Chadwick Steve: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Chadwick Steve: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:941] 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a call to build on the previous speaker’s comments about New Zealand’s international reputation. I have just returned from a climate change conference in Viet Nam that I attended with Dr Paul Hutchison and Sue Kedgley where we hung our heads down in shame. This conference was about climate change and the effect on population and population demographics. We used to be looked at in this forum as leaders in the world. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Absolute rubbish! 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: And I will build on another conference I went to in Chile where I was asked with Ministers of Conservation—I say to Dr Nick Smith—to also give a paper on conservation and climate change. People at these conferences were looking to New Zealand to be a leader and to take keys and intuition from the way that New Zealand was going. 
I think that the trifecta the Government has plonked in the House under urgency brings shame on this Government. What did we see? We saw the gutting of the emissions trading scheme and that Dr Paul Hutchison now has to chair a select committee—with no gender perspective on the terms of reference I note. Women are hugely affected by the effects of climate change and we will make sure that we fix that. The emissions trading scheme special select committee is going to waggle on for some time giving no clues to the market about the investment signals that the previous Minister of Energy had been very clear on with our energy strategy stating that we would have 20 percent renewable generation by 2025. 
Hon David Parker 
: 90 percent. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: It is 90 percent. What a line in the sand that was. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: 20 percent! That’s about right. That’s where it was heading. 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: I will correct that I say to Dr Smith. It was 90 percent renewable generation by 2025. What a wonderful signal that was by the previous Minister of Energy. We also had the biofuels target. Shame on the Government now for the damage it has done to the biofuels obligation and to investor signals in what was a lofty goal for New Zealand. 
Now tonight there is the trifecta: this ridiculous Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill. I am ashamed that after all the work we did led by the then Prime Minister Helen Clark we are now looking at a cumulative effect that is not going to let New Zealand hold up its head in international fora and say we are leaders on climate change. 
So what do we have? We now have a Prime Minister who has also made himself—and I thought it was very clever at the time—the Minister of Tourism. As well as looking at footballs for the World Cup he will also go around the world as Minister of Tourism touting the brand of clean green New Zealand. I think our Prime Minister needs to look very closely at this trifecta which signals a slipping and sliding back to the times before Labour came into Government in 1999. It is a sad day for us. 
I think the other thing about all of these signals is that these are deemed to be “urgent” measures—lifting a 10-year moratorium on baseload thermal energy. It is absolute rubbish that we have to be doing this in urgency and that it will not go to a select committee to allow the Major Energy Users Group the small energy-developers and the consumers to come before that select committee to give their view. I am ashamed of the process that this legislation is going through now; it is absolutely shaming. The country is noticing it and soon it will wake up to realise that this was the genesis—as Jeanette Fitzsimons said—for allowing the production at e3p and Kaipara. Of course this was what this was all about—opening up the way to gas— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: e3p at Kaipara? 
Hon STEVE CHADWICK 
: —no at Huntly—and opening up other thermal baseload generation. The spokesperson when he was in Opposition kept asking David Parker why he was so risk-averse about lifting the 10-year ban. I also want to mention the first role of the Minister of Energy which was to come into what was my old electorate which I love dearly to open the Kawerau power station. And how did that happen for Mighty River?