Shirley Ken: Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill — First Reading 
Shirley Ken: Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:618;Page:13875] 
Hon KEN SHIRLEY (ACT) 
: 
 The ACT party is happy to support the Wellington Regional Council (Water Board Functions) Bill but really we have to ask ourselves why on earth legislation like this is occupying the time of Parliament. All that the bill does is allow the Wellington Regional Council which has taken over the functions of the former Wellington Regional Water Board to extend its functions so that it can set up windmills in these large forestry catchments. Why do we need to change an Act of Parliament to allow that? We are meant to have changed the Local Government Act in order to give powers of general competence so that councils could have wide powers and do these things yet we are debating a very minor little point—to change the status of land so that this council can set up windmills. 
I am actually very familiar with these areas. My first job was with the Wellington Regional Water Board where I was employed as a scientific field officer. Prior to that I spent a lot of my earlier years as a young boy chasing pigs and deer around the Orongorongos the Rimutakas and the Whakatiki catchment which is most of the area referred to in the bill. I know it intimately. My job was to assess the water flows and catchment yields of these various areas so I know them well. This proposal is to allow the setting up of windmills on the ridges and tops. Wind is a good form of renewable energy and ACT certainly will support it. 
But the Green members really are a bit inconsistent. They say they love windmills and are happy to support them but there are downsides to windmills too as with coal mining and damming rivers. With windmills we have to have transmission lines. Will the Greens support the transmission lines to take the power from the windmills down the ridge—big ugly lengthy transmission lines right on the ridge top? Green members are the sorts of people who would welcome the windmills but oppose the transmission lines. What utter nonsense that would be! Windmills do chop up native birds. Increasingly the evidence shows that they do so in very large numbers. Some Green movements overseas are now starting to rail—excuse the pun—against windmills because of the impact on bird populations. They also can be very noisy and others will say that they cause visual pollution. 
The real issue—which has already been raised and I would like to do it again—is the point that Dr Nick Smith raised about the incredible contradiction and duplicity of this Government. The explanatory note of the bill states: “The object of this bill is to authorise the Council to establish and operate electrical installations and works in circumstances similar to those permissible under the Reserves Act 1977”. I have no difficulty with that. That is fine. It is renewable energy and that is good. But the energy produced by the Dobson scheme at Card Creek on the West Coast would have been renewable too. The Department of Conservation has reserve lands covering 87 percent of the West Coast and it was proposed that a very small area be used to create renewable energy—hydro energy—to produce 65 megawatts which would make the West Coast self-sufficient in electricity. That is point one. It would also obviate the need to run a new transmission line from Lake Coleridge and Kikiwa through a national park; think of the impact of new transmission lines through a national park relative to using just a few hectares at Dobson Creek! It would also overcome the power crisis we have in the upper South Island because every kilowatt and megawatt that we can generate above the Islington power station alleviates that problem. 
But for straight dogmatic reasons this Labour Government said that no an existing power scheme could not be upgraded from 15 megawatts to 60 megawatts. That appalling decision has been the subject of much debate in the House. I suspect that it will be raised time and time again until a future Government overturns that very silly decision of this Labour Government. It is absolute nonsense and it is just a case of the dogma and rhetoric that we get from the Prime Minister Helen Clark and Chris Carter the Minister of Conservation who does her bidding. There is no other rational explanation of why the Government should oppose the TrustPower scheme in the Dobson area. It is important from a strategic point of view not just for the West Coast but for the whole integrity of our power supply. It would produce renewable energy and be in a water-rich area. The West Coast does not suffer droughts—we all know that. It is a very sensible place to upgrade that power scheme. 
That was reserve land and the Government said that it could not be done there—that it was utterly impossible. The Minister for the Environment did not even realise the hypocrisy that she brought to the House today. Government members are saying what a wonderful thing for Wellington it would be to set up all these windmills on reserve land because they would produce renewable energy. What is the difference I ask the Minister between this scheme in the Wellington region and the Dobson scheme on the West Coast? It is an absolutely duplicitous situation that the Government has brought to us today. 
I would also in passing like to challenge one of the facts that Sue Kedgley from the Greens raised. She made some prediction that within 10 years 50 percent of the power generation would come from wind. Well the facts are that if we quadrupled our wind generation we would generate only 2 percent of our electricity demand. A quadrupling of our wind generation would give us only 2 percent of our generation. That is the reality of it. I am not saying that wind power is not important. It is. It is part of the mix. But what a lot of people do not realise is that wind generators are less reliable than water. Water is intermittent and flows change but at least one can predict when it will be dry. We cannot predict when the wind will not blow. If one becomes reliant on windmills as the Danish have found out one then has to have backup thermal stations for when the wind is not blowing. That is the reality; otherwise there is no power. So one might become more and more independent but one is also more and more vulnerable. That is why although wind is part of the solution I put it to the House that it is a relatively small part. It is not the answer that the Greens and some people would like to paint it as. 
We will support this bill. We do not know why it is before Parliament as it is a very minor issue. We see no problem with it at all other than the incredible duplicity of the Labour Government in saying that it is fine to have windmills on reserve land because they produce renewable energy but we cannot produce hydro energy which is an even better form of renewable energy on reserve land on the West Coast. That is absolute duplicity.