Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Well thank you Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to speak on the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Amendment Bill.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sorry could I just say the question is that the motion be agreed to. Carry on.STUART SMITH: Thank you Mr Speaker. I do have news for the Minister. She won't be getting this through all stages tonight—in 10 minutes. I don't think that's possible even though we are going to be cooperative.First the National Party does support this bill but we do have reservations and we have significant reservations because yet again—yet again—a lazy Government hasn't got themselves organised to be able to take this through a proper process. We should have a select committee process. This is an outrageous waste of Parliament's time putting us through urgency when they clearly cannot get themselves organised. We should at the very least hear in select committee from the fuel companies from the AA and from the Motor Trade Association as well. All of these things are important issues for us.The Minister mentioned fuel tickets and I think that that's a very good point to make. We don't have the tankage onshore to have the storage that we necessarily need in New Zealand and the closure of Marsden Point was supposed to not put our fuel security at risk. Yet since it's closed we have had two instances of shortage of fuel supplies at great cost I'd say to consumers with airlines having to tanker fuel into airports—that means filling their tanks to the brim burning more fuel to get to the airport where they don't have the fuel supply raising emissions and then of course having enough fuel for the return journey. Similar in a slightly different way in overseas international travel with aircraft leaving Auckland for example doing a short hop to Sydney or Fiji to refuel at great expense. Having an extra take-off burns a lot more fuel instead of climbing up to altitude where they use much less fuel rather than flying low. That all burns money. It costs airlines a lot of money. They don't like it. And ultimately while the airlines pay the money upfront in the end it flows through to the consumer in higher ticket prices. So we all pay. We have found how vulnerable we are—and this is diesel we're talking about here. But as you might be surprised not all diesel is the same. It comes under different specifications and so the diesel coming in to New Zealand will be tested in every shipment. We could have the same scenario that we had with the jet fuel although we won't be worrying about a freezing point although diesel does have additives in the winter to stop it from freezing—it goes waxy in the fuel lines when temperatures are too cold. I know that from experience when I was farming in Canterbury and we got quite a bit of snow so I know that that is an issue. So we're putting ourselves at risk and so we do need to get fuel security sorted here in New Zealand. But tickets are not the panacea that has been alluded to. Marsden Point's closure which I alluded to before is more serious than fuel security although it is a really important part of it. But the much-needed high-paying highly skilled jobs in Whangārei all were lost as a result of the closure of Marsden Point a massive cost and yet another example of a Government so hell-bent on lowering emissions that they want to de-industrialise and to decarbonise everything. They're quite happy to do that and I think that is outrageous and poor Government policy. And we know that the Government at least had a part to play in it because Naomi James the former chief executive of the Marsden Point wrote to the to the finance Minister Grant Robertson and asked him essentially to get ACC who are a major shareholder of Marsden Point refinery and who had been instructed to divest themselves of fossil-fuel investments when Marsden Point refinery company was going through pretty difficult times to help Marsden Point. The Minister wrote back and said essentially no he wouldn't do anything about it so they had to actually make the decision to close the refinery. They may have done it anyway but we will never know. And I suspect that was the straw that broke the camel's back. Unfortunately these things have far-reaching consequences and now we're dealing with this bill under urgency tonight. So we're only talking about 28 days of onshore storage—the International Energy Agency recommendation is 90 days of storage. We don't have that. Diesel is the essential fuel we have for our emergency services and for transport all of our food and the supermarkets—supermarkets run out of food and they need to be restocked at least every 24 hours. We need fuel to run that. Our rail for what it does—and that's questionable at times—it also runs on diesel. And our ships are going have to run on diesel to meet MARPOL Annex VI which is an emissions profile.DEPUTY SPEAKER: This is fairly broad. Can we talk about the levy which is actually the point of the legislation—but carry on Mr Smith.STUART SMITH: Fuel security is a very important part of this. Why are we doing this under urgency? We still haven't had an answer for that although the Minister couldn't answer the simple questions in the last bill. In fact she caused more confusion than any light that she might have put on the issue at hand. What we don't know from this is what the time line is that we're going to get and I'll be looking forward in the committee of the whole House to getting some answers on this question. How long is it going to take to get the 28 days of supply onshore? That will be very interesting to learn. All these things as I said could have been teased out in a much more fulsome way in select committee but we didn't get the opportunity for that. So as I said the National Party supports it. We will help the Government out at this time. They desperately need help. We know that. But we do not like the process. We do not like urgency being abused in the way it is constantly—constantly—by this Government. It just shows how poorly organised they are. So we will support it but we will be asking some hard questions during the committee of the whole House process—and that will be for the Minister's benefit—tomorrow. And so we look forward to that tomorrow in the committee of the whole House. So with that I recommended it to the House.DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's time to rise from the Chair. The House is suspended until 9 a.m. tomorrow.Debate interrupted.Sitting suspended from 9.58 p.m. to 9 a.m. (Friday)