Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. What an irony it is that on the day the Government has been crowing about what they call a Wellbeing Budget" where the Prime Minister and the finance Minister speak about how much they're doing to address the cost of living for New Zealanders the very first bill they bring into the House under urgency related to the Budget is going to push costs up for New Zealanders. One of the things that's most staggering is quite apart from the fact that this is about a hundred-word bill in substance—about a hundred words; not much more—it simply increases the levy that's allowed to be taken on some gases.It's interesting to note the departmental disclosure statement from the ministry of—what are they called?—innovation business etc. who has energy inside it—MBIE; they don't like being called MBIE but I'll call them that. This disclosure is to tell the public of New Zealand what work is being done to prepare the bill. Well there are multiple points all the way through here—and I'll talk to some of them—where the answer is no they haven't done it. There is one here though that is most concerning which is a no which asks that question about: is this a policy that if enacted into an Act of Parliament will cause extra costs for New Zealanders? The answer to that is—sorry; the analysis was: can you quantify the size of what the potential costs might be to New Zealanders? The answer is no they can't. Now that would leave it for me to say quite comfortably and uncontestably that this will put power bills up by 30 to 40 percent. All those people across the North Island tonight who are relying on gas for their cooking for their heating for their showers—as my colleague from the North Shore was talking about before—their energy bills will go up as a consequence of this. There's no way that it can be looked at any other way. The members over there can shake their heads; they haven't been able to control a single other price related to cost of living in the whole five years they've been in Government.Hon Dr Duncan Webb: Price controls now—price controls—"Muldoonism".Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Here it is in black and white from the ministry—and I can see I'm being heckled by the "Minister of Weights and Measures" over there; it might have been good if he'd actually got on to here and done a bit of analysis. It's quite clear: is there any work done to find out what the costs might be on New Zealanders? The answer: no.Then of course diving a little bit deeper into the same document—the departmental disclosure statement—it's no wonder there's no departmental officials here; deeply embarrassed by a bill like this I'm quite sure. It says: "Does this Bill create or amend a power to impose a fee levy or charge in the nature of a tax?" The answer is: "Yes". One of only two yeses in about 20-odd questions that they have answered on this particular bill. So there's no doubt about it: it's a tax and it is raising costs for New Zealanders.One of the things that's been interesting in the last few minutes is the previous speaker Angela Roberts talking about the so-called just transition. I feel for her because quite clearly that member is a victim of the sloganeering that comes out of the Minister of Energy and Resources when it comes to all of these matters.The Minister said some years ago when the offshore exploration was cut—an industry by the way that was a worth about a billion dollars a year to New Zealand; a billion dollars of hard cash coming in that might have made a difference to the lives of some New Zealanders but that was closed off all gone—"Well there's plenty of gas onshore and that gas can be extracted and that will fill up the gap for the just transition." Well the question is: why is Huntly short of gas; so short of gas that it's now got the coal pots burning flat tack? Not coal that's extracted from a short distance away the Huntly coal line but coal that's extracted from some very very questionable operation—by way of climate change I mean; it's probably a good company I don't know—from Indonesia. And so traveling all the way across the Tasman to New Zealand and apparently this is part of the just transition of energy.Look I'm attending in a short while in about a few days' time a conference that is looking at hydrogen as a future fuel for New Zealand. I think that's great. I think that's absolutely wonderful. But if anyone thinks that fossil fuel is suddenly going to be off the agenda on a particular day they are seriously deluded. It's just like anything else. There is a slow transition that can occur but it's not helped by this sort of dopey legislation that retrospectively puts unreasonable costs potentially because there's also in that disclosure statement no indication of what levy will be applied. All we get is that at the moment they're paying between 5 and 10 percent as a levy or a royalty and in the future they're going to be paying a levy on top of that—very explicit in the bill. So their costs for that part of it of their expense in their business are going to go right up.So I'm saying that you can't expect to have that transition if the fuel source for that very transition is cut off. No one argues that we should use less coal. But if we are using coal it should be from a source that does not see our emissions profile artificially lowered while we increase someone else's. That's no contribution to the world whatsoever. It is a complete head-in-the-sand ostrich approach to the idea that you're going to transition energy over a period of time.Some of these other things in here I think are quite worrying. The question is: "Are there any publicly available inquiry review or evaluation reports that have informed or are relevant to the policy to be given effect by this Bill?" Now what that means is it's a question: is there some expertise out there that has suggested this is a good idea? Is there some sort of compelling economic reason for going down this track? Are there any documents that can support the reason for this other than the whim of the Minister and the will of the Government to take more cash off New Zealanders so that they can spend it because they apparently know better than New Zealanders? The answer is: no there's not—no there's not.So I say again that I'm not surprised there are no officials here. They've probably done a reasonable job of writing the bill but do they support it? Clearly not in the documents that they have provided to go alongside the bill.Look I think the real problem here is that there are no specifics within the legislation—no specifics in the departmental statement. There is no New Zealand Bill of Rights Act report because the Ministry of Justice who looked at it clearly thought "Well actually it's not even worth writing anything about this; it's so patently clear that there are injustices in it."That is why during the question period that comes with the committee stage there will be a lot of questions for the Minister. I hope over the coming dinner break that the Minister is able to get some of those more quantifiable numbers that might make us think some of the aspects of this bill are reasonable; at the moment none of them are.The other thing that is slightly chilling about any legislation that is retrospective is that anybody who has made an investment on the basis of a contract will now feel a little bit uncomfortable about the prospect of the Labour Government simply coming into the House using their majority under urgency and changing the basis of that contractual arrangement. I think that is a chilling aspect that is perhaps not well-enough understood by people across the country.In the meantime can I just say to those people who are preparing their evening meal who probably have the heating on in the colder weather looking forward to a warm shower later tonight or first thing in the morning wanting to keep the kids—you know the kids who we're all worried about—in nice safe warm conditions: don't feel too threatened by this ridiculous bill because there is change coming because we do need to get New Zealand back on track; we do need to get New Zealand thinking about the welfare of people in a much broader fashion than the narrow "We'll take the money in and spend it on your behalf" approach of the current Government.This is not a bill that we can support but we do look forward to the Minister attempting to answer some of the very reasonable questions that will come in the committee stage."