Williamson Maurice: Urgent Debates — Power Outage—Upper North Island 
Williamson Maurice: Urgent Debates — Power Outage—Upper North Island 
[Volume:631;Page:3480] 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON (National—Pakuranga) 
: 
 I say from the outset that I was a victim yesterday. My electorate office was plunged into darkness at 8:30 a.m. and my staff and I sat in the dark trying to work anything we could with a pen and paper until about 1 o’clock. 
But the question all members of the adoring drive time audience stuck on Auckland roads will be asking right now—the question people right across the Auckland isthmus will be asking right now—is where is the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues? Where is she in a debate that is about Auckland’s power failure? 
Hon Judith Tizard 
: I am here. 
Hon MAURICE WILLIAMSON 
: Yes she is in the House; I am not saying she is absent. But when will we hear from her about what she is doing because—let us see it was a power crisis and it was in Auckland? Does that seem to suggest that it might involve the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues? Where is the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues? She is here in the House but from her there has been not a mutter not a murmur not a whisper. 
I heard the member from New Zealand First get up and say we should not be making politics out of this issue. Well it was Winston Peters during question time who tried to make some cheap politics. My colleague Nick Smith brought him straight back into his bottle when he suggested he read from the Minister’s speech of 1998—which I have here but which was unable to be tabled. I will quote from it though because Mr Peters went on about what a good job the then Government was doing. He said: “The Government is doing all that it can in this crisis. The Minister of Energy has done all that he can in this crisis.” He went on to say: “I am proud of that and so are members of the coalition.” He said: “We in this Government will not sit around making petty lousy little political points of the type emanating from the other side.” He also said: “We will get our priorities right unlike Labour members who guilty as sin stand here trying to find a political angle. The people of Auckland and the businesses of Auckland are owed better than that.” 
That is what Mr Peters said back then and let us get it clear why there is a significant difference between then and now because Labour in its typical blurring of the margins has tried to say: “Oh well look this was only for 5 hours; back then National caused one for 5 weeks or whatever it was—that is right; 5 weeks; 5 times 7 is 35. Well let us get it clear so that the adoring drive time audience knows the difference. 
The big problem back in 1998 was a company called Mercury Energy—it has now become Vector. It was a separate company that was not owned by the Government or controlled by the Government; it was actually controlled by a consumers’ trust in Auckland. It was the failure of Mercury Energy—the lines company that was not in the Minister’s ambit not a State-owned Enterprise and not controlled by the Government—to invest in new lines and new equipment that actually caused the 1998 blackout. It is quite clear the Minister in charge had no say. No Minister in this House had the powers to direct a private operation that was owned by a consumers’ trust. 
Well was that the case yesterday? Is there a difference? Yes there is. Because this tiny little wire that broke yesterday—the pathetic little strand that members can see in this picture—is part of the Government’s operation called Transpower. That is the difference. That is the way the responsibilities lie. I will never hold a Minister in this House responsible for an organisation he or she is not in charge of. The Ministers in this House are not in charge of what is now Vector—what was Mercury Energy—and never will be. But the Ministers in this House are responsible for Transpower. 
What have we heard? We heard people such as Dr Keith Turner telling us in February of last year that there were serious problems with one small wire carrying everything and the company could not do maintenance on it because it was so integral to Auckland’s supply. Dr Turner specifically identified the Otahuhu substation as the problem. So it is not a case of: “Oh goodness what happened yesterday? We didn’t know this could happen.” The Government was warned of it last year. It is a Government-owned agency unlike in 1998 when it was not the responsibility of the Government and I thank Winston Peters for telling us all that. 
Today I saw a letter that was written just under 2 weeks’ ago by the chief executive of Vector. Let me quote this letter which the Government should have been listening to for some time. “Without wanting to be alarmist I think I should put on record our concerns. We think that crunch time—the point where demand can exceed peak capacity—may be closer than the Electricity Commission assumptions because the system is already under some pressure. Little new transmission has been built since the 1980s but electricity use has been rising exponentially on the back of strong population growth strong economic growth and rising living standards.” The Minister has been getting that sort of advice from so many different quarters for so long that it is unacceptable for him to now come to the Parliament and say: “Oh gosh a wire snapped and brought the economic powerhouse of this country”—the place that Dr Cullen calls a dead weight on New Zealand’s shoulders but I do not believe that Auckland is that—“to a standstill.” 
I know a number of businesses that lost a lot of money. Will they get some compensation? Will the Government tell businesses that lost money by having to pay staff to go home and take the day off that it was a Government agency’s fault—it was Transpower’s failure—and compensate them? No of course it will not. It should but it will not. Then the Minister had the audacity to bring up an example about Brisbane and what happened there! Well let us look at what happened in Brisbane. Far fewer people were affected and guess what? The Minister resigned because of it. So I think the Minister is dead right. We should take Brisbane as a good example; we should go by the letter of the Brisbane example. The Minister should tender his resignation. 
I am telling this House that not having some sort of a back-up a redundancy or an alternative switching mechanism is simply as stupid as flying a Boeing 747 without a second set of controls—because if that set goes out of control the captain would have to say: “Sorry passengers we’ve only got the one steering wheel it’s broken and we’re going to die.” That is what is stupid about the Auckland arrangement and it has been for some time. The Minister has been warned of that in all the advice I have seen going to him. Keith Turner was very clear. The Minister says: “Oh well I don’t accept it I don’t accept his advice.” He should tell that to the little restaurateur across the road from me who lost his entire day’s takings yesterday. Maybe my colleague is right. He has just passed me a note saying: “Ministers can’t actually resign twice in the same year—that might be a rule around here—so he will have to wait until next year to resign.” I say it is not acceptable for the Minister to say he did not know because he has been briefed. 
It is not acceptable to say it was a once-in-a-lifetime occasion. I tell members that the storm in Auckland yesterday was not the worst storm I have been through in Auckland by a long way. I have been through a number of storms in Auckland and as a local member I have gone to see various houses in my electorate that have lost their roofs. Not a single roof came off yesterday. I have seen a number of trees come down. About 2 years ago a massive tree fell across the Pakuranga highway and workers had to get chainsaws to cut it up as fast as they could to get the traffic flowing again. It did not matter because the traffic was blocked up on the motorway and could not get through anyway! That is what happened in a storm 2 years ago and 3 years ago there was a real cracker of a storm. Yesterday there were just strong winds. It was not a one in 100-year storm; it was not even a one in 20-year storm. It was probably about a one in 6-months storm. During most beginnings of winter as the southerly swell starts and the barometer drops we get those sorts of winds. 
I tell the Minister to look at this picture. For this pathetic little shoestring wire to snap and bring Auckland to a standstill is an outrage. It is a Government responsibility—it is the responsibility of Transpower which is owned and operated by the Government and of the Ministers who approve capital expenditure in the Government and who have the say. It is not like 1998 when a completely separate entity which no Government Minister had any responsibility for had the say. 
I want to know when the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues will get up and tell us what sort of Cabinet paper she will be drawing up because we have seen a lot of coverage on the TV in the last week about Cabinet papers she draws up. We will be looking to see the Cabinet paper from the Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues about what she believes. Because I do not think there is a bigger issue in Auckland. I know that transport is bigger on most days but right now Aucklanders are saying: “Actually we don’t worry about transport if we can’t get there.” Let me give a final warning: at the next Rugby World Cup people will not be worried about the fog blocking one’s view. If the lights are out the games will be played in the dark! It is grossly unacceptable.