Curran Clare: Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill — In CommitteeText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeCurran Clare: Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill — In Committee[Sitting date: 11 February 2015. Volume:703;Page:1493. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]CLARE CURRAN (Labour—Dunedin South):Speaking as a member of the select committee that discussed this bill it was I suppose you could say a relatively uncontroversial bill at the select committee. There were four submissions provided to the Commerce Committee. There were some changes made in the select committee to the bill most notably that the committee recommended limiting the scope of the levy by clarifying that it was for the Crown to meet the reasonable costs and expenses of compliance with New Zealand’s obligation under article 2 of the International Energy Agency to maintain the emergency reserve commitments that are set out in that article. So that is quite an important amendment that was made.There has been some quite good debate so far in the Committee stage on this bill. I do note that there has been a number of questions put forward for the Minister in the chair Nicky Wagner to answer or to clarify and I have got a few more to put tonight. It would be useful if they were actually addressed by the Minister in the Committee stage but in the absence of that happening I will do my best tonight to actually address some of the things that have been raised by other members in the Committee stage. I note that the debate has been via the Opposition benches and that there has not been any participation from the Government’s side so far.I have gone back and looked quite closely at the second reading speech by the Minister of Energy and Resources. I suppose there was a relatively important statement made by him when he said that “the Government continues to undertake a range of initiatives to improve the operating environment for the oil and gas sector” and he said that the priorities for the Government were to promote “energy efficiency measures to help make our fuel use more efficient”. Well this bill does not go to that. It deals with ensuring that we have certainty of imported sources of oil and security around that. Unfortunately though it does not actually address the wider issues of energy security generally in New Zealand or the wider issues of an alternative fuel production and where we are going as a nation on that. Those are two really glaring gaps. I would hope that the Minister given that this is a new year and it is the beginning of a new term of Government would be able to give us some indications of where he is intending to go in this area and this would be a really good opportunity for that to happen.I do want to take the Committee back actually a little bit further than what happened at the select committee because the fact that this bill actually exists comes from a process where you have to dig a little bit into the process and actually dig into the documents to find out the information about this. There was a consultation that went on by the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment that released a discussion document back in October 2012. Yes there were 15 submissions as my colleague Stuart Nash has noted but you do have to look a bit under the surface to actually find out this information. There were some very interesting submissions given during that process and it is a real pity that those submitters did not take their submissions through to the select committee so that there perhaps could have been a bit more of an in-depth debate around some of those issues.For the benefit of the New Zealand First speaker there were questions raised in that process around whether host countries would actually release ticketed stock to New Zealand during an international supply disruption—so whether or not the oil would actually come even if there were tickets. The ministry noted at the time that the tickets were backed by Government to Government agreements with a number of them being international treaties. So I suppose there is a reliance on that treaty relationship being fulfilled and the Government would import stock to New Zealand only if oil companies in New Zealand were unable to secure their own stock. It was Z Energy that raised that issue during that discussion process. The ministry considered that the most likely scenario following an emergency declared by the International Energy Agency would be that the Government would release the stock to the foreign company holding it on the Government’s behalf thereby fulfilling its obligations. There was a trust assumption. The select committee did ask and it was given assurances around that.The select committee also asked whether or not there should be—well this discussion paper certainly canvassed these issues—more domestic stockholding to cope with supply disruptions. This issue was also raised during the select committee discussion and the ministry noted that “the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research study [said] that the discussion document [it] is based on found that building further domestic stockholding in New Zealand was not an economic way to mitigate the risk of supply disruptions.” It said that it was keeping a watching brief on this issue but that it was not economic essentially to do it. So those were the answers that were given to us as well during the select committee discussion around whether or not this would be a problem.I just want to raise one more submitter to this discussion process which unfortunately did not submit to the select committee. The Sustainable Energy Forum “recommended that New Zealand should take steps to reduce its reliance on oil imports. It suggested that longer-term issues such as climate change and ‘peak oil’ should be considered in the analysis of oil security.” Unfortunately when we received the report to the select committee on this this issue was not part of that discussion. I note as I said at the beginning that the Government did not consider it relevant to raise those issues or give any signals around those things when it brought this bill back to the House. I would make the point that there is a far more serious issue highlighted that sits behind this bill which is future energy security for New Zealand. I am very pleased the Sustainable Energy Forum raised this issue back in 2012 during the discussion process but unfortunately it was not considered to be a part of the discussion in the select committee.As I said Labour supports this bill. I note the issues that have been raised by other colleagues across the Chamber during the Committee discussion on this bill. I think it would be good practice for the Government to be taking notice and for there to be a response on some of the issues that have been raised tonight. It might be an uncontroversial bill but it does raise some significant issues that do need to be addressed around our treaty obligations and how they are being met around the costs and around the wider strategy for New Zealand around future energy security and growing our alternative sources of fuels. The concerns about our international reputation are valid. This Government is however prepared to act only on protecting our reputation.It is a pity as I said before that there were not more submissions on this bill but there has been a good discussion tonight. I think that there will be further discussion in the Committee stage.