Lee MelissaMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It is a great pleasure to rise to speak on this Electricity Industry Amendment Bill in the second reading. As the last speaker from the National side I feel obliged to reiterate some of the comments that my colleagues have actually very aptly made prior to the dinner break. Sometimes when you're debating in the House when someone makes a great contribution you wish you could actually like you do in an email cut and paste. I wish I could actually cut and paste Gerry Brownlee's speech for mine and pretend that it was mine because he was so very articulate giving the historical facts that actually led to this legislation and the electricity price review that happened in 2018. I was listening to Stuart Smith who very clearly at the outset said There are many things in this bill that we actually agree with but there are things that we do not agree with and that is the reason why we actually opposing this bill." National strongly believes that—although some of the members opposite have tried to actually insinuate that we don't support the idea of consumers and small businesses and households being able to get affordable energy and actually making sure that the cost is actually reduced for them this bill doesn't actually provide that. And as the Hon Gerry Brownlee aptly said the competition actually exists in New Zealand for small businesses to actually enter the electricity market. This bill doesn't actually make it more possible or easier for them I do not believe especially during this current economic environment where there is a huge cost of living crisis—and even during the COVID lockdown many families had to make decisions make choices as to how they spent their time. For example for the internet were they able to work or would they actually provide that option for their children to study? It was a very difficult choice for them. And in this particular instance there are families with very small margins where there are costs: going to the supermarket the cost of food is actually so expensive and rising costs of mortgages and now they're going to have to think about how they're going to reduce their costs or how they're going to meet the cost of electricity. Luckily as some members have actually said we no longer have experience of—you know years ago when we used to have no electricity and we were actually not allowed to do certain power days. I was actually just watching the news over the dinner break and there was a story about the announcement of a Government subsidy for people to move to electric vehicles (EVs). That led me to think: does this bill actually make people buy more EVs? How are we going to generate more electricity for everyone who owns EVs to charge them at the same time? It actually seems like we can't do that especially now that we're moving into winter. And as I walked into the Chamber I was going "Oh it's a bit cold. Maybe we need to turn up the heat in this Chamber." I'm not sure if they purposefully keep this Chamber temperature down to actually keep members a little bit more alert—I'm not so sure—but it seems a little cold today. And I'm just wondering are we trying to save power charges for Parliament by not actually heating up this Chamber?But it just makes me wonder whether this bill will actually change any of the behaviour. We definitely support any notion that supports consumers businesses and households to actually achieve affordable energy costs in their businesses and in their households. But you know this is as Simon Watts just finished off saying actually a power grab by the Minister. And the establishment of a new consumer entity—it just seems a bit ridiculous that we already have so many agencies that look after consumer rights including the Commerce Commission the consumer protection agencies. So why do we need another agency? It just seems like another bureaucracy after bureaucracy and that although it says it's going to be paid with the levies from the businesses the businesses will often charge the levies that they will have to pay. And who will end up paying for those levies that this agency will be run by? It will be the consumers who will actually pay through the increase in their electricity charges. That is one of the reasons why I do not support this bill.I look forward to the committee stages where we can actually ask the Minister more questions and hopefully make some improvements to this bill."