Prebble Richard: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
Prebble Richard: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:15705] 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party if anything is even more strongly against this proposal. 
Phil Heatley 
: That’s impossible. 
Hon RICHARD PREBBLE 
: Well we are very strongly opposed. The Committee should know that the submissions received were also hostile. There was a very good submission from Mr Scott who used to be the Secretary to the Treasury pointing out the inconsistencies in the bill and pointing out that the ways in which it will work will not actually achieve the purpose. I think that the Minister when he is looking at these particular clauses should think about the fact that they will meet the worst type of lawmaking: “there ought to be a law”. That comes from a drought from a possibility of electricity shortage and from great public pressure for something to be done. The Government has reacted to the notion that for every problem there ought to be a law. So here we have a law saying that there ought to be electricity. When we look at it we see that that is what it really is. The commissioners are really being told that somehow or other they have to create electricity. 
What the Government has not looked at are the underlying reasons that there is a shortage of generation. The Government knows the reasons—the Minister does. He can take a call because he knows. The Resource Management Act makes it virtually impossible to build generation as does the ideology of this Government—the fact that it has signed up to the Kyoto agreement. Interestingly enough if Government members read the latest issue of  
The Economist  
magazine they will see that it is predicting that within a decade there will be the ability to build coal-fired stations that do not emit. But this bill is set up because the Government has a shortage of gas. 
The impossibility of building a decently sized hydro scheme and the Government’s ideological opposition to coal mean that we are now being told we have to have this stand-by station. But does anyone actually think that that is a good use of taxpayers’ money? Even the Minister does not. Of course Government members then try to pretend that it is not taxpayers’ money—because it is a levy. Well does anyone think the generators will pay that? Of course not! The public of New Zealand will pay that. 
This is a bill to put up electricity prices. Here we are a country on the edge of the world looking for every competitive advantage we can get and one competitive advantage this country has had all through our lifetimes has been low electricity prices. But this Government is actually legislating against low electricity prices. I tell the Minister that that is what these clauses really mean and he is bright enough to know that what I am saying is completely correct. This Government does not believe in this bill. We can tell that because no one has taken a call to support it. If they had and if they believed that this bill would do some good there would be Government members going for the call. But they have not because they know that the bill seemed like a good idea a year ago when they had a blaze of headlines when people were worried about electricity shortages and when they felt there ought to be a law. Here is the “ought to be a law”—namely an Electricity Commission. I ask the Minister how on earth that will help. Does anyone seriously believe that it will? 
When we actually look at the projected energy needs in this country we see that this reserve station even after it is built will not in any way be able to compensate for the sort of weather cycles we will get. We know that we will have occasions—and that is absolutely predictable—when there will be a shortage of rain. When we have a shortage of rain we then have a shortage of water in those dams and that situation will come. It might be next winter it might be in five winters’ time but it will come. Will this legislation cover that situation? No it will not. What the Government should be doing is looking at the electricity market. It should have some faith in the market to enable the market to work. For a proper price the private sector is most willing to invest in electricity generation. We have only to look at the share price of the registered electricity generators to know that electricity generation is something that entrepreneurs are prepared to invest in. But they cannot get around the real problems that exist or around the Resource Management Act.