Shirley Ken: Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Shirley Ken: Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11318] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (Deputy Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party will certainly vote against this foolish legislation brought to this House by this beleaguered Labour Government. It is a result of the Labour Party’s foolish adherence to the fundamentally flawed Kyoto Protocol. It is part of the Government’s foolish response mechanism and I can only predict that we will see more of this type of stupid foolish legislation in this House from this Labour Government. 
It seems that the Government has a fixation with renewables. I do not think that it actually understands the physics of that because no matter is created or destroyed; it is merely transformed. But somehow the Government is going to categorise what become renewables. 
I know that Mr Hodgson the Minister of Energy in this Labour Government has a fixation with wind. He believes that somehow by harnessing the wind we will solve our country’s energy woes. 
Brian Connell 
: So has Mr Benson-Pope. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: Yes Mr Benson-Pope has a fixation with wind too but that is another matter. 
I believe that New Zealand is on the brink of an energy crisis through inaction and lack of planning and foresight by this Labour Government. At best a wind turbine generates 0.8 of a megawatt a year. Just to keep pace with our expanding energy demands we would need to build over 200 turbines every year. Just think what the landscape would look like if we were building 200 wind turbines across our landscape every year. Of course wind is intermittent and variable. I was reading figures just the other week and saw that in Denmark no power is generated for something like 37 percent of the time because the wind is not blowing. So wind power is not a reliable solution to the problem. It is certainly a contributor and I believe that it is a valuable contributor. I am not knocking wind turbines at all. They have a role to play but wind power is not the solution. 
This Government somehow thinks that tilting the Resource Management Act in favour of windmills and condemning coal will prove to be a solution for our energy woes. It will not. We know that the Maui gasfield is at the end of its commercial life—2007 will be the commercial end and it could be sooner. That is a huge problem for this country. We know there are huge deposits of lignite coal in the Southland deposits—50 Maui gasfield equivalents in the Southland lignite deposits alone. However because of this Labour Government’s mantras and foolish adherence to that flawed Kyoto Protocol coal is off. We cannot talk about coal. 
We have about 1000 years’ supply of coal deposits in this country to meet our energy demands—if we are prepared to use them. I know that the Minister in the chair Mr Duynhoven is sympathetic to that view but he has been railroaded by the rest of his colleagues. It is a shame he did not make it into Cabinet because he would have been a better Minister in Cabinet than the clod—who is the character the Government has just promoted? 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: I will not allow the use of the word the member used to describe the senior Government whip. I ask the member to withdraw and apologise. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: What was the word? 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member knows exactly what he said. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: I am sorry I cannot recall what I called him. 
The CHAIRPERSON (H V Ross Robertson) 
: The member is aware of what he called him. 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY 
: If I caused him offence then I will certainly withdraw—be that as it may. 
A select committee of this House went down to look at Project Aqua last week. In that project we have the modification of one of the few remaining rivers in this country that is unmodified—the Lower Waitaki. If we are not going to use our coal resources and if we are going to adhere to the policy of total emphasis on renewables then the country had better be prepared that there will not be an unmodified river left in this country. That is the reality of the situation. 
When I look at some of those definitions too I see that they are equally as confusing. Clause 4 states: “renewable energy means energy produced from solar wind hydro geothermal biomass tidal wave and ocean current sources.” Now solar energy is actually nuclear energy; it is radiation.