Pugh MaureenMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you very much. Kia ora Mr Speaker. I'd like to start my contribution today by talking about renewable energy. Three weeks ago in this House I made mention of the two-year delay that there had been from Minister Parker in making his decision over the Waitaha power scheme in South Westland.Now Coasters could have been excused over that period of time for thinking that this was a done deal and you might ask why? What would have led to such an optimistic conclusion? Well how about eight years working with the Department of Conservation on flora and fauna studies flows in the rivers management during construction and post-construction of pest and weed control about having the support from the conservation board? There was absolutely no pushback from local iwi the traditional guardians of the land and they set a very high bar for access to that land. It was supported by the local council and it was hugely overwhelmingly supported by the local community. It was a clean green 100 percent renewable power source. It's a run-of-river scheme. It's not a dam which means that they divert a small amount of the water through a tunnel and back into the river after going through a turbine. Now what's becoming typical for the locals in the coast is that when we want to do anything on our land along come the greenies and some other interest groups who say to us that they want us to leave our land alone because it's their playground and it's got to be accessible when they want to visit any time in a blue moon. But they forget about the people that have to live there and scratch a living off that land.So along came Forest & Bird; the Green Party with their form submissions—thousands of them; and a handful of kayakers. This river has been successfully kayaked six times—six times—in its history. But if they did want to go Westpower the power company was prepared to shut down the scheme and close it for the day so that they could actually accommodate them.Now to achieve 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 and charge the 34000 electric vehicles that the Government is aspiring to we're going to need more generation. We're going to need it so that we can achieve our zero-carbon targets. So within 30 years we are going to need double the electricity generation like the schemes that Waitaha would have given us.Now the Minister has said in this House that there are 3 gigawatts of consented generation in New Zealand. Well news for the Minister: you don't generate electricity from consents. These ones are actually beginning to lapse and the reason for that is because those schemes are not financially viable. Waitaha would have been built—it would have been built—and the return to the community was the profit from that scheme because it's a community-owned trust.Before I finish I'd like to touch on the triple whammy that's coming down the pipeline into our rural areas at the present time. Now I know that a Cabinet paper's gone to a Cabinet committee today on bringing agriculture into the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and we can expect a decision or an announcement on that in the next week or two. We've got the zero carbon bill which is creating some unachievable methane targets for our farmers and we've now got the freshwater reforms that have already been dubbed the no more farming policy". This Government—Hon Amy Adams: The ETS tomorrow.MAUREEN PUGH: —does not—ETS tomorrow as well thank you Amy Adams. And yes exactly that's the Cabinet paper that I was also talking too. But emissions trading—we need to have these renewable power generation schemes but we've got to think about our rural communities. Butter beef and lamb are getting great prices at the moment. It is fantastic for our primary sector. So our primary sector—thank God for them because they produce 60 percent of New Zealand exports; so do not mess with it! Join the dots. Back our farmers back our rural communities back our small-business owners and back Westpower and other small hydro generation plants so that we can have renewable energy. We can reach our renewable targets we can be 100 percent renewable in this country but we cannot achieve it while this Government continues to say no."