Hide Rodney: Urgent Debates — Power Outage—Upper North Island 
Hide Rodney: Urgent Debates — Power Outage—Upper North Island 
[Volume:631;Page:3484] 
RODNEY HIDE (Leader—ACT) 
: 
 The Helen Clark Government has failed Auckland and sadly having the opportunity of an urgent debate on the chaos inflicted on Auckland yesterday the lead Minister Mr Trevor Mallard never once addressed the issue. He did everything he could to talk about everything else including bringing this House into grave disrepute. He did anything to avoid discussing the issue and what the Government’s response would be. Auckland is the only city to have its own Minister—we have a Minister with responsibility for Auckland Issues. That Minister has not spoken here today. The Government failed Auckland when the power crisis occurred but it is failing Auckland and the country again by its complete failure to give an adequate response. Auckland roads are clogged and yesterday the city was plunged into darkness. 
It is bad enough that one earth wire could shut down Auckland’s power supply and shut down Auckland but what is astonishing is that it took an entire day to restore power to large chunks of the city. I would have thought that members of a Government that cared—a Government that was actually interested in helping the country—would be here today to take the opportunity to outline what they are doing. Did we hear one thing? No. All we heard was Trevor Mallard hurling abuse at everyone—including his own colleague the Assistant Speaker—and saying that there will be an inquiry to find out what happened. The reality is that there is no surprise about what happened in Auckland yesterday. This Parliament Ministers select committees and the public had been warned of this issue for months if not years. Our infrastructure did not get into the mess it is in overnight. It takes years to run down infrastructure to the extent that ours is now run down. It is so run down that an earth wire can flip in a slight storm and blank out our largest city for a day. 
The Minister of Energy has refused to accept any responsibility. The Minister of Energy has spoken in this Chamber as though the situation were a big surprise yet he was told of the problem by experts such as Keith Turner. What was David Parker’s response back then? It was: “Oh it’s not that bad.” That is typical of the spin from this Government. There has been a failure to deal with the facts and a failure to deal with the issues so Auckland and the country suffer. 
We heard from Mr Peter Brown of New Zealand First about what needs to happen. That was a constructive input to this debate. We do need more energy supplies but that means actually having a planning system—a resource management system—that allows our energy resources to be developed. Mr Brown said we needed more investment—that means having secure property rights whereby if people invest in New Zealand the investment is safe and will not be pinched from them as happened in respect of this Government and Telecom when $3 billion of shareholder value was pinched. Mr Brown said we needed security of supply. That is true; that is an issue for the Government and the people of New Zealand. Again we have heard nothing from this Government. Mr Brown said we needed a competitive pricing system so we can afford the energy. That too is true. After the chaos that occurred in our largest city would it not be nice to have Government members who were prepared to come to this House to explain what they are doing to address those issues?