Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Chair. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. It is great to see all the members back after a 4-week adjournment. I want to take this opportunity to wish our Olympians the best of luck for Rio.If anyone is watching the parliamentary broadcast and not watching the Olympics right now they would see some pretty pure political athletes on that side of the Chamber. They would see some gold medal candidates when it comes to pole-vaulting over facts in terms of political spin and mental gymnastics. I have just been spun out by all the political spin I have heard from the Government benches tonight because there has just been so much bunkum that we have heard. We heard Steven Joyce stand up and say: Well you know I've been doing an innovation Budget." You cannot call it an innovation Budget when you are seeing real-term cuts to tertiary education and when the investment is not even pushing the needle on our woeful research and development statistics which see us in the bottom half—half the developed-world average—when it comes to research and development spending.We saw Jonathan Young angling for a medal for the fact that we are 80 percent renewable. We have less renewable electricity in New Zealand than we had in 1980 than we had in 1990. This Government does not deserve a medal to say: "We're 80 percent and aren't we doing well."Then Simon Bridges got up and Simon Bridges was trying to trumpet that for one measure for 1 year over 25 years prices for one component went back—never mind line charges and all the other fees that keep going up. For one measure one component over 1 year after 25 years we saw the generation component of electricity bills decline. He was trumpeting that as a great success. There was a quote a former energy Minister told me and I think it is quite applicable to the energy portfolio. He said that no one has ever made their reputation as the energy Minister but plenty have lost it having that portfolio. I think Minister Bridges has taken that to heart because what we see—ironically it is called the energy portfolio—is someone with no energy whatsoever who has taken an approach to talk a big game and do absolutely nothing. He is absolutely risk-averse and he is refusing to look at the global trends. When it comes to electric cars allowing them to drive in busways is not going to cut it.This is a Minister who has continued the tens of millions of dollars of tax breaks and subsidies for last century's fossil-fuelled polluting oil industry. This is the Minister who sat on his hands when Huntly went back to burning more 19th century coal. Ironically this is the Associate Minister for Climate Change Issues but he seems to have all the portfolios where it comes to increasing emissions be it fracking subsidising oil drilling seeing more coal burnt in Huntly more motorways more trucks or closing down regional rail lines. We saw a Minister who was quite prepared to see the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority use taxpayer funding to slam solar energy in a recent report a Minister who is standing by and refusing to act when the electricity industry to protect its profits is trying to discourage customers—and it is customers in regions like the Hawke's Bay Taupō and Rotorua who are facing these arbitrary unfair discriminatory new solar charges. This is the Minister who has seen power bills go up and up more than the rate of inflation and has seen people scared when they see their power bill when they go to their letterbox because they know it is going to go up and up.A single component of a single measure of a single year over 25 years is cold comfort for those customers. Talking about cold comfort this is the Minister who has seen the smallest amount for energy insulation in years and years and years. This is a Minister who asked for more at Cabinet but delivered the lowest amount of insulation funding we have seen for years and years. This is despite the fact that we see 15 New Zealand kids dying and 42000 kids hospitalised every year as a result of our cold damp housing in New Zealand. Yet this Minister spends his money on providing tax breaks for the oil industry. What we see is a Minister missing in action someone with no vision no leadership. He is not acting and it is a tragedy because we have got such tremendous opportunities.There are four times more jobs when it comes to clean energy than in fossil fuels. We do have a good energy story to tell. Once upon a time we were leaders and pioneers. We should be the ones selling those solutions—the intellectual property the software—around the world because currently unlike New Zealand more people are investing in clean energy than fossil fuels. We are missing the opportunities because our Minister is missing in action."