Hipkins Chris: Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill — First Reading 
Hipkins Chris: Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill — First Reading 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 There we have it. National the party that purports to be the party of choice is denying consumers the choice to have lower power bills and to save money on their electricity. National purports to be the party of choice except when it comes to giving ordinary working New Zealanders any choice over saving money those members do not want a bar of it. At a time when prices are continuing to go up and we have low low rates of wage growth under this Government—the lowest in almost a decade—National does not want to give people the choice of saving money on their power bills. That is what this Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill would do. It is a very good bill from our colleagues in the Green Party it is supported by the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment and the National Government is turning its back on it. 
Those members do not care about the evidence. They do not care about giving people choice. They want to take the Gerry Brownlee “we know best” approach and not give people the choice. National members do not care about energy efficiency at all. We saw that from the minute they took up the Treasury benches when they repealed the restriction on new thermal generation. They repealed laws on biofuels. They slashed the $1 billion home insulation fund that would have given so many New Zealanders the opportunity to save money on their power bills and to live in warmer drier homes. That all went out of the door as soon as National got into office and as soon as Gerry “Sexy Coal” Brownlee became the Minister of Energy and Resources. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Order! 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: He does not want to reduce our use of energy because that would reduce the market for coal which he wants to go around pulling out of the ground to turn into electricity. Mr “Sexy Coal” Brownlee— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: The member will use proper names. 
CHRIS HIPKINS 
: Gerry Brownlee wants to mine our national parks. Gerry Brownlee’s motto is “When in a hole keep digging”. He thinks that the future of New Zealand is not in energy efficiency and in giving consumers the ability to control their power bills but in digging up more fossil fuels and burning them to produce electricity. 
Members on this side of the House say that that is not a sustainable future for New Zealand. We need to look at more sustainable energy and electricity generation and we need to give consumers the ability to reduce their energy consumption should they wish to; to spread their energy consumption; or to make use of cheaper electricity. What is Gerry Brownlee’s answer to that? He says that we have ripple control. The 1970s solution to energy efficiency is good enough for Gerry Brownlee. As Charles Chauvel said it is a bit like saying that we do not want an iPod because we have a perfectly good set of LPs. 
The Government is not interested in the latest technology that can give people choice. The Government is going against all of the international evidence. In fact we can look at what the Conservatives in the United Kingdom are doing. David Cameron that great Conservative icon for the National Party stated: “We have got this big 1960s grid but it’s a dumb grid and we need to make it into an intelligent grid.” That was David Cameron. He said that a smart grid is “the equivalent of the internet rather than an old phone system.” That is the Conservative Party in the UK. 
The UK Conservatives who are not even in Government—at least not at the moment—are miles ahead of the National Government here which has had 18 months to do something to lower the price of electricity for consumers and it has done nothing. National members went up and down the country during the last election campaign promising people lower power bills. Where are they? The Government has had a year and a half. The price of electricity has not come down; it has continued to go up. Instead of lowering power prices the National Government is denying consumers the right to cut their power bills by being able to have smart meters. 
Thousands of new meters are being installed in households as we speak. Consumers are paying for the new meters already so the rhetoric from National that specifying a standard would load more costs on to consumers is not correct. Consumers are paying already. The meters are already being installed just not to a consistent standard so there is no guarantee that they will be compatible. There is no guarantee that the electricity companies installing the meters will not use them as a competitive advantage to stop consumers switching electricity companies. Specifying a standard would give consumers more choice. It would allow them to lower their power bills. This Government is denying people that choice. It is denying hard-working New Zealanders the chance to have lower power bills.