Smith StuartSTUART SMITH (National—Kaikōura): Thank you Madam Chair. There's been a lot of talk this evening about a whole lot of intentions and so on but I want to actually talk about issues that have been caused by not consulting particularly with the business sector before making some of these changes. Some of the changes that were discussed during the select committee process were around the oil and gas ban leading to the 100 percent renewables target by 2035. Had they in fact consulted with business and more widely in general they would not have got in the position that they did. By having an oil and gas ban that puts at risk our electricity supply so that we are now having to burn more coal—a record amount of coal in fact this year in electricity generation. Since 2013 this is the most that's been imported and used by the energy sector. So international energy consumption is 84 percent delivered by fossil fuels. Yes as the member for the Greens said there was a lot of money invested in renewables in the last year but that percentage is going to take a very long time to change.We're at the point now with renewables where there are only incremental gains to be made. In terms of solar we're getting pretty close to what the theoretical actual energy output from solar is because no one has found a way to make the sun shine at night yet and generate some energy from that. There is a theoretical limit also for wind generation and the technology is approaching that limit. So there are no Moore's law gains or orders of magnitude in change; there are only incremental levels of change. One of the big hopes there for the renewables sector was in fact to get viable batteries but they are approaching the limits of the laws of physics. In fact the lithium ion batteries have quite a few problems with them and now the hope is that redox batteries might be the answer but they are a long way off yet as well. All of these things are just out there just out in front of us and they have been for decades and so these things aren't going to change quickly.Then when we look at that 100 percent goal that has been completely undermined by their own climate commission which went through that and pointed out the failings with that policy in that we would end up with significant increases in electricity prices: 14 percent for households above what it would've been otherwise and 39 percent higher for industrial users. So the Government has backed off from that and I welcome that decision but that actually brings us right back to where we started with the oil and gas ban putting us at risk because we have a limited supply of gas and we need more of it actually. The US dropped their emissions quite significantly because they moved away from coal to gas generation of electricity and so that's something that we should be looking at as well just to keep our system running.The Germans—who have gone of course very hard at their renewable electricity—in fact have increased their emissions in order to match the power supply. When the percentage goes up with renewables you have to keep these peaker plants ticking over to be able to kick in as the wind dies and it clouds over and you lower your solar generation. Something has to pick that up or the whole system falls over—as we saw in South Australia leading to a massive blackout.We also heard about science and innovation around genetic modification and we have the high metabolisable energy grass which we aren't allowed to test here in New Zealand. It's being tested and field-trialled over in the States. It grows 50 percent faster and it has 23 percent less methane—one of our key emissions—so we should be doing everything we can to fast-track that to have it as a tool in our valuable tool box to lower our emissions and yet the Green Party according to Chlöe Swarbrick in a debate I was with her on last week is taking a precautionary approach on that. That means do nothing I think because we've been taking a precautionary approach because of the flawed Hazardous Substances and New Organisms (HSNO) Act. The changes around genetic modification in the HSNO Act were really a compromise that should not have been made.