Brownlee Gerry; Mallard TrevorHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): Mr Speaker the speech just delivered by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises Hon Dr David Clark I think very clearly demonstrates the problem that this country faces. A pair of Ministers in this case who appear to have very little understanding of how the system works but worse than that no understanding of what their own responsibilities are. Now Grant Robertson wanted to make the case and I notice that the Minister who sat down now has just also tried to make the case that the National Party was saying that the Minister of Energy and Resources should have the big switch that gets flicked on and off at any particular time. We are not making that case. But what is clear is that under the current arrangements the Minister has responsibility for security of supply the Minister has responsibility for the direction of investment that occurs in the electricity sector and the Minister of course overall has a responsibility for the consumers who expect the system to always keep them supplied with electricity.Now there are protocols in place for how things should work. What is extraordinary is that there can be an alert put out at 6.40-odd in the morning and then repeated throughout the day up to midday and still apparently no one from any ministerial office saw it. Now it's all right to swing round and swing back on Transpower or the systems operator effectively or the Electricity Authority and say They failed. They didn't communicate." That's not reasonable in my opinion just to take the blame from one place to the other. They're culpable no question and they need to have their feet held to the fire. But the idea of a Minister's office stocked full of advisers on this particular issue this particular portfolio did not see an alert on the system early in the day. And what would the response be? They should've gone to the Minister and said "Look there's an alert out there do you want us to find out a little bit more about what that means?" There would have been a communication that started that that Minister over there knows would have amped up the circumstance and the concern to a much higher level than it appeared to be.To find out that we go right through the day and get to 5 o'clock in the evening before there is an emergency declared knowing at that point that there were constraints on solar obviously; constraints on the wind turbines; and that it does take a long time—anybody would have known anywhere the 10-hour time to get the coal-fired plant going the slightly less time to get a gas plant going. Also at that point they knew the assessments were wrong. Well why did it take until 5 o'clock to work that out? What was magical about 5 o'clock? Why didn't they know at 1 o'clock in the afternoon—when they should have been able to see from some of the very good weather forecasting we get at the moment—what the temperatures were likely to be and anticipate what the demand could be?So then to say "Well the system completely failed." is not a reasonable thing and to say "Oh it's all the market. The market failed." That's where Labour goes and hides on all these things. Blame someone else. Blame a system that is non - State-controlled and say that it's nothing to do with them. It's everything to do with the Government because for a start the generators are half owned by the Government in the main. But let's get back to the point. What they could have done at that point is start talking directly to the generators. The State-owned enterprise Minister can do it and say "Is everything OK here? What's the deal?" not telling them what to do but perhaps finding out why only half of the capacity of the Cook Strait cable was being fed. What's so hard about asking that question? And why do we sort of say "Oh well you know that was one of those things."? I think it was Minister Parker and Minister Robertson who talked about how you bid in for expected demand and everything else and put prices on; well that simply indicates that the Government knew that there was a degree of gaming going on by the generators.As far back as March this year the Major Electricity Users' Group were saying that the generators were keeping the supply right on the precipice of shortage. Well why are they doing that? They're doing that because that effects price obviously. So if the Government was so concerned about this why weren't questions asked of the authority about whether or not that was actually happening? Why wasn't that simply asked? Other commentators in the field have also been making those sort of predictions—notably John Kidd one of the foremost commentators on the electricity industry in New Zealand—since early parts of this year. So it shouldn't come as a total surprise that we got to this position.Then for the Government to walk in here today and for the Minister yesterday in the House to answer the questions and say "Well actually there was plenty of capacity. Plenty of capacity no problem at all." Well capacity is a faceplate measure. It's like saying my car is a 341 cubic inch V8. It's just a measure of potential capacity. Until the switch is turned on the tap is turned on or the gas is lit nothing happens. So that's not an answer. The answer part though is that the capacity wasn't turned on. And it goes right back to that eye off the ball—14 hours with no Minister apparently knowing what was going on. I tell you what that beggars belief. We accept them because they've come in the House and said it. But it is very hard to understand how a Minister's office can be so far off the ball.The last time that we had this sort of problem in New Zealand the last time we had a snap debate on energy in New Zealand was in the latter stages of the Helen Clark Labour-led Government. That was at the end of three years out of eight where we'd had massive electricity shortages. Well Mr Robertson might want to criticise the arrangements that are in place at the moment—I don't think they'll be changed. I don't think they'll be changed. Now we've had 14 years of not having to put up with this sort of stuff and I don't think we needed to put up with it this time had there been a Minister with their eye on the ball. I think—well the Minister over there sort of mumbles under his breath and said "No that's not true Gerry." The fact is the Minister did not know for 14 hours that the country was facing major shortages. How does that happen? That is a totally MIA thing. Then of course there's the argument run "Oh well you guys didn't pay attention to the renewable system." Let's be clear. Stats New Zealand have figures out today that tell a really interesting picture. New Zealand has fallen in just four short years from a renewable capacity over 80 percent to down around 70 percent of generated electricity. That's just ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. Others of course have raised the issue of climate change and everything else. I won't do that Mr Speaker because you'd want to contain me. But it is ironic isn't it that on the day that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes out with the new predictions about global temperature increase due to carbon emissions this Government has an electricity shortage entirely due to the fact that we are now so dependent on fossil fuels to keep the system alive. I don't know why that hasn't been reported. I don't know why some people who are absolute zealots for everything this Government does can't see what a massive failing that is. And the other thing is of course this comes on top of months and months and months of industrial shutdowns industrial slowdowns and the commercial sector of New Zealand having to really really turn the tap off because of that massively increasing price over time. All of that all of that is scarcity. Scarcity in a system that as the Ministers have said today does have the capacity to deliver the electricity that we need. So the question that has to be answered by the Minister is: first what happened in the system of communication inside the Minister for State Owned Enterprises' office inside the Ministry of Energy and Resources' office inside Transpower inside the Electricity Authority and the communication from the generators to the systems operator as well and from the systems operator themselves given that they are a separate office from Transpower.So we look forward to the terms of reference for this inquiry. We hope that they are comprehensive and we hope that the right people are put in place to inquire. Those right people are not the current Electricity Authority. SPEAKER: The Hon Dr—sorry Dr Deborah Russell."