Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. The ACT Party will be supporting this bill. We're absolutely committed through our own policy development in the initiatives that we would introduce should ACT be part of a future Government to ensuring that the supply chain is resilient and that New Zealand has a brighter future because New Zealand is extremely vulnerable with 5 million people living on an island the size of Japan riven with earthquake faults spotted with volcanoes and subject to tsunami cyclone and all kinds of extreme weather events. New Zealand is a vulnerable country in the South Pacific. And that means at the end of a global supply chain with 5 million consumers—probably only 3 million of which are actually earning enough to be net taxpayers—we don't have a lot to offer the rest of the world except a friendly environment to invest affordable homes for people to live in and higher wages. Except under this Labour Government New Zealand is not seen as a friendly destination to invest in. Housing affordability has got worse under this Government. Not that long ago in Auckland where I live the difference between the median wage or salary and the cost of a home—the cost of the home was six times the median wage or salary. Now it's 10 times. And when you think about our wages the average Australian is earning $23000 more than the average Kiwi doing the same work. So if only New Zealand was an easier place to invest and this Government didn't treat foreign direct investment as if people trying to send money here were criminals if only our homes were affordable and if only our wages were higher.And this Government's response to trying to solve problems around security of supply for fuel and supply chain resilience—in fact every single problem this Government tries to solve it tries to solve through regulation and more red tape. Now I asked the Minister at committee stage Would there be any additional cost?" The Minister said no. Well I want to raise this issue because it's going to come up. Currently New Zealand relies on tickets which guarantee that New Zealand meets its 90-day fuel storage obligation which is an international commitment which we've signed up to in terms of the International Energy Agency that we will retain 90 days of fuel stockpile. But most of that stockpile is floating around somewhere between the Gulf of Arabia and North Korea as the Minister accidentally pointed out and New Zealand. It's on the high seas somewhere or potentially it's just an IOU in someone's bottom drawer. That's what security of supply and resilience means right now. Well a bit of paper a scrap of paper doesn't cost much. I mean these were probably arranged at a time when fax machines or even telex machines were still in common use. An IOU sent to another country doesn't cost much. But what the Minister is proposing is that the Government will procure storage or procure fuel management testing regimes and a higher specification—a winter specification—for diesel to store 70 million litres onshore in addition to what's currently stored. There will be an extra cost to build tankage pipe networks construction consents and that's when we get to the rub of it. If this was a simple thing to organise the Minister could have simply written to the fuel companies and said "Would you please give us your plan to store more fuel on site in New Zealand? We'd really appreciate your advice and if you think there's any additional cost to that would you please tell us how you think that should be apportioned?" Because there is a cost for paying for security whether it's security in your shop—if you're a retailer these days you might have to invest in cages you might have to invest in CCTV. Security costs money whether it's building tankage for more onshore fuel storage or whether it's security for your home and business. Security costs money. But how easy is it and how affordable is this extra security? I just want to bring the House's attention and the attention of people who might be watching this debate on a Friday morning or in the future on demand because everything that's said in this House is available for New Zealanders to inspect at their leisure on Parliament TV On Demand. I want to pose this question: let's imagine that the Government procures additional fuel storage 70 million litres of tankage and then in the request for proposal the tenderer offering to build more storage for a price says "By the way we're tagging out resource consenting because if we have to go and get consents under the Resource Management Act (RMA) or whatever Minister David Parker thinks the future of environmental law might be we can't guarantee we're going to get a consent because under the current RMA it says any decision maker has to take account of the effects of climate change on the planet." So can you imagine a Government agency procuring fuel storage having to explain to an Environment Court judge why they should be allowed to build diesel tanks even though there's a law on the books—which Labour passed an amendment to the RMA—that said every decision maker needs to take account of climate change? Well this Government declared a climate emergency and has been fearing up the kids and fearing up the public about climate change for five or six years. And yet now reality bites and they need to pay for onshore diesel storage. These two things cannot exist in the same universe. Either you want to focus on a resilient economy and resilient communities and give Kiwis options about how they achieve that resilience or you wrap them up in red tape and you let more and more people object to doing things that are just sensible. Now I will give an example: we've got a proposal in Taranaki to stand up a wind turbine that would generate hydrogen that would reduce the amount of natural gas being used to make fertiliser at Ballance Agri-Nutrients Kapuni and Greenpeace has objected to it. If we want to actually become more resilient as a nation more resilient in our far-flung communities subject to natural disasters the Resource Management Act has to be reformed but not in the way this Government proposes. We need to make it easier to build things like fuel storage tanks and we need to make it easier to move goods and services around the country. Not everything can be done digitally. Even though this Government told people during COVID to put a teddy in the window and stay home a lot of businesses can't operate by putting a teddy in the window and staying home. They actually need to get out on the road—we need to put trucks on the road we need to put things in those trucks and we need to deliver things to customers.So it's not just about building some tank storage somewhere. The Minister wasn't able to explain where that is although I've offered a few suggestions: it might be the West Coast of the South Island for example. But we also need ports that are resilient. What we saw during the Blenheim / Kaikōura earthquake sequence actually Wellington CentrePort fell down fell into the harbour wasn't able to be operated. We've got different port ownership around New Zealand: local government ownership—local government's cash strapped; they can't afford to invest in resilient port infrastructure. So buying additional onshore tankage or storage is just one part of New Zealand's resilience problem. Then we come to the road network. What did we see during Cyclone Gabrielle? Roads all over the country particularly in the top half of the North Island were blown out by floods and storms. Now a lot of those roads were built to 1980 standards with culverts and bridges designed between the 1950s and the 1980s when we didn't understand what we do now about the likely intensity of storm events. And so building tank storage in different places around the country won't help unless we can transport the fuel to those storage facilities by ship or by road or by rail. And so this Government has failed to solve the problems of how to make New Zealand's infrastructure and communities more resilient. It's failed. That's why the ACT Party says we'll support this bill—put to the House under urgency today—but we will be demanding that New Zealand's Government of the future invests more in infrastructure so that we can become more resilient and we will be seeking foreign direct investment to help pay for that infrastructure because the New Zealand taxpayer and consumers are tapped out tapped out by this Labour Government. ACT will support this bill but watch out.Debate interrupted."