Dean Jacqui; Halbert Shanan; Court Simon; Bishop ChrisIn CommitteeParts 1 and 2 clauses 1 to 3 and ScheduleCHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the House is in committee on the Energy Resources Levy Amendment Bill.SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order Madam Chair. I move that the two parts be taken as one.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is. So we turn to Part 1 first. This is the debate on clauses 4 and 5 Amendments relating to sectors". The question is that Part 1 stand part.SIMON COURT (ACT): Would we be able to seek the leave of the House to ask that question again?CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry was that a point of order?SIMON COURT (ACT): Sorry Madam Chair. Point of order. We seek leave from the House to have that question put again regarding leave to take the bill as one question.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): OK. Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none.SHANAN HALBERT (Junior Whip—Labour): Point of order Madam Chair. I seek leave to move that the two parts be taken as one.CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Leave is sought for that purpose. Is there any objection? There is none. The question is that Part 1 stand part.CHRIS BISHOP (National): Thank you very much Madam Chair. CHAIRPERSON (Hon Jacqui Dean): Sorry sorry as you were. Sorry. The question is that Parts 1 and 2 and clauses 1 to 3 and the Schedule stand part. CHRIS BISHOP: Madam Chair thank you. This is my first contribution in this unusual bill and I know members on this side of the House and I think from the ACT benches as well have a number of questions and we want to get through those. The first one I suppose for the Minister is what is the retrospective effect if any of this bill? Because I'm someone who's a bit of a constitutional purist in the sense that it's not good to retrospectively alter arrangements particularly commercial arrangements that the Crown has set for players in an industry. And it's a very technical bill and I accept that it deals with legislation going all the way back to the Muldoon era—that was when the New Zealand Government was interested in energy and did a few things. And I accept the energy resources levy is an old—it'd be fair to say it's an old piece of legislation and it dates back to the Muldoon era. But I am genuinely interested in just how much retrospective effect it has. My read of the bill is that it does alter arrangements for some licence holders and I suppose the follow-up question from that is: how many people or how many companies or licence holders are we talking about? Because and if I could just make a general complaint there's a real paucity of information about this bill a really scant identification of the problem that we're talking about how much money is affected by this for the Crown if any. At various points members on the other side said "Well it's about getting fair return and getting more money for the Crown." and at other points they said "Oh it's very very minor." So we want to know on this side of the House: how much are we talking about? Unfortunately I've read the—again—very scant departmental disclosure statement and it says "The size of potential costs or the benefits to the Crown are largely dependent on the amount of the levy payable on any fossil gas produced that is claimed to be a discovery" etc. "No quantified estimates are available." Well why not? Why are there no quantifiable estimates available? It does say at one point the amounts involved could be significant but we really have no idea. And frankly I think that's pretty suboptimal when Parliament's being asked to change the law. So those are a few starters for 10 but I'm sure other members will have many other questions to get into."