Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): I move That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance. So Monday was a day in New Zealand where—we have been hoping for quite some time around the policies of this Government that the lights would not go out. Unfortunately on Monday sadly our prediction came true for New Zealanders across a large part of the North Island. Now in the ministerial statement the Minister of Energy and Resources said New Zealanders expect the lights to be on"—[Interruption]SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Minister of Finance. BARBARA KURIGER: —"and the heaters to be running on a cold winter's night." So the first question around this is was this—so that's why the situation unfolded and my question around this was: was it avoidable? The Minister said it was unacceptable but I ask was it avoidable? Because it just seems that there are so many things that went on on Monday that seem to be unnoticed by this Government. In the ministerial statement "at 6.43 a.m. Transpower issued a low residual notice to participants following their forecast showing a deficit in generation during the forecast evening peak. Transpower requested more generation or less load." And remember it actually was an extremely cold weather forecast. There was a lot of snow blasting across the South Island and the peak of demand was always going to go up on that evening. Now "At 1.02 p.m. … Transpower issued a warning" that there were insufficient generation offers for the evening peak "and another warning was issued at 5.07 p.m. At 6.40 p.m. Transpower issued a request for network companies [and] direct grid connection[s] to shed load by 1 percent." And then "At 7.10 p.m. Transpower issued a grid emergency notice."—a grid emergency notice that is required by law to go to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises with a dotted line across to the Minister. Now we still haven't had an answer from this Government as to what the Minister for State Owned Enterprises did with this grid emergency notice and whether anyone from his office notified the Minister. Now the disappointing thing about this was that the Minister said that she found out around about 8.30 on Monday night and it has been reported that it was found out by the media. We've just heard from Minister Parker that it was a text that she received. Now at 1.22 on Monday afternoon I received the Energy News via email and it was already starting to talk about what had been happening earlier in the day. I've actually got that with me. And I would have thought that any Minister's office or any Minister worth their salt would have actually picked up on what went on in the Energy News. Basically it said "Polar winds drive up load forecast: strong winds from the Antarctic are driving up electricity load forecasts around the country and the North Island in particular where Transpower says residual generation will be below 200 megawatts for this evening's peak. The system operator expects demand to peak this evening at 4800 MW in the North Island and 2200 MW in the South Island." So I would have thought that if the Minister had been on her game someone in her office may have informed her at that particular point in time and so I have a question around why that did not happen. I'm noticing also from the Minister's statement—it said in her ministerial statement the other day "I will add that this Government has taken numerous steps towards ensuring the electricity market is working as it should". Now there seems to be a lot of finger-pointing towards the electricity market but I'm wondering when the Government itself is actually going to look in the mirror and take some responsibility for some of what went on here. We look at the premature decision around the gas permit ban. Despite what we've been told there have been some gas finds since the year 2000. It just so happened that the rig was sent away because it wasn't considered an essential service at the time that COVID hit. So I'm really getting quite concerned that this Government is making some really really poor decisions around how we actually make the system work because it takes six to 10 hours to get a Rankine fired up at Huntly but gas can be turned on very quickly. So some forethought into all of this—really concerned in the long term. I'm worried about the next eight to 10 years and I worry how many more winters we're going to have where we're going to have a repeat of Monday night. So it's a Government that's sending us into an energy security issue. Surprisingly enough the Climate Change Commission said that New Zealand needs an energy strategy and that seemed to take the Minister by surprise. The Minister thought that was quite a good idea that we should have an energy strategy and I was just a little bit surprised that it took till May 2021 after being in Government for 3½ years to decide what the climate commissioner said was quite a good idea. I think in the rush to get to 100 percent renewable electricity with no plan this Government has done us a huge disservice. Demand is going up. We hear every day from the Minister of Transport around electric cars. We have all of these virtue-signalling things going on around how we're going to get to the 100 percent renewable electricity and we get one cold winter's night and what happens? The lights go off. So let's wake up people and realise that the demand is going up and the demand will continue to go up over time as people start to get into more of this renewable energy. The Government wants everyone to use 100 percent—and we can debate that number because 100 percent is a very expensive target to get to. We know that 95 to 98 percent is much more achievable and much more cost-effective. We need to look at what we can do in energy per se. So the Government wants everyone to use 100 percent electricity in transport. The Government wants everyone to use 100 percent renewable electricity in heat processing 100 percent renewable electricity in our homes. The question is: how are we going to stop this repeat performance from happening again? Part of the problem is the cut-off of the investment in the gas which was premature. Gas is instant; coal Rankines are not. Now the Minister said yesterday that she was going to have an inquiry and she was going to try and find out and get to the bottom of what happened here. So I want to offer some questions for the Minister that I think that she should be throwing into the inquiry. The first one is: why did the Minister not know until 8.30 p.m. when the knowledge was becoming widely available and it was actually on social media before the Minister was told? That's the first question that should be asked: what failed in the Minister's office? The second one is: why were the Minister and her office not part of a comms plan? Because actually surely that's the Government's responsibility when there's an event or a disaster going out there in the public arena. Why was the Minister's office not part of a comms plan that helped people to understand what was going on? Waikato Police had to put a post on Facebook to explain to people not to call 111 because it was in fact a power outage—it wasn't some other sort of emergency. People were ringing the police station clogging up the 111 system. Imagine if there had been other sorts of emergencies the phone lines would have been blocked and other people would not have been able to get through.So in a time and an age where this Government is spending more and more and more money on comms people we don't even have enough comms to get out the information that we're having a power blackout. It was really concerning to see a mother on TV last night who said that the lights went out she was trying to find her toddler in the dark she was trying to feed her toddler she was trying to keep her toddler warm—imagine how scary that is for some of our people out there. It also must have been a heck of an event when those people who rely on electricity for lifesaving medical devices were alerted on social media that they should make their way to the hospital due to a power outage. That is just not good enough from the Government. That is something that I think the Government should really hang their heads in shame on that one. The way they frightened people with life-threatening illnesses by not coming out and communicating this issue faster. Could the civil defence or other mechanisms been used? Could there have been a way that we could have front-footed this if the Government had not been asleep at the wheel? If someone in the Minister's office had managed to pick up the Energy News at 1.22 p.m. even if they weren't looking at their emails and watching other systems—I mean that's their job: to make sure the lights stay on. If someone had just been awake maybe the Government might have been on to this.I also want to know and it's not been defined yet but I think it's something that the Minister should really put in to her inquiry if she didn't is: why did the Minister not hear from the State-owned enterprises Minister's office? There was a 7.10 p.m. grid emergency notice that went out and that is required by law to go to the office of the State-owned enterprises Minister. So when that notice went out I cannot understand for the life of me why the Minister for State Owned Enterprises or someone in his office didn't go about advising the Minister of Energy and Resources because it was something like an hour and 20 minutes later that the Minister of Energy and Resources was alerted to the fact that there was a grid emergency notice issued. Was the Minister for State Owned Enterprises asleep or perhaps was he out riding his bike?So you know New Zealanders as the Minister said we can expect better. But I think the Minister needs to stop pointing the finger at every other possible option and when she does this inquiry or when the people do this inquiry on her behalf to look at all of the things that her and her office and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises and his office could have done around this issue because it's all very well to point the finger forward but when you point the finger forward there are three fingers pointing backwards at the person who is doing the pointing. And so I want the Minister to put all of these questions into the inquiry. There must have been somebody within her office within the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment within somewhere that could have actually notified the Minister. I'm just standing here gobsmacked to think that this could have actually happened and you know it's just not good enough.The Government is totally asleep at the wheel. So I want also when the Minister does her inquiry into how this happened I want the Minister to also think about how this is not going to happen again. I want the Minister to know how she is going to keep us safe from power outages for the next 10 winters because we know that the Government thinks that everything they've got in the virtue-signalling realm around 100 percent renewable electricity is actually at least 10 years out into the future. Minister Wood wants people to start driving their electric cars everywhere. That's only going to exacerbate the problem. Next time we get snow the time after that we are going to have a repeat. Get your act together—it is not good enough for New Zealand.SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."