on record today some of the facts of their very long gestation. This week we have the lowest inflows to the hydro lakes in the 71 years that records have been kept. That is entirely consistent with advice given several years ago by the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research Ltd that climate change was likely to reduce inflows to the hydro lakes and that we would start to see the effects of global climate change in the early years of this century. The Greens have been calling for some 15 years for policy change to protect the climate; only in the last 3 years has any real action been taken and it is still too little. 
Along with the low levels of the hydro lakes we are currently facing the loss of Maui gas which has provided a quarter of our electricity and much of our industrial fuel for the last 30 years. Everyone acts surprised about that but the 1973 gas contracts made the decisions to use the gas fast to use it wastefully to pay for it whether we used it or not and to use it all up in 30 years. The Greens have been warning for 30 years that using most of that gas for electricity generation rather than as a direct fuel was wasteful. Two-thirds of all the energy value of the gas burned at Huntly goes up the stack or into the Waikato River; one-third ends up in the electricity grid. 
We have been warning that that would lead to inefficient use because of the artificially low price of the contract that it would lock in inefficient technologies and high demand and that it would lock in an attitude that resources are boundless and that we have a right—even a duty—to waste as much of them as we like and as we feel we can pay for. 
 We have been warning that that would leave a gap at the end of 30 years that would be very very hard to fill when Maui gas ran out. Now it is running out a mere 2 years earlier than was always planned and there is no plan to fill the gap. We have heard efforts to blame the current Minister. We have heard efforts to blame recent and previous Ministers. We have not heard many efforts to blame the 1973 contract. We have heard efforts to blame the Resource Management Act and weather forecasting models and we have heard demands of every possible kind for new generation. But the fact is that only by managing demand for energy will we be able to keep the lights on either in the short term or the long term. 
For 30 years the Greens have been promoting the direct use of gas for heat rather than gas-fired electricity insulation of homes and water heaters refrigeration in industry compact fluorescent lights direct solar heating of homes and water wind generation of electricity industrial motors properly sized to their load wood waste - fired boilers in the forestry industry and a host of other measures. If the Governments of the 1970s the 1980s and the 1990s had done those things we would not be talking about an energy crisis today and old people would not be worrying about freezing in the dark this winter. 
All of those measures are now starting to happen and given time they can replace Maui. Thanks to the Greens we have an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Act a strategy and renewable targets but they cannot happen fast enough now to save us from shortages this winter or even next. Neither can any of the power schemes that people have been ranting on about in the House today—not Dobson not Project Aqua not coal and not even wind. It is outrageous that the conservation estate our precious biodiversity and our wild places should become the scapegoat and have to bear the brunt of our neglect and our ignorance over the last 30 years. 
For this winter the only solution is to engage every business every Government department every family every school and every New Zealander in making sensible savings to the extent that we can. It gives me no pleasure to say: “We told you so for the last 30 years.” It is an unproductive sort of approach to take. What we can pledge is that now that the Greens are here in the House things are changing and it will not happen again.