Kuriger Barbara; Woods MeganBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): While I expected that the Minister may not support this particular Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) and has given an explanation about why this particular clause is required the Minister has failed to tell me why the words Minister must" rather than the words "Minister may" are so important because for us the words "The Minister must" would need to come out because we don't support this particular piece of legislation. I understand many of the explanations—also understand the explanation that the Minister gave around decommissioning and why it's important. It's not decommissioning that's the problem; it's the extent of the overreach which is in this bill. So I hope when the Minister takes the next call that she'll take an opportunity to tell the House why it's a requirement that "The Minister must" rather than "The Minister may" within my Supplementary Order Paper.And if the Minister is not going to take a call at the minute I would actually also just like to talk about one of my other SOPs at this stage Supplementary Order Paper 91 and it is to reinsert new section 89E(2) previously removed by the select committee to remove the strict obligation to remove petroleum infrastructure if it could be repurposed by another permit holder. Now this is quite an onerous task that needs to be done and sometimes things can be repurposed. Sometimes things can be used again and sometimes there are pieces of particular plant and equipment where there may be more issues with trying to remove the particular piece of equipment than there is by actually leaving it where it is. You can certainly see in some aspects that some of the equipment particularly—and I know with the offshore stuff they actually become quite seabed orientated and if there's no risk of a leak or anything that's going to cause us any environmental concerns in the near future then it seems like dead money and sunk money to remove absolutely every last nth degree thing without an absolute reason as to why it's going to cause a problem. We can fully understand why the industry would want to remove anything that's going to cause a problem and cause a leak.And I do just actually want to say that this bill is the problem not the decommissioning because what we're seeing in this House at the moment and we're seeing it on a number of bills is that one incident seems to take this Government down a track of control ban and the Minister stands up and talks about the Government paying the costs of decommissioning in the Tamarind situation which was unfortunate and it was one of those situations that would be better if it didn't happen. We all know that from an environmental level but we've got a Minister here that's really damning the industry over one incident an industry who is prepared to decommission an industry which contributes $2.5 billion to the New Zealand economy. It brings in around $750 million worth of export receipts approximately $500 million in royalties and income tax for the Crown. So this is not a one-way street. This is not an industry that's all take and I also want to reiterate the fact that this is an industry that's going to help keep our lights on. Even the Climate Commission has made comments around how we're going to need gas for the future and this bill is just going to put another nail into this industry and take away investment and really really hurt the energy security of our country.I would like the Minister to stand up and refute what I've just said going in through the next 10 to 15 years where we're trying to get our energy security under control—that this bill isn't another nail in the coffin that is going to lead New Zealand to awful climate change problems with the amount of imported coal we're bringing in on ships that are actually coming from another country.Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I'll answer a couple of the questions that were put there. The member Barbara Kuriger asked for a more explicit explanation around why we won't be voting for her Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) that asks that the Minister "must" rather than "may". When it comes to a Minister having to require permit holders to provide a proposal as to what is the right security for them it actually is a case that they must do that because it is a bespoke—it's not a one-size-fits-all provision. It's that the Minister must require that each of the permit holders puts forward the details of their particular permit around their own individual circumstances. So the "may" provision that the member is proposing simply is not workable.The member has also talked about her Supplementary Order Paper 91 which we will also be voting down. We won't be voting for this because actually it's not required. The select committee simply moved that provision when it was there. So while it was deleted from 89E(2) it was folded into 89E which does make an amendment that introduces a provision allowing a process to be set aside in regulations whereby infrastructure may be left in place if certain criteria are met. And this would allow a range of considerations to be taken into account. So it's simply not required. It would be superfluous. It was fixed up by the committee and it was one of the pieces of work that happened there.One of the comments—it wasn't so much a question—that the member who just resumed her seat made was that this is putting an undue onus on industry and that it may cause them to not further invest. But I'd just like members of the House to reflect on the fact that this bill is designed to clarify the existing expectation that decommissioning informs an important part of the petroleum lifecycle. And actually most companies realise this and are happy to do so. There are flexible arrangements built into this and I'd point the member to the fact that actually what we're enacting here is actually following international trends that we're seeing around decommissioning obligations as the world moves towards decarbonisation and that we have a number of areas including New Zealand where we're getting to the late stage development of fields and decommissioning needs to be taken into account. So New Zealand is moving in line with international trends; it certainly isn't an outlier. At the moment it has one of the more permissive regimes that did allow for a situation where the taxpayer of New Zealand—it wasn't just a little annoyance to the taxpayer of New Zealand; it was $349 million. And when I reflect on the houses or the schools or the healthcare that we could have put in place rather than picking up the tab from someone shirking the obligations required of them under their permit then we as a Government have an obligation to the taxpayers of New Zealand to ensure we do not see more of that.One of the things that we do know is that the New Zealand oil and gas sector by and large with a couple of exceptions is operated by multinational companies—that we don't have the fact that companies will be staying in New Zealand. A number of them exit as soon as they exit their permit. There's no enduring relationship that needs to be preserved or preservation of reputation which if it's a domestic onshore company is a further incentive for companies. We do have some New Zealand - based petroleum and oil companies who certainly are very aware of their reputation and the need for them to preserve their reputation and this is exactly why a flexible risk-based approach has been built into this legislation so that a number of factors can be taken into account.The member talks about the need for us to move away from moving coal; I couldn't agree more. Central to this Government's energy strategy is the fact that we need to move away from fossil fuels and we need to have transition plans whether that be coal or whether that be gas—both are harmful to our climate and as a country we have to have a plan to move ourselves to renewable forms of energy—but in order to make sure that the taxpayers of New Zealand are not left holding the decommissioning bill it is the responsibility of a responsible Government to put them first and foremost."