Smith Nick: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
Smith Nick: Estimates Debate — In Committee 
[Volume:632;Page:4352] 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (National—Nelson) 
: 
 In 17 years in this House I know of no area of public policy that is as big a botch-up as what we have with regard to energy and climate change. I am reminded of the debate we have just had in respect of corrections and the fact that in the era of straight thinking we have a policy whereby people who did the rehabilitation programme had a higher rate of reoffending than those who did not do it. Well in the area of energy efficiency we have it just as bad. Labour came to Government in 2000 and said in the great proud words of Pete Hodgson that we did not need to spend money on transmission or power stations because we had it with the great National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy. 
Over the last 5 years the Government has poured $100 million into this vote on that policy and in March this year we had a review. The review showed that gains in energy efficiency have been less than when we did not have a strategy—that is for the 5 years from 1995 to 2000 we had improvements of 0.7 percent a year in energy efficiency. Since we have spent $100 million and we have had this flash bells and whistles strategy energy efficiency has become worse. The Minister of Energy at the time Pete Hodgson must take responsibility for that fiasco and failure. 
But the situation is worse than that. In the area of climate change we had the Government powering in and ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. The Minister Pete Hodgson told the country that we had to race in and ratify it because we would make hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact he said that for members like those in the National Party who opposed that early ratification it amounted to burning a multi - hundred million dollar cheque. Well what has happened? We now have a projected bill of nearly $500 million because of that. 
Let us look at the track record for the environment. This Government rejected the Dobson hydro scheme on the West Coast. That scheme would have been producing power as we speak if it was not for the stupid decision of Chris Carter in that respect. We had Project Aqua a very large renewable power scheme which the Minister in the chair David Parker campaigned against and passed dopey laws in this Parliament to defeat. Would we not prefer right now that Project Aqua was under construction to deal with some of these concerns? 
Well let us see what we did fund. The Government signed off $150 million to build an oil-fired power station in Napier. Its own State-owned enterprise has proposed building—and has received consent with the Government’s support—a coal-fired power station at Whangarei. The bizarre thing is that while we have had Pete Hodgson David Parker and Helen Clark giving speeches all around the world about how we have to move on climate change simultaneously the biggest change in energy generation is a threefold increase in the amount of power that we are producing from coal. Hang on the great greenies have given so many speeches—and we have trebled the amount of power produced from coal. That is madness! 
In fact it is very interesting to look at the latest data under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This Government has been keen to damn Australia and the United States. Well let us compare the figures. Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions have gone up by 3 percent. The United States’ emissions have gone up by 2.5 percent—and they are the bad guys. They are the ones that Helen Clark damns. How much have our emissions gone up over the same period? They have gone up by 10 percent I say to the Minister. I ask the Minister to take some responsibility for the failed policies that have done just that. I also draw his attention to the damning comments coming from every corner of the energy sector in respect of his policies. Dr Keith Turner has said that the state of the transmission system—