Peachey Allan: Electricity (Continuance of Supply) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Peachey Allan: Electricity (Continuance of Supply) Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Sitting date: 23 September 2008. Volume:650;Page:19086. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 I am very very conscious Madam Assistant Speaker that you came to this House from a previous life with a most formidable reputation as a headmistress and I would not want to trifle with you at all but I would seek a little bit of room to move in rebutting some of the arguments that have been put up in this debate to date. We have here again with the Electricity (Continuance of Supply) Amendment Bill another bill having its first reading in urgency in the last couple of days of the Parliament under a struggling strangling dying Government—and we wonder why. I think about the comments made by the two Ministers who spoke and we should observe that no other Government members have taken the call. It seems to have become their style now not to stand up and debate openly and according to the rules of debate but to sit there and bellow snipe sneer and that sort of thing. That is regrettable Madam Assistant Speaker as I am sure you will agree and it does nothing to enhance the reputation of the Parliament.  
Let this House be very very clear as to the context in which this bill has been introduced and in which we are having to debate it. For all the socialist rhetoric from the other side of the House the reality is that the Government’s energy policies have been a failure. That is a comment most relevant to this bill when we appreciate that the intention of the bill is to make a change to the Electricity Act 1992. It had always been the intention of that Act to guarantee continuance of supply but now as the sunset clause approaches it is also appropriate to consider whether that clause should remain. This bill of course gets rid of it. Let us not forget that the 2013 clause was put in the 1992 Act for very very good reason. The reason had to do with flexibility with looking ahead and with the anticipation that new forms of energy would be developed. We cannot blame the legislators of 1992 for not anticipating that there would be 9 years of failed socialist government and that energy policy like so much other policy would just be allowed to drift. New Zealanders will take great heart from the knowledge that they can—and will—very very soon put an end to that drift.  
There is mention in the bill of alternative means. That is my point. The Government has not done its work. I think that if we could turn the clock back to 1992 and talk to the people who were in the House at that time we would see they would not have envisaged a Government that would fail so badly. I want to take a moment to make reference to the comments—[ 
Interruption 
]. Is that the final speech by Peter Brown? If you want to have a say Mr Brown through you Madam Assistant Speaker have it now because I do not think we are going to see you back. Snipe away as much as you like. Enjoy it for the last few moments— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Marian Hobbs) 
: Do not bring the presiding officer into the debate. No second person references please.  
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: I apologise Madam Assistant Speaker. You are quite right.  
I refer to what the member for the Green Party had to say. There was not a great deal of substance to it. It was not a new wider or different perspective. It is disappointing that that party actually brings so little to the table in terms of the energy debate. Perhaps I could issue a caution having listened when sitting on election platforms around the country at which some of the Green Party’s candidates have been present. It is easy to criticise. It is too easy to go all the way back to 1992 and have a crack at the National Government Ministers of that time but sometimes one has to take responsibility for something. That is the experience the Green Party does not have—experience in Government. I think that in future debates on energy and in the debate on the Electricity (Continuance of Supply) Amendment Bill a party like the Greens would do well to try to bring a different perspective rather than simply to indulge in criticism of legislation passed through this House in 1992 with the very best of intentions. I reiterate the point that the original intention of the bill in 1992 was for ongoing universal supply. The repeal date was put in there to build in flexibility and to try to anticipate what alternative technologies might be available and what would be developed over a—what was it—25-year period. That was not an unreasonable thing to do. Now we find ourselves at the end of 9 years of failed energy policies in a position where things have not developed as we would have hoped. As I have said before we cannot blame the legislators back in 1992. I am sure they did not contemplate 9 years of socialist rule—who would have? But given that that has happened it is appropriate that the 1992 Act now be amended.  
It is for that reason that the National Party will support the first reading and the referral of this bill to a select committee. As other speakers across the House have commented New Zealanders need to be guaranteed an assured supply of electricity. That is a basic feature of New Zealand life and every New Zealander wherever he or she lives and whatever his or her circumstances is entitled to that. In conclusion I say that we must be very very clear about the context in which this debate is occurring and in which this legislation is receiving its first reading. That context is of a dying Government that has failed to move the energy debate forward in 9 long years.