Smith Stuart; Parker DavidSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Mr Chair. I'd like to go back to Lake Onslow—the New Zealand Battery Project—which the Minister brought up before. I've been and I'm sure the Minister has been there—probably several times I'd imagine. I've certainly been there; it's a beautiful place. I would like to know if he's satisfied about whether that project will not damage should it go ahead—and I think if the Government changes it won't but that its environmental impacts don't outweigh the viability of the project. The last that I heard the feasibility work or the investigations that are going on there still don't have one of the consents. It's around lizards and they're going to be affected by that investigation work. I understand they have to put in lizard fences. The mind boggles when you think about a lizard fence but is the Minister aware of that? And is the Minister satisfied that the environmental effects of the construction of that dam should it go ahead and the lake and how much bigger it will be that those environmental effects are worth the project?I'd also like to know that—unfortunately the Cabinet paper that's been released doesn't identify where if the water take is below the Roxburgh Dam it will require another pond. That's clearly going to have to be built somewhere on probably highly productive farmland. Is that why that was redacted so that people wouldn't know where they were going—whose property was going to be up for the requiring authority to take that off those people? So I really look forward to the Minister's answers. I know he's looking forward to giving them.Hon DAVID PARKER (Minister for the Environment): Well I have limited ministerial responsibility in this in that that feasibility study is being done under the auspices of the Minister of energy although I am aware of the local environmental issues and I'm happy to talk a little about those. Of course the underlying thesis is that New Zealand although we've got one of the best electricity systems in the world as another member has already observed in a dry year we've got a reliance on Huntly and coal and as we have more renewables we become more vulnerable to renewable intermittency and dry-year risk. So there are ways that that has to be ameliorated and one of the ways that is being considered is whether we increase our hydro reserves by building a giant battery effectively in Lake Onslow by raising the level of that. It is actually already artificially raised a bit.The environmental damage that would be caused by that—and I would observe that any form of electricity generation carries with it some environmental damage whether it's the visual effect of a wind farm or you know the serious effect of changing a running river or climate-changing emissions from coal power. You can see that there are no easy choices here. The local environmental effects there would include a scroll plain that leads into Lake Onslow which would be a loss. It would be contrasted with the scroll plain in the Upper Taieri which is a much more significant feature. In respect of lizard reserves I can inform the member that I've volunteered at the Aldinga lizard reserve close by near Earnscleugh which is predator-proof fenced and we actually have the return of giant Otago skinks and other lizards which are protected in that reserve in a way that they didn't used to be. So these things are possible.