Bennett DavidHon DAVID BENNETT (National): Thank you Madam Speaker. I just want to rise in response to that last speech and talk about the Crown Minerals (Decommissioning and Other Matters) Amendment Bill; it's a Government bill in the name of Dr Megan Woods. The difficulty New Zealand faces at the moment is the large degree to which this Government has transferred away from renewable energy into use of a carbon-based energy source through using coal as its mechanism to deliver heating to New Zealand and to keep the lights on even if they did go off at a certain stage. The approach that the Government has taken from day one has been a very strict approach around energy. They've taken the approach that there will be no oil and gas exploration that the country will deliver its energy needs without those key sources of energy which actually are part of the transfer to renewable energy. Gas for example is widely used around the world and seen as a more renewable form of energy than for example coal would be—or a more environmentally friendly form of energy. So the ideology and the blind ideology of this Government has led to a position where New Zealand has an energy system that is now compromised. When we come to this bill here today this is a bill that has been in response to the Tui oilfield decommissioning where taxpayers had to fund $350 million in the clean-up. The bill amends the Crown Minerals Act and it does a number of things in that and one of them is to require permit holders to submit plans it allows the Minister to create regulations and requires the permit holders to submit notices in certain cases. Now all those factors you may think are fine and that is OK but it flows from an approach that this Government has taken to energy that simply has not worked. And what we have seen is that the knee-jerk reactions of this Government around energy have compromised the ability of New Zealand to have the strong infrastructure that we actually would want as a renewable country going forward.We just have to look at another bill that's going through this House at the moment the Land Transport (Clean Vehicles) Amendment Bill which is similarly an approach by this Government around fuel. It's more commonly known as the Ute Tax Bill" but it is a bill which this Government uses and says "Well this is an example where we can dictate energy policy."ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jenny Salesa): Come back to this bill.Hon DAVID BENNETT: Yes Madam Speaker. So in the way that they dictate energy policy there we also see it here today as well. This is another aspect of retrospective legislation that we see from a Government that when we were in Government would always stand up and say we can't have retrospective legislation and yet they are doing it time and time again.It also has the unusual effect of making the former owner liable for meeting the costs of decommissioning energy infrastructure if the new owner fails to do so so it doesn't follow general commercial practice in that regard. And as Business New Zealand has said that could create a perpetual liability on energy businesses that strongly should be opposed. Like other legislation we've seen from this Government they don't have a commercial reality of what that actually would mean. They actually think that it's fine to be able to put such restrictions on business that it's fine for this Parliament to legislate that somebody is liable. They don't actually understand what it actually means to the consumer because that liability has to be transferred to the consumer in some form as they have to meet the costs so that that company can actually be able to progress and survive knowing that it has that liability.So we see these downstream effects from the energy policies of this Government which doesn't understand the practical realities of what they do just like they banned oil and gas exploration just like they put taxes on utes just like they are here putting a liability on other energy providers. And it is all for a grand plan that just won't work because they haven't invested in the things that we actually need like renewable energy. Where's the grand plan of building the renewable energy that we need? Where's the grand plan so that we can have those electric vehicles and we can actually charge them from renewable electricity? Are we going to be moving to a new fleet that's going to be charged with coal-powered energy? That's what's happening in this country. It's the case that we just don't understand where we actually need to go. We've been blessed as a country to have a huge renewable base and they've lost that. They are now making it even harder for future Governments to get that renewable target achieved. It's going to be even more difficult when you place on top of that a lot of requirements about using electricity instead of other types of energy.So what we have here is a very short-term Government when it comes to energy. They only look at their goals at the moment and progressing some grand ideals that they can promote on an election pamphlet. They don't actually look at the reality of what energy requirements are for this country what the needs are for our electricity supply and how we could actually meet those in the future.So when we see bills like this that are around energy and specifically in regard to the petroleum sector and gas that has had a vicious attack on them from this Government over the period of time that they've been in Parliament and has really compromised our ability to be self-sufficient in energy this legislation just adds to that list a tax on our energy sector which has been misaligned with our actual energy needs going forward. So that is what New Zealanders need to be aware of that by taking the approach that this Government has done we all suffer in the end in not being able to meet our renewable energy targets. As a country that is not good for us when we sell ourselves on the world market as a clean green country. But it actually means our consumers will have to pay more because in the end we're going to be paying—either through climate change we're going to be either paying through some form of cost on consumers and the continual beating up of our energy sector that is a local energy sector in favour of having imported energy will be to the detriment of New Zealand consumers and the New Zealand brand over time and the climate essentially.Now the last week or so we've heard a lot of great talk coming out of Scotland around banning coal and those sorts of things and yet when we characterise the New Zealand environment we see us using more coal. It just doesn't make sense that the Labour Party and the Green Party effectively as coalition partners have banded together to actually create the opposite of where the world is wanting to go. At the same time this is a Labour Party that talks about climate change as the biggest thing of our generation and yet they do the very opposite from what we see around the rest of the world. They're contrary in their policy to what is being approached in the rest of the world.So when we come to energy and legislation this legislation may not be as big as some of the other legislation they've done in the energy field but it all points back to their misunderstanding of economics their misunderstanding of how business operates and their desire to just beat up the energy sector because they just think that they shouldn't be there doing it and that they can hide behind a shipload of coal coming in every so often rather than actually dealing with the issues and actually having a forward-thinking approach that's really based on renewable energy that actually would deliver for New Zealand going forward. So it's very disappointing to see that from a Labour-Greens Government but that's the reality of what we face at these times."