Brown Peter: Urgent Debates — Electricity Industry 
Brown Peter: Urgent Debates — Electricity Industry 
[Volume:608;Page:5846] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 Electricity is not a luxury and to have 2 years out of the last 3 where the public and our businesses have been told to save electricity is not acceptable. It indicates that somewhere along the line our political policy is off the tracks by a country mile. New Zealanders are entitled to have electricity at the push of a button whenever they want it and wherever they want it. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: And all for free! 
PETER BROWN 
: No not all for free but all at a reasonable price. 
We have an abundance of sunshine in this country and an abundance of wind. I do not know whether there is an abundance of gas as we have yet to discover it. I suspect that it is in abundance but yet to be tapped into. We have an abundance of coal. We are exporting close to 2 million tonnes of coal a year to places like China Chile India Japan and South Africa and none of them are signed up to the Kyoto Protocol. We are in the daft state of exporting coal to nations that have no obligation to pay a carbon tax or whatever whilst we are prepared to punish ourselves for using coal. We have millions and millions of tonnes of it and we regard it as a second-rate source of power. It just does not make sense. We should be developing coal-fired power stations to suit the needs of New Zealanders. There are 4 million people in this country but on a world scale that is not terribly many. 
 My political party has concerns about the number of immigrants but we have double the concerns when we cannot provide enough power for the current visitors to this country. It affects our businesses our home lives and our tourist industry. Who would want to come to a country as nice as this when one is allowed to have only one light on in a hotel room? It is absolutely ridiculous. In a mild winter we are seeing people turning power off left right and centre. We are being asked to turn off the stand-by switches on our microwaves and televisions. That is the state we have got ourselves into with the power crisis in this country. 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: It keeps you fit. 
PETER BROWN 
: Yes it keeps us fit all right! In the circumstances the Government’s move today to set up the Electricity Commission is a move in the right direction. 
Hon Paul Swain 
: That’s the first bit of positive news! 
PETER BROWN 
: The member is quite amazed. Two years ago when the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Bill went through—and I do not think he would deny this—I told the Minister of Energy that setting up a governance board made up of industry members would not work. One cannot have a competitive environment self-regulating itself. A competitive environment is the exact opposite of a regulated regime. It was ambitious to the point of almost being stupid to expect the industry to regulate itself in any worthwhile manner. We quite welcome the Minister putting in place an Electricity Commission that is independent of the people who participate in the industry. The market will not work in the sense of social deliverance. The market does not have a social conscience nor does it have social responsibilities. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: Why does it work for food? 
PETER BROWN 
: It works for food only because there is an abundance of food. But here we are talking about a relative shortage of electricity where it gets— 
Hon Paul Swain 
: It’s Economics 101 and you should tell him that! 
Hon Damien O'Connor 
: That’s right! 
PETER BROWN 
: If I might just get this point out: the generation companies have an incentive to withhold producing electricity because the price goes up. They can make more money from a lesser amount of electricity than opening the industry up to unlimited amounts. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: You could have State-owned monopolies. 
PETER BROWN 
: No because there is a lack of controls. As I said at the outset of my contribution electricity is not a luxury. The average New Zealander wants electrical power in abundance—[ 
Interruption 
] A conversation is going on here that is not even involving me and that is hurting my pride somewhat. I do not mind members heckling me but when they are heckling across the alleyway I think it is a little bit much. 
This is a move in the right direction. I accept the Minister’s definition that it is insurance against a 1-year-in-60 drought but we have had 2 years of drought in 3. New Zealand First questions whether 1 year in 60 is the appropriate level of concern. We believe that it should be a good deal less than that. However a half-cent per unit increase in the average electricity bill to 80c a week is the price we will have to pay for that sort of insurance. 
But more should be done. New Zealand First has concerns about both electrical lines companies and gas lines companies. We believe that the Minister should take a good hard look at how they operate how they charge and their stipulated values. There should be some fairly forceful legislation governing their activities. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: More regulation. 
PETER BROWN 
: Yes. We do not believe monopolies should exist in an unregulated environment—that is putting it in a nutshell. When one gets a monopoly in an unregulated environment sooner or later someone pays through the nose. We are conscious of the charges that will fall on old-age pensioners on fixed incomes. We are not ashamed to say that where there is a monopoly basically there should be some regulation. 
We certainly believe that the Kyoto Protocol should be shelved. It is absolutely ridiculous to sign that protocol in these sorts of circumstances. We will be exporting 2 million tonnes of coal to nations that will burn it largely in their power stations. They will not be paying a carbon tax and we will be charging ourselves a carbon tax. It sounds like a Monty Python type of policy. 
We believe that we should look at solar energy. We should be giving tax incentives—favourable fiscal incentives—for people to install solar power in their houses and not just hope that they will do so because they are suffering hardship. We believe that there is a lot of scope—and I am certain the Greens will agree with this—for wind power although we would hate to see those windmill things stuck all over the skyline. That would cause us more visual environmental concern— 
Hon Brian Donnelly 
: Visual pollution! 
PETER BROWN 
: My colleague calls it visual pollution. There is a limit to what we can do with windmills. They are quite ugly looking things— 
Rod Donald 
: They are relatively benign. 
PETER BROWN 
: Mr Donald can have them stuck in his back garden as his scenic view but I do not want to see any of them near me. 
I should finally come back to coal. There is an argument which I saw on a television programme that one of the biggest disadvantages of coal is that it produces carbon dioxide. Let me tell this House that there is technology that will eliminate carbon dioxide from coal-burning power plants. It is fairly costly but the cost is coming down in leaps and bounds. Therefore we should be developing coal-fired power stations which ultimately will not be pumping out carbon dioxide at all. We should also be getting ahead of the act not waiting for that technology to occur. It is better to have a power plant pushing out some carbon dioxide and feeding the public cheap electricity instead of the public pushing it out with open coal or wood-burning fires. 
To summarise the Minister has moved somewhat in the right direction but there is still a long way to go.