Wong Pansy: Electricity Industry Reform Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wong Pansy: Electricity Industry Reform Amendment Bill — Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 02 September 2008. Volume:649;Page:18560. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
PANSY WONG (National) 
: 
 According to the Minister in the chair the Hon Harry Duynhoven the Hon Damien O’Connor is doing a good job on the West Coast. The only question I have if he is doing such a good job is why the Prime Minister and the president of the Labour Party have dumped him so far down the ranking on the party’s list that has just come out. He is unlike our hard-working effective member the next MP for the West Coast Chris Auchinvole who makes so much sense. I think the people on the West Coast deserve a good effective MP. 
Given that the Minister in the chair the Hon Harry Duynhoven is looking forward to taking a call I would quite like him to stand up and explain to us a very important part of Part 1 namely clause 7. He is not very good at making comments about who is an effective MP so maybe he could try to see whether he can do a better job of explaining the meaning of “involved”. I say to colleagues that I have started to think that this bill will generate a lot of business for consultants and lawyers. Apparently there are all sorts of restrictions on who can trade with whom so therefore we get down to the nitty-gritty and have a definition of involvement. New section 7(1) to be inserted by clause 7 states: “For the purposes of this Act a person is involved—(a) in a line if the person conveys electricity by the line or owns or operates directly or indirectly the line or any other assets used in connection with the line either alone or together with its associates and either on its own or another’s behalf:”. I would really like the Minister to take a call and say how legislation that defines involvement in such a way can actually help competition or incentivise anybody to generate more electricity. Actually it gets more interesting. The definition goes on for about five more paragraphs which I do not want to bore the public with. These paragraphs get into the question of how to measure involvement. So lawyers and everybody else need to get around the definition of involvement and how to measure involvement? Is that not intriguing? 
This is very enlightened legislation because there is an example included in the bill of a company called LineCo which has a 20 percent shareholding in a joint-venture company that operates a connected 100 megawatt plant. That means that the company is involved in 20 megawatts of generation. As a very qualified accountant and a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants I can assure everybody who is listening that a 20 percent shareholding in a joint-venture company does not necessarily translate into 20 percent of the revenue generated etc. The direct relationship is not very obvious but apparently that is the formula that this company has to operate under. Therefore as the example in the bill states “LineCo can sell to connected customers”—and that is interesting; we will have to look for a definition of who is qualified to be a connected customer—“all of the total annual nominal MWh capacity of the 20 MW. The selling cap does not change in proportion to the extent of LineCo’s interest in the business selling the electricity.” I can see that even the Minister has a perplexed look on his face. I am sure that the great listeners to this debate like me really want the Minister to take a call and explain to us in very simple terms what involvement is and how one measures it. Once we get hold of this definition and measurement how can that actually encourage anybody? I can just see people lining up to get into this new legislation so they can get involved and measure how involved they get in generating the much-needed electricity to power those plants. I want the Minister to get up take a call and say how this definition and measurement of involvement can reassure people that there will be no power cuts.