Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Chair. Look I want to come to clause 19 which inserts section 44B(3) and (4). This is an absolute constitutional outrage. We have an authority that has its job to do and now have a clause in here—and I'm going to ask the Minister some questions on this.It says here The Minister may amend the Code under this section as if the Minister were the Authority." Well what's the point of the authority? What's the point of having an authority that actually has expert knowledge in it and is immersed in the sector to then have a Minister deciding that she can decide that they can just overrule that authority and actually be the authority?So this is an extraordinary piece of essentially legislation by fiat that the Minister is seeking to give herself—and that that party over there and its friends are happy to give her. I have no idea why they'd do that given the KiwiBuild disaster. I have no idea why they'd do that given the emissions going through the roof for electricity under her. I have no idea why they'd do that when we have this.This is unusual in the extreme because there are other options. Number one the authority is allowed to do its job. The authority has essentially—it's sort of quasi-judicial in some of its mechanisms. It's subject to the Official Information Act and it would no doubt wish to comply with it. It's also subject to judicial review of its decisions. The Minister is now seeking to make herself judicially reviewable because of this. Why is this not even going to her colleagues in the Cabinet? If she really wants to say that she has no confidence in the authority to make the decisions that she wants why bother having them? If she really wants to do that then why is this not at least an Order in Council so that her Cabinet colleagues could look at it and say "On what planet is she living?" Why would we have the authority?This is a bit like saying "Because the authority is very powerful within the industry and we want the Minister to be in charge of everything." It's very clear she can't even just send it back to the authority and ask them to rethink it. No no no; this is as if she is the authority. Why don't we just get rid of the authority; is that her idea?So question to the Minister is: how is this constitutionally sound? How is she better equipped than the authority to make these decisions? She has an ability for instance to change the authority if she really wanted to. She has an ability through the appointment process to do that. If she's going to override the authority on issues like this why would the authority have any confidence in anything else it does and why should this House have confidence in the authority if she is showing no confidence in the authority?We on this side have confidence in the authority because we know that it is actually an expert body with knowledge. We also are concerned with what standard this is where the Minister is saying that small users of electricity seem to need this agency to be set up to protect them. It's been ably pointed out in this Chamber already on this side that actually there are loads of opportunities for people to change electricity retailers and many of us do from time to time. But these big suppliers their costs—any extra costs—of course will be added to the cost of what they produce which means added cost to the consumer anyway. So how is that going to help the consumer?So there's two questions there for the Minister. I hope that she'll be able to answer them without the level of sarcasm we've seen already from her."