Brown Peter: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
Brown Peter: Electricity and Gas Industries Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:620;Page:16020] 
PETER BROWN (Deputy Leader—NZ First) 
: 
 I have to say that New Zealand First shares some of the concerns raised by the Hon Roger Sowry. We are concerned that this bill is being made retrospective by quite some time and perhaps the Minister could take a call to explain why it has to go back that far. This Government only a week or so ago said that when it came to criminals it was impossible to go backwards. It said that it was impossible for the Government to apply retrospective legislation in respect of guys who are thugs murderers and goodness knows what but for law-abiding people it can go back something like 18 months. That just does not sit comfortably with New Zealand First because—as the Hon Roger Sowry has said—this bill has at least the potential to override some serious contractual arrangements. 
I have said before that we in New Zealand First looked for three things in this bill. Would this bill address security of supply? We believe that by giving more teeth to the Electricity Commission it probably does address that issue very largely. Will it reduce prices? Well we do not believe that it will. We believe that this bill could be a formula for increasing prices. I personally had some confidence in the cheap lines charge of 30c a day plus a higher unit for power and that confidence was shared by most if not all of my colleagues. However recently I was in Dunedin and the people there said: “Well that might be all right and fair and proper for you guys in Tauranga but come down here in the winter and see whether you can live on 8000 units a year.” They told me that it was quite impossible and that for Dunedin people it should be around 13000 to 14000 units as it is so cold down there. I was there on a sunny day and I have to say that it was a bit chilly. So we do not believe that this bill will go terribly far towards reducing prices for the average consumer in particular or even for the business consumer. 
So the third question that we asked ourselves was: will this bill create a climate for greater investment in the industry? We have seen nothing that gives us any confidence that it will achieve that. In fact we think that the best opportunity to increase investment in the industry would be to open up and take a more liberal attitude towards lines companies and allow them to do so. They have millions of dollars that they want to invest in electricity. The only place they can invest in electricity is outside New Zealand and the logical place for them to do so is Australia. I understand that several if not many of them are looking at investing in Australia or at using their finance to invest in some other sort of activity altogether. 
I have to come back to this. Had United Future shown a little bit more keenness willingness or conscientiousness towards this bill we might have got something. Had that party put a member on the Commerce Committee—even though the member could not have voted he or she could have turned up to hear the submissions—we might have got somewhere. But no United Future told members in the Committee that they did not like the maximum of 25 megawatts a year for lines companies and they wanted to increase it to 50 megawatts as an appropriate percentage. Those members did a deal in a back room somewhere—I was going to say a smoke-filled back room but I do not think that it was smoke-filled. They did a deal and that is not democracy. 
The United Future members are shocking. Had they come to the select committee they would have heard several representatives of the lines companies saying that they wanted to have a better opportunity to invest in the industry. They have the money and expertise and they could increase the total capacity for New Zealand. The total capacity right now as I understand it is about 8700-plus megawatts a year and on an ever-increasing basis we need another 150 megawatts a year every year from now on. If we believe Bryan Leyland we will have to double that. I am not expert enough to say what exact amount we need every year but it seems that there is a very good degree of common ground that is saying we need a lot more electricity capacity every year. The fundamental solution to that is investment and the lines companies are the only people with the money to do it.