Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki-King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. I just want to perhaps note for the previous speaker Sarah Pallett that there's nothing fair and equitable about going back 37 years after a contract is formed and putting some extra costs on it to cover the deficit in Budgets that don't seem to be working for the Government at the moment. Now in terms of this not having a select committee stage there will be a lot of questions that come up in the committee stage but there's a couple that I just want to bring attention to from earlier. So the Minister actually said before that she had been asked by people in the industry if she would take a look at this but if you look at 3.6 in the departmental disclosure statement it says Has there been any external consultation on the policy to be given effect by this bill or on the draft of the bill?" and the answer is no: "No external consultation was undertaken on this policy." Now people talking to each other from within and without this building is actually consultation whether it's formal or not. It's actually having a conversation and talking to people. The second part that I'm a bit confused about is that when Dr David Clark got on his feet he talked about how the Treasury's regulatory impact analysis team determined that the proposed amendment to clarify obligations relating to the fossil gas levy exemption and the Energy Resources Levy Act 1976 is exempt from the requirement to provide a regulatory impact statement on the grounds that it has no or only minor impacts on business individuals and not-for-profit entities. The Minister then went on to say that there are actually millions of dollars that are being lost to the taxpayer. So that'll be one of the questions that I'll be looking for answers to: is it not worth doing or is it in fact worth millions of dollars? It was really interesting—there's a couple of other questions before. So the list MP for Taranaki-King Country did stand up and say "Well it's all right; we did do the gas thing in 2018 but we've got all these things. It's all right. We have a plan." And can I just tell this Government that when you're doing a just transition—and that's not what this Government is doing; there is no transition because all the magical things that they're talking about on the other side don't yet exist—that is not a just transition; that is dumping something and hoping for a future and having a plan and expecting people's gas cookers and heating and everything to go ahead when the gas runs back or bringing Indonesian coal into the country and then having the gall to tell us that we're not wanting to do anything about climate change. There's a whole oxymoron about that because we know that gas is far more effective a fuel than what Indonesian coal is. The other thing is that we were told by one of the members across the House earlier that it wasn't really going to affect people and their cost of living in terms of households because only 9 percent of the gas went to households. Now it would be worth actually clarifying that one as well because it might seem like a small amount and it's 9 percent of the gas but what one really needs to ask is: how many connections and how many households will that be affecting with that 9 percent of the gas? Because it could actually be quite a proportion of the connections. So little bit by little bit it adds up to affecting a whole lot of households that will be affected by the cost of living who won't want to turn on their gas because they won't want to pay the extra cost that's going to be driven by what the Government is trying to do. And the Government can call it a levy amendment bill and they can go around saying that there weren't going to be any extra taxes in this Budget—and I noticed one or two others did sneak in today as well—but this is definitely a tax. This is a desperate attempt by a Government who's running short of money to go back and look at a contract that was made 37 years ago. And I'd like to ask anyone on the other side of the House who's actually old enough to remember 37 years ago how would they like it if someone knocked on their door after 37 years and asked for some more money for a contract that they thought was well done and dusted? We are never going to get any investment in this country—and others have said it before me on this side of the House—if we're going to treat our investors like that; it's just going to be impossible. Thank you Madam Speaker."