Collins JudithHon JUDITH COLLINS (National—Papakura): Thank you Madam Speaker. Look this is an interesting debate. I've heard the member Ingrid Leary who's just resumed her seat who has talked a lot about electricity poverty and she's talked about how people should be able to change their supplier. Well they can. I mean—news break—they've been doing this for quite some time. In fact I recall that it's probably been for well over a decade that that's been very easy for people to be able to do. So looking at this whole new regulatory authority that's being set up—more regulation more authorities—we already have the Electricity Authority and I thought I'd just go and refresh my memory about the Electricity Authority. What do they say they do on their website? They say—and this is a direct quote—[We] promote competition in reliable supply by and the efficient operation of the electricity industry for the long-term benefit of consumers." So they've already got the job. They have 65 full-time employees and having been their Minister my view is that they were a very well - operating and functioning organisation and authority. So why do they need to have yet another authority to do what is actually their purpose of looking to the long-term benefit of consumers? It's exactly what the authority already does. Instead of having some supposedly low-cost solution with no doubt low-paid people doing this job which the Government seems to be considering we've got these well-qualified well-paid people—65 full-time employees—who are already in the Electricity Authority. Then we take the many thousands of people working in the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—MBIE—who have advised the Minister that "This is a really dumb idea. We don't need to have it." We all get power bills and we look at them and think "Oh why didn't we turn something off there?" but there are also people who get power bills and they wonder how they're supposed to pay them. Some of those people are in parts of the country where their power bills or electricity bills are more expensive than other parts and a lot of that is around the cost of transmission so one would think that there would be a commitment in this Government to encourage some generation in places where those transmission costs are more expensive. I'm reminded of the Waitaha operation on the West Coast which was trying to get to have an electricity supply basically under a waterfall with very little ecological impact—and as I recall even the Department of Conservation (DOC) was supportive of it—to provide electricity for 5000 families or residences. This was in the West Coast of the South Island a part of the country which does not actually have electricity independence and as we know is subject to all sorts of issues around earthquakes and weather events. So it makes sense to have something there for the West Coast yet this Government which is suddenly worrying about consumers—at extra cost and yet another authority and at extra cost to those consumers—wouldn't actually approve that. If DOC thought it was a good idea out of all the agencies that we would think of surely this Government would have thought it was a good idea too but apparently not. Then I cast my mind to another authority that already exists and that is in fact the Commerce Commission. They are made up of eight branches already. These are competition credit fair trading infrastructure regulation legal services market regulation organisation performance and strategy governance and engagement. That's what they're doing and they are governed by a board of commissioners. Now the Electricity Authority has 65 full-time employees and one might think that well perhaps they need a few more to do this role that the Government thinks it should be doing which they're already paid to do and that is actually in their purpose statement. But let's look at the Commerce Commission. Maybe they could help out and how many staff do they have? Stuart Smith: A hundred? Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Well Stuart Smith my colleague says a hundred and I'm telling him and the House they have 400—400—staff across their head office in Wellington and their office in Auckland. So surely they've got some capacity to do something if that's needed. There is nothing from this Government despite the hand-wringing and the talking about a very sad instance that happened under the last Labour Government of Helen Clark in 2007 to actually justify this new imposition of further regulation. I heard the Minister yesterday in a very sarcastic performance from her which I thought went down like a lead balloon in Parliament—very sarcastic and lacking the basic understanding of her portfolio. It was really really the sort of thing that one would expect from a Minister in charge of KiwiBuild. What she said was that effectively it's only another $2 or something a year for each household or each bill-payer. She talked a lot about industrial users of electricity and essentially said that they should all pay more. That was essentially what we got from it—that that was what she was saying. They already pay more—they pay more than anyone else. So what she's saying is that we'll just stick up the cost of living a bit more and make them pay more too so that we can afford to have yet another authority to say "Gosh electricity is quite expensive." Well renewable electricity is quite expensive but we are very committed to a high rate of renewable electricity use. The reason is because it is better for the planet and better for our country and by the way we already have a lot of the infrastructure in place. But the problem is that most of that infrastructure is down the very bottom of the South Island and we then lose a lot in the transmission to the North and even to the West Coast of the South Island. So clearly it is actually quite an expensive form of electricity generation although nobody in New Zealand now would want to go around talking about "Ban the dams!" and all the sorts of campaigns that the Values Party as I recall were running back in the days when these big hydro dams were being built. Yes of course it sort of beggared the country but another thing we're seeing right now is big government thinking that Onslow a big dam or was it pumped hydro is going to suddenly make a difference and where have they put it—where do they want to put it? Well they haven't put it anywhere of course because the good thing with these things—Stuart Smith: Near Auckland where there the demand is. Hon JUDITH COLLINS: Does Stuart Smith the MP for Kaikōura think it might be near Auckland where the demand is? Oh no no—definitely not. That would be down the bottom of the South Island again Mr Smith and the reason for that is that clearly we can afford to lose more electricity being transmitted up north because the transmission itself loses a percentage of the electricity up to 10 to 20 percent—depending on what's going on. We've talked about the cost of a new Cook Strait cable and when I was the Minister I asked about that. We've heard some different estimates on that cost. We've heard it was from $1 billion. I was told back in 2016 that it would be more like $3 billion to $4 billion and actually there was obviously an idea that there might be a Labour Government that would have to sign that off. The fact is that we need electricity generation and we need more of it in the places where it is needed and not necessarily down the bottom of the South Island. At the same time that Onslow project is actually stopping other people who want to be able to produce electricity from actually going through with their plants and the reason is because they know that the Government is committing taxpayers and—for generations—those paying for it to this enormous big project which thankfully will never get done because it will not be happening under the National-led Government after the next election. It will not be and by the way—this is one of those little things we can get rid of—I'll be going through looking to see what is unnecessary and what needs to go. Thank you."