Tisch Lindsay: Electricity Industry Reform Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Tisch Lindsay: Electricity Industry Reform Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18562. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
LINDSAY TISCH (National—Piako) 
: 
 I wish to conclude the points I was making in the first call I took in respect of the numbers of megawatts that have been commissioned and those that have been decommissioned. I got to the point of identifying some of the plants that have come on stream since 2000. The amount of megawatts commissioned came to 1942 megawatts but for decommissioned plants the capacity amounted to 797 megawatts. So the net figure gain is very very low compared with what it was back in the period of the previous National Government. I just wanted to finish off that point in regard to the capacity we have. 
My colleague David Bennett has talked about the amount of renewables and how they have been reduced considerably yet this bill is focused on renewable energy sources. I want to look at clause 7 “Meaning of involved”. There have been some changes here because originally an issue that one of the submitters came up with was to say that we needed to amend the definition of “involved” and this concerns clause 7. The effect of the broad definition of “involved” in the Act will be to include the generation capacity of the entire wind farm or any generation in a calculation of generator cap even if the lines business owns only a small proportion of the wind turbine. I refer to one of the submissions which was from WEL Networks and it had this to say: “One potential structure of ownership being considered by WEL Networks is the ownership of a proportion of turbines in a wind farm so as to come within limits of generation prescribed by the legislation. If the 30 megawatt restriction continues to apply in section 2(9) schedule 1 of the Act the effect of this broad definition of “involved” will be to include the generation capacity of the entire wind farm in the calculation of WEL Networks’ connected generation even if WEL Networks only owns a small portion of the wind turbine which amounts to below the 30 megawatt capacity.” So that change was made because that very good point came up during the WEL Networks submission. 
Another point I raise came from the Vector submission and relates to the regulatory impact statement consolidation of November 2007. The submission said: “If line companies invest in electricity generation it is likely to be within their own lines networks or other distributor generation. This is because generation in their own region enabled line companies to (a) develop a more diverse portfolio of assets capable of meeting consumer demand such that is possible to defer or avoid investment in new capacity and (b) ensure better local optimisation between investment in lines generation and demand sign management as noted in the November 2006 Cabinet paper.” 
It is interesting to note that when we are looking at bills we need to know exactly what the regulatory impact analysis is. A lot of bills that have come forward before this Parliament have not had a regulatory impact statement and we have seen that with the KiwiSaver legislation as an example and with the Waste Minimisation Bill. It is important that when we are looking at legislation we know what the costs associated with that legislation will be by way of a regulatory impact analysis. Those are the only points I want to bring to the attention of the Committee. There is no need for the Minister to respond to my questions unless he wants to. National is in support of this legislation and with those comments I will finish. 
Part 1 agreed to.