Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. I just want to offer the ACT Party's view on this piece of legislation. Now it's true there's a problem that the Government would like to solve that they can't solve. It's another one of these Sisyphean paradoxes where they will tell us they're trying to reduce carbon emissions to save us from a burning planet. Or as Green MPs regularly telling us If we don't stop using fossil fuels our children will have no future" although we—Hon Julie Anne Genter: True—it's true.SIMON COURT: Apparently it's true the member Julie Anne Genter called out. Although I do seem to remember her riding a bike to hospital recently to have a baby so I'm not quite sure that these two things whether they exist in the same universe or whether they're parallel universes. But we'll put that aside for a moment.If we're going to solve the global problem of how to reduce carbon emissions because climate change is truly this generation's nuclear moment and the climate emergency is the thing we should be spending all our time on then it's a great surprise that this Government banned oil and gas exploration at a time when New Zealand was so heavily reliant on natural gas as a fuel for energy and manufacturing. And then lo and behold the import and use of coal in New Zealand has increased two or three times in that period.I've recently returned from a trip to the United States where in Texas they told me "Texas is doing better than ever because the US is reducing its use of coal which produces twice as much carbon dioxide when you burn it as natural gas" and they're using natural gas from Texas.So what can you Zealand learn from the "lone star state"? Well firstly don't elect Green and Labour Governments because they never would. Secondly if we're going to actually deliver our best future to New Zealanders who are children today and who will be born into the coming generations we actually need to secure an economic base—a wealth base—and that will deliver the money that we need to solve our environmental problems. The technology for example to capture carbon and store it in the ground.In Australia for example where they've developed the Gorgon natural gas field in Western Australia every year—in addition to supplying natural gas to Europe and Asia—the Australians are also capturing 7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and pumping it into the ground back into the same wells that they took the natural gas out of. So they get to have their natural gas and then they pump the carbon dioxide back into deep geological reservoirs.So for young people wondering "What do we do to solve climate change?" there are engineers in the oil and gas industry; there are environmental scientists who have already solved this problem. But in New Zealand instead of allowing the technology that exists elsewhere actually Kiwi scientists working in places like Western Australia to do the same here this Government would prefer to ban oil and gas exploration and make it harder to get minerals—really valuable minerals—that are used in things like cell phones like gold and aluminium and other minerals out of the ground.So I just want to very briefly cover off some of the minerals that will be affected by this. In New Zealand we mine for gold and we make some of the best gold in the world and that is used in all kinds of electronic products. We also dig lime out of the ground. Lime rock—or limestone—is something that's used to make concrete. Without limestone we can't have concrete which means we can't have safe buildings or concrete pipes that carry stormwater and waste water for example.But when you turn limestone into cement it does release carbon dioxide. So we have to find a way to reduce that but that's not by making it harder to mine the limestone in the first place. That doesn't make any sense at all particularly when we know that there is technology now—and I've seen this at Stevenson's concrete batching plant at Drury in Auckland where as they mix the concrete in the big batching plant they inject carbon dioxide into it. So when the concrete goes into the truck and the truck takes it to the building site and they lay it into the foundations then the carbon dioxide that they've captured is actually locked into the concrete slab. That's called carbon capture and storage. We can do that.Then we think about natural gas and oil. Well when I was first elected an MP—and I have to be honest as a civil engineer I never expected to be a member of Parliament but I was elected in 2020 and I'm proud to represent the ACT Party and to help deliver on behalf of the ACT Party and David Seymour sound environmental engineering and climate policy. The first thing that happened when I sat in my seat in Parliament was the Prime Minister declared a climate emergency.This Government had already banned the exploration offshore for oil and gas. Yet when we think about the role natural gas plays in our society it's not just heating homes—it's natural gas that provides the heat at the cardboard recycling factory in Auckland at Oji Fibre. Without natural gas all of the cardboard that gets collected you put out in your rubbish—it would just go to the dump. But with natural gas it's hot enough to boil all of that cardboard up in a big pot essentially and then recycle all the fibre and turn it into new cardboard. Only natural gas is hot enough to do that. Or maybe if you're another country coal—but we wouldn't want to use coal because we've got gas in New Zealand.And then we think about how crazy it is that this Government would want to ban exploration for natural gas and oil and then we end up importing more coal. Our coal imports have more than doubled in the past three years under Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern's supposedly environmentally friendly Government.Well I'm a civil and environmental engineer and I started my career as an environmental scientist because I believe we can have a better environment but we can also have high-paying jobs and people who work in industries like oil and gas for example or mining. If we think of the Taranaki region. Now if you grow up in a family and your mum and dad don't have books in the house because they're not readers and mum and dad live a pretty rough life and maybe they came from a family that had a pretty rough life but your mum or dad worked in the oil and gas industry they could be earning $80000-plus a year—$80000 a year just as a worker blue collar or maybe an orange uniform or red overalls if you work in oil and gas.They could be earning $80000 a year even without formal education without finishing high school or going to uni. And those kids who grow up in families where mum and dad earn $80000 a year have very very good prospects. They're likely to go on to be high-paid workers themselves and that's what the oil and gas industry gives to New Zealand.Then we think about places like Kaitāia where they don't have an oil and gas industry. In fact this Government won't even build them a proper road. They're cut off right now: State Highway 1 slipped into a big gully at a place called Mangamuka Gorge for the second time in three years a town of 40000 people is cut off effectively from the rest of New Zealand because they don't have a proper road. Trucks are having to take an hour-long detour on very narrow roads to get to Kaitāia.You think of the difference growing up in a family where mum and dad are both earning $80000 a year because they work in the oil and gas industry in Taranaki or growing up in a community where the average wage is $25000 a year and that's Kaitāia. That's what this Government wants to deliver: more townships in more regions that have economic and social outcomes like Kaitāia—that's what their policy around energy and resources will deliver. The ACT Party absolutely rejects that.Now I want to come to the role of the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE). MBIE is the ministry that's tasked with processing oil and gas and mineral application permits. They've got hundreds of permits they've handbraked for years that they are not releasing. And now this law change potentially puts people who've applied for permits legitimately their application process at risk.That creates sovereign risk. When a Government changes the rules halfway through someone's application process for a new mine or a new energy development that makes people stop trusting New Zealand. They stop trusting our Government they stop investing in our country and what they do is they choose to invest somewhere else. So the people in other countries like South America Chile Indonesia and of course Australia end up with the high-paid jobs and the thriving communities and healthy economies that New Zealand should have but that this Government through their poor policy choices denies us.So what could be done? Well what ACT would do is say "Look let the big mining companies who've restored the environment back to original standard in places like the Globe Progress Mine at Reefton in the South Island where they saved the tree stumps and put them back after the mining so the little creatures have somewhere to live." We can have mining we can have energy we can have wealth. Thank you Madam Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The member's time has expired."