Court Simon; Brown SimeonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. The ACT Party campaigned to repeal the ban on oil and gas—a terrible policy delivered without any consultation by the previous Government no cost-benefit analysis and no idea what the impacts would be or how Kiwis would actually cope. Gas shortages have been forecast for years as the former energy Minister Megan Woods rightly pointed out but her Government—the previous Government—did nothing about it. It did nothing about it. Their gas transition plan was a no-gas transition plan and that's why we're experiencing shortages and why the spot price for electricity today has hit a serious peak. It's going to cost households and businesses more than they could possibly imagine. New Zealand is dependent on natural gas not necessarily for energy use but also for industrial manufacturing. There are plants like Methanex in Taranaki which produces all of the plastic products that go into everything we use and consume. Your kid's backpack your special raincoat that not just Green Party but also maybe even ACT politicians like to go tramping in the plastics in your mobile phone—they're all made from methanol coming from Methanex in Taranaki. Two-thirds of their plant is shut down right now because of gas shortages and the extraordinary price of gas. It is correct that gas is a transition fuel. Gas is going to help us transition from a period of using high - greenhouse gas fuels to lower but only because natural gas provides for the peaking. In other words when there is too much demand in the morning or evening peaks the gas peakers can come on. They can be turned on with a text message; 20 minutes later they're delivering 50 or 100 megawatts to the grid; and what that means is we can continue to invest in renewables in New Zealand knowing that the lights will always be on and the heating will always be on. That's quite a different approach to the approach taken by the previous Government. Now when we hear from the Opposition that we should be—oh this what do we call him? The Switched-on Gardener" over here in the Green Party is suggesting we should move to 100 percent renewables and nothing but solar panels. I don't think that member knows that the Huntly power station typically runs on about 85 percent coal but it can run on 100 percent natural gas—Scott Willis: And it can run on biomass. SIMON COURT: —at half the emissions. The member points out that it can run on biomass. Well fortunately because we have natural gas we can afford to invest in biomass and that is a good thing. But it's not the answer to everything. Households businesses rest homes school boards as well as major energy users—they want to know that they have access to affordable and reliable energy and that is natural gas. Minister I've got a couple of questions for you. How does having fast-start gas generators help achieve New Zealand's progress towards a greater percentage of renewable energy? Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Energy): Well the reality is that having fast-start gas peakers means that we can firm the renewable energy that is intermittent and that is why we on this side of the House are committed to repealing the ban on oil and gas exploration and encouraging the investment into that gas production. It is so that we can firm the renewable wind and renewable solar which means that when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing we can still have that security of supply on our electricity grid which is so critically important to households and businesses across New Zealand. SIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Minister. How does repealing the ban on oil and gas exploration help support businesses in regions like Taranaki and does this provide confidence to those businesses and all of those engineers and support sectors that work in the natural gas and energy sector to actually invest and stay in New Zealand? Hon SIMEON BROWN (Minister for Energy): Well repealing the ban on oil and gas exploration is part of the plan to ensure that we can encourage investment back into oil and gas in New Zealand because it is a critical part of firming renewable energy and it will play a huge role in terms of providing confidence back to that sector. My colleague the Hon Shane Jones is leading that piece of work and will be making decisions on that in coming weeks."