2. Question No. 2—Prime MinisterHon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader—National) to the Prime MinisterQuestion No. 2—Prime Minister2. Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Leader—National) to the Prime Minister: Does she stand by all of her Government's statements and actions?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN (Prime Minister): Yes. In particular I stand by this Government's commitment to take action to mitigate the impacts of climate change and to create a smarter greener more resilient New Zealand through our recovery. Already we have—as has been discussed in this House—ended new offshore oil and gas exploration passed the zero carbon Act and become one of the first countries to put the 1.5 degree global warming threshold into primary legislation doubled our climate change - related aid to the Pacific committed to a Public Service that is carbon neutral by 2025 become the first country in the world to introduce legislation to require all listed companies and large financial institutions to report on their climate-related risks and undertaken world-leading work alongside our primary sector to tackle what will soon become a global issue around emissions related to food production. I'm proud of this Government's efforts on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report demonstrates why it is so important. The future lies in transitioning our economy including transitioning our energy generation.Hon Judith Collins: Is it acceptable to her that medically vulnerable New Zealanders were forced to drive themselves to Waikato Hospital last night because her Government couldn't keep the electricity on?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I totally reject the second half of the member's question. In answer to the first half I absolutely do not believe that that is an acceptable scenario no.Hon Judith Collins: Has she seen advice that the proposed Onslow pumped hydro scheme will be at least 10 years away from completion and why did she ban gas exploration before any alternative was in place?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Let's be absolutely clear. The last gas find in New Zealand offshore was in 2000. If the member believes that offshore gas was the solution to New Zealand's future energy needs then her Government while in office would have needed to bring it online. Gas exploration takes years. Bringing a gas find online if you find it takes years. It would not have made any meaningful contribution to what happened yesterday. Nor are fossil fuels the future answer for New Zealand. I have seen advice saying Onslow would take ten years which is why we have consistently said it and which is why the work is starting now.David Seymour: Can the Prime Minister tell the House of one tangible initiative her Government has taken to improve New Zealand's energy security in relation to electricity supply?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes. Not only are we doing work on the grid we have also tried to remove the barriers to renewable electricity generation. I'm holding in front of me a list that particularly focuses on solar and wind but also geothermal a list of renewable energy generation investment across 2019 and 2021 to increase the renewable energy supply in New Zealand.David Seymour: How did those investments help New Zealanders last night when solar and wind contribution to the grid was zero?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Let's be absolutely clear. As the Minister has said in her answer generation was not the issue last night. Last night the issue was it was not brought online. We had capacity that was not used. That was the problem. No New Zealander would consider it acceptable that we had capacity that was not brought online.Hon Judith Collins: Does she prefer the Huntly power station burning New Zealand natural gas or Indonesian coal? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: I would prefer that New Zealand prepares to transition. But right now whilst we are between 80 and roughly 85 percent renewable we do still have fossil fuels in our electricity generation and no Government including this one is going to make decisions that mean that we are unable to continue to meet the demand. But we will make decisions that mean in the future we have the ability to transition away from fossil fuel use. If only previous Governments had had the foresight to make those decisions. Hon Judith Collins: Can we get an answer to it? Which is better: natural gas from New Zealand or Indonesian coal fuelling up and keeping the lights on in New Zealand? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: The best option is a supply that actually doesn't have to have an impact on our environment and does allow us to keep the lights on. It is within New Zealand's power to have 100 percent renewable electricity generation. It will require investment but that is why we are making the decisions we are now. At the same time we have to ensure security of supply. What happened last night was that the generation that was available was not brought on so that did not have to happen with the current mix that we have. Hon Dr Megan Woods: Can the Prime Minister confirm that there was 350 megawatts that was not taken up from the Taranaki combined cycle and a further 240 megawatts of electricity available from the third Rankine at Huntly that could have been brought on last night but commercial decisions were made not to bring it on? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Yes—exactly. We said that the issue that we experienced yesterday was that we simply had capacity that was not made available. That is a totally unacceptable situation and New Zealanders who were in that scenario I think would think it was pretty dire that we had the ability to deal with the situation we had yesterday but simply those generators made decisions not to bring that capacity on and as a result their lights went out. That is not good enough. David Seymour: Will the Government abandon its target for 100 percent renewable electricity generation by 2030 and if not was the Climate Change Commission wrong when it said The Government should consider replacing the 100 percent target with a goal of aiming to achieve 95 to 98 percent renewable electricity by 2030."? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: So what you can see I think is the Climate Change Commission generally sharing the aspiration that we increase our renewable electricity supply in New Zealand and that is an aspiration that obviously you'll see from our policy we share. We of course built into our policy the ability in 2025 to look at our mix of electricity generation and see whether or not going through to 2030 which is where we've had the goal we should maintain that 100 percent aspiration but generally speaking the goal is the same. We've got to increase the amount of renewable electricity supply that we have in New Zealand and that's exactly what we're working on. David Seymour: Is the Prime Minister or her Minister prepared to repeat the assertion that generators plunged New Zealanders' homes into darkness due to commercial decisions that they made outside the House where she's not protected by privilege? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: What we've presented here are simply the facts. As you will have heard at 6.43 a.m. Transpower issued a low residual notice to participants. At 1.02 p.m. Transpower issued a warning that there was insufficient generation offers for the evening peak. Another warning was issued at 5.07 p.m. At 6.40 p.m. Transpower issued a request for network companies in direct grid connections to then shed 1 percent. As I've said despite all of those warnings we had an issue where the Rankine at Huntly was not—was not—fired up. Clearly we had capacity that was not utilised despite Transpower's requests. Hon Judith Collins: How long has she known that large numbers of front-line port workers are still unvaccinated? Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: You'll see from the decision that we made as a Government to mandate vaccinations at the ports that we had identified that uptake was an issue. It is not evenly spread. Some ports have very high uptakes; some have lower. In response to the issues that we were identifying on 19 February a port vaccination hui was held at the port in Tauranga. On 26 February two sessions open to the port and family at the yacht club were held. On 5 March there was an online session made available for port workers which was then shared electronically across other platforms again to encourage uptake of vaccines. In March we talked to those port workers who had taken up a vaccination to share their stories and again to spread the message to take up a vaccination offer. On 4 June we held two sessions specifically targeted at those groups we were worried about where uptake was low. At the end of June we had another session with port workers. This is all just at Tauranga and it demonstrates we were working very hard to increase the uptake. We saw that we were having issues we heard the port's concern around it affecting the supply chain but we none the less decided we had to mandate to lift those vaccination rates.Hon Judith Collins: With all the hui and the discussions with the port workers why didn't she just get the vaccine and the vaccinators to the ports and get them done instead of just talking about it and promising it?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course we did. A vaccination site started at the Port of Tauranga on 1 March—[Interruption]SPEAKER: Order! Order! Sorry I am going to interrupt the Prime Minister. We've had quite a lot of discussion in recent weeks about loud interjections from particularly close to my microphone which are drowning out others and it means that people can't be heard—including me having trouble hearing them. I'll just ask the member with the very loud voice that's not very far away from me to turn it down.Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Of course this was in conjunction to vaccines being offered. You wouldn't have sessions encouraging vaccination and then not have clinics to enable the vaccines to be had. They started on 1 March and ran for six weeks. Following 11 April pop-up clinics were arranged on site as needed which occurred fortnightly when the port had a group of workers that needed vaccination. That is in addition to the vaccination sites that are generally available of course across the Bay of Plenty. And priority spots had been retained for those port workers or those workers at the border to ensure that they don't have to wait in order to access a vaccine.Hon Judith Collins: Why wasn't it mandated earlier given the risk?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: As I have obviously stated many many times one of the issues that the ports raised with us was that some of those individuals who had not yet taken up a vaccine were in critical roles and that there was the risk that we may have supply chain issues if we mandated a vaccination that would lead to potentially job loss. None the less we took the extraordinary step of mandating the requirement for those at the port in those highest-risk jobs to be vaccinated. Again it would be unfair to state that this is an issue across the board. We have very high rates at for instance port of Otago Napier Port and some other areas. In certain areas we have had pockets where uptake has been high for certain employees but in others it has been more challenging.Hon Judith Collins: Who is responsible for unvaccinated port workers being allowed to continue working on the front line and going on to ships?Rt Hon JACINDA ARDERN: Again just a bit of context: of course there has been a period where the world had no vaccines in which we were still operating our ports. So we have had orders in place that mean that for this entire time we have treated every ship as if those who are on it have COVID. Keep in mind there is no requirement to test every single cargo ship that comes into New Zealand because we have 2000 a year and some ships (a) don't stay long enough (b) would risk those individuals coming off ship when they are currently banned from doing so and there is also the risk that they would not come. So we behave as if every cargo crew has COVID. There are requirements around social distancing; personal protective equipment use if you may come into contact; and now on top of that we have mandated vaccinations."