Parker DavidHon DAVID PARKER (Minister for Economic Development): I rise to support the comments of the Minister of Energy and Resources the Hon Megan Woods and to thank her for bringing this legislation to the House. I've been around this place for 16 years now and those speeches that we've just heard from the Opposition—I've got to say I've heard it all before. I was Minister of Energy from 2005 to 2008. I arrived at a time when New Zealand's renewable electricity was decreasing. It was down to 64 percent of total and it was decreasing. We turned that around by a range of measures that led to investment certainty for the generation sector. We priced emissions—National opposed that.Todd Muller: Nothing to do with the National Party. It's all you.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well actually on this occasion it is actually us Mr Prebble—ah Mr Muller. Mr Muller—sorry. It is. I'll come back to that. We authorised the necessary investments in the grid to bring distant renewables to market to give investment certainty. We brought forward new forms of renewable regeneration—at that time wind. We encouraged the generators to invest in renewables. We had a ban on baseload generation from thermal which the subsequent Government repealed. Now at the time the spokesperson for energy from the National Party was the Hon Gerry Brownlee. For those who want to look at this online you just google Sexy Coal Brownlee" because he put up a blog which I'm sure he now regrets which was called "Sexy Coal". He did that to gain attention and he said that New Zealand if we turned our back on thermal would face an energy gap. This is one of the slides or the images from that video clip that is still there and you can see that he has this growing wedge of energy insecurity in New Zealand that he predicted could only be filled with thermal—coal and gas.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! I'm sorry to interrupt the member but the second reading is actually supposed to focus on the main purpose and the contents of the bill. Speakers' rulings 108/2-5 all deal with that. So I'd ask to the member to relate the history to the contents and the principles of the bill in front of the House please.Hon DAVID PARKER: Thank you Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact I considered those rulings before I took my call and Speaker's ruling 108/3 says that "the broad principles … are a proper subject of discussion [it's] relevant to"—DEPUTY SPEAKER: That's right.Hon DAVID PARKER: Now I'm responding to the comments of Jonathan Young the energy spokesman from the National Party—DEPUTY SPEAKER: I'd like you to actually focus on the broad principles of the bill in front of the House.Hon DAVID PARKER: The broad principle of this bill is that we need to have a transition away from fossil fuels. The argument that the member opposite has been making—and I'm in debate now Madam Deputy Speaker; I'm not making point of order and I haven't been making a point of order—is that we can't do that because security of supply will be at risk. I'm saying that's not correct and this is the same argument that is always run by the National Party whenever we move along this transition away from fossil fuels. In simple terms you cannot start a transition without starting a transition.Jonathan Young: It's already started before you put this bill in.Hon DAVID PARKER: Well after this legislation goes through 100000 kilometres approximately of prospective territory already permitted for exploration which can be taken to conclusion—that is the most prospective 100000 square kilometres that New Zealand has which is why it was offered first. That's the equivalent of the area of the North Island.The contradictions in the last speaker's contribution are clear. On the one hand he said that we've heard that takes till about 2027 to bring on any gas from new block offers assuming they were explored and then drilled tomorrow and yet he says we can't rely upon the comments from the Wind Energy Association saying that if we want battery storage it won't be here till 2026. That's far too far out. These are long time frames. The system has time to adjust. I would make some predictions as to how the system will adjust because what is happening here is we are creating investment certainty for those who have to make the generation investments that we need over the next couple of decades.The work that's been done by Transpower and others that have modelled the extra electricity generation that's needed to electrify transport to take renewables ever closer to 100 percent of total electricity generation and to start replacing some industrial heat—there's roughly a doubling of electricity generation capacity needed in the next 20 or 30 years. We want that to be renewable. We are by this decision making it clear that it must be renewable. Who will invest? The people who want to make a buck out of renewables.Now the next argument we hear from the National Party is that that will increase prices. Well we don't agree with that on this side of the House and we point to the fact that since those decisions were taken by the last Government—and they were taken mainly by the last Government—the investment that flowed as a consequence lifted New Zealand's renewables from that declining percentage at 64 percent up to 85 percent or 84 percent in a recent quarter. That's because we've created the right investment signal for people to invest in renewables. Actually the last Government said they were going to abandon the 90 percent renewables target that we'd set. In the end Mr Brownlee was moved on and Hekia Parata had the good sense to keep it. That ambition was maintained and we are close to realising that because we are 85 percent renewables now. It hasn't been the cause of electricity price rises. Those electricity price rises in recent years have actually been caused by increments in the reinforcement of the grid that the last Government wisely carried on with. The current cheapest sources of new generation are renewables proven by the fact that that's what those companies are investing in—in geothermal and wind. Jonathan Young: It's not true.Hon DAVID PARKER: He says it's not true. Well why are they doing it then? Jonathan Young: MBIE gave us a report last week and it's gas baseload. Hon DAVID PARKER: Well the latest investment that we've had is this new wind farm in Taranaki and they're doing that because it's more cost-effective for them than investing in more gas. That decision was obviously under way before this latest decision was taken. I think that we've got a very very low-cost transition to a low-carbon future in New Zealand and I also think that we've got more advantages in doing this than any other country in the world.Jonathan Young: Yeah.Hon DAVID PARKER: The member agrees we have. Well then if New Zealand doesn't do it who will? If New Zealand doesn't do it who will? The answer to that is no one. And if no one does it we ruin the planet. So there really is another issue other than the dollars and cents. I think this will prove to be cheaper than the alternatives anyway because we'll replace our reliance on those expensive imported fossil fuels and we'll replace them with hydrogen and electricity in batteries. But if New Zealand doesn't do this—if we've got the cheapest transition in the world and we don't—then no one will. If that's the sort of leadership that the National Party wants to show the world well I'm glad I'm on this side of the House. I believe that this is sensible policy. I believe it will be sending the right investment signal that we want industry to be investing in renewables so that over the next 20 to 30 years we double generation capacity so that we electrify transport and electrify industrial heat. The one technology key that we've not yet cracked is hydrogen. I thank the member for his contribution saying that the last Government made some efforts in that regard. Those were good and we're continuing on and amplifying those. We've had an agreement signed last week with Japan who are one of the world leaders on hydrogen technology. I've got other things here. [Holds up pictures] These have been shown in the House recently. We've got hydrogen cars out there in the world now from Hyundai and from Toyota. We've got hydrogen buses we've got hydrogen trucks and we've got hydrogen trains.Hon Member: They're a million dollars.Hon DAVID PARKER: The member says they're expensive. They are expensive but if you go back 20 years or 30 years so was wind power. The cost of these are being driven down. The Japanese are absolutely determined to use their point of comparative advantage in these technologies to create industrial opportunities for themselves and to clean up the world. We're going to help them do it because we're going to get the investment signal right in New Zealand. We're going to go to renewables. We're going to bring forward those new technologies. We did it when last in Government getting ahead of the curve in wind. If we hadn't done that as a Government New Zealand would have developed and burnt more gas rather than going into wind. That's proven to be beneficial for us and we've been able to take advantage of the cost of wind power which is still going down even to this day—those new facilities.I have great confidence that this country will be one of the first countries in the world to get to net zero in carbon dioxide and I'm very confident that we'll not only be cleaner but we will be wealthier as a country because we'll avoid that imported oil bill. My goodness wouldn't that be good if we were a beacon of hope in the world rather than yet another source of despair as the other side of this House would have our trajectory."