Nash Stuart: Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeNash Stuart: Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 14 October 2015. Volume:709;Page:7278. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STUART NASH (Labour—Napier): Gerry is right. I am sure that if Helen Clark in 2005 had not told the Labour voters in Epsom that they had to vote for Richard Worth then I would have been in that Labour Government. But unfortunately it did not happen in Epsom and I lost it.Let me tell you a story. When I lived in Mount Eden we used to drive past an appliance store and there was a big plasma TV in there and it was $10000. The sort of thing that we used to say when we drove past it was: “When I win Lotto I’m going to buy that television set.” Ten years on you can now buy a plasma television twice the size and much better quality from The Warehouse for $500. The point of my conversation is that demand drives innovation and at the moment there is an incredible amount of money being spent on disruptive technologies which is driving innovation to the point where the price will come down and solar and battery technology will become affordable to a good number of New Zealanders.One thing Mr Brownlee said—I should call him “Sexy Coal Gerry” I suppose—that was quite salient was when he talked about what he is doing in his house. He said “At the moment we will stay on grid.” and at the moment I agree with the Minister. At the moment it is not necessarily a rational economic decision to put solar on because the payback is a long time. But the thing that I do know is that the future for electricity is changing; I do not know whether it is going to be in 5 years or 10 years but the bottom line is that in 10 years’ time the electricity generation story will be completely different from what it is now.But the other thing that I read from this bill—and I could be wrong and this is where I think the Minister may have misread the bill but maybe I have—is that this bill is not saying there has to be a higher price for buy-back. What it is saying is that it needs an independent arbiter in the Electricity Commission to actually set legislative terms and conditions that those who are actually implementing solar—Hon Gerry Brownlee: Price control.STUART NASH: No I have been on record I think saying that I do not think subsidies in this market work. If there is a subsidy for the solar generator then those people who actually cannot afford solar are subsidised and I do not think that is right. If there is a subsidy for the power companies—i.e. they pay a lot less—then those who cannot afford solar are subsidising it. I think it should be somewhere around the wholesale rate and this is why two power companies actually dropped their price considerably earlier this year. They said “Why should we have to pay considerably more than the wholesale rate?” because in effect they were subsidising the people who put solar in. I do not think that is right.But what I do think needs to happen is there needs to be a level of certainty for those people who have made a decision to implement solar. I do not think that certainty is there if the only organisations that have the ability to set the price are the ones that have to buy it. In fact the reason why the Electricity Authority was set up in the first place—and I personally think it was a great initiative so credit where credit is due—is actually to provide an independent body that will advocate on behalf of consumers and will in a way mitigate a lot of the power excuse my pun here that the power companies do have. I think it has done not a bad job of first educating consumers; second holding a lot of these gentailers to account; and third providing the sort of independent arbiter that we need in a country of 4.5 million people a long country and in many places with not enough people to make a lot of this stuff economic.The Labour Party is supporting this bill to the select committee for the very reason that I would love to hear what the experts have to say on this. I have done a lot of research into this but I do not consider myself an expert. If the experts take a good hard look at this and say that this is not a bad way forward then that is great and we will support it on the way forward. If they do not then let us hear what they have to say in the first place. This is why the Labour Party is supporting this bill because it is about what the future looks like and we need to start addressing these issues now. Thank you very much.