Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. So we've heard a proposal from the member as to why we need vehicles responding to electrical emergencies to have special powers—the same powers that are afforded to others responding to emergencies. It's because the traffic delays the response times. It's because customers need power restored quickly particularly to businesses and families and those who are medically dependent on electricity. It's true: electrical outages have real impacts. The Eaton annual blackout tracker an Australian company that tracks the performance of electrical networks—their data shows that in the 2017-18 year across New Zealand and Australia there were 327 blackouts affecting 1.7 million people. And in 2018-19 the most recent year they have data there were 167 outages affecting 1.1 million people. That is a large number of events. However most of these events are caused by storms or other actions which are not human induced. And what I understand the member's concerns to be in particular are around those events that occur because of an accident during peak traffic times and where it is very difficult for a contractor to get there and fix it. And so the member proposes the contractor to be given a special flashing light to go to the emergency. Well I've managed teams of contractors men and vans and I tell you they are not the same quality of driver as professional Fire and Emergency drivers. I would not want them to be upgraded from the orange flashing light to a green red or blue. They are not qualified and the member has not outlined how these drivers may become qualified. But I want to offer you a personal perspective. There are options. Now some years ago I could have benefited from a midwife with special emergency powers when I was standing knee-deep in a birth pool in my home in Titirangi; begging my wife to keep the baby on hold until the midwife got there; getting those phone calls I'm nearly there. I'm stuck in traffic." 4 o'clock on a Friday afternoon. I wished my midwife had had that green flashing light. But it turned out that a quick rally around—a phone call around friends—produced a fire officer and a police officer who came to my home and stood by to give me the assistance I needed.My proposition to the member is whether you're trying to be a midwife or you're waiting for someone to come and put your power back on if it's a real emergency Fire and Emergency New Zealand (FENZ) and the ambulance service will be there to help you. If there's an accident or an event and you can imagine there's a power line across a car or somebody is suffering because they're trapped in their home because of an electrical fault then the network companies have the ability to disable the circuit in your area and once it's made safe they can very very quickly come in and fix it. The other thing they can do is they have a register of people who are medically dependent so in the event of an emergency which knocks out the power they can send suitable people—ambulance or FENZ—to go and help the people who are medically dependent and make sure that they don't suffer.So the ACT Party believes that there are in fact existing provisions for organisations that need emergency-like powers to navigate their way through traffic to seek those powers from Waka Kotahi the New Zealand Transport Agency to seek an exemption. The ACT Party believes that the existing provisions are adequate and for that reason we will not be supporting this bill. Thank you Mr Speaker."