Lee Melissa; Woods MeganMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Mr Chair. It is committee stage and when members have a lot of questions I don't think it is actually responsible of the Government to move a closure motion. I think it is shameful that they're trying to shut down debate. But there are some questions that I would actually like to ask the Minister. In particular I'm looking at the main provision of the bill where it actually says that if enacted the bill will clarify that the gas governance regulations could and I quote specially provide for arrangements relating to outages and other security of supply contingencies." And it is this contingency that I'd just like to ask the Minister—my colleague Stuart Smith actually talked earlier about the reason why we have to actually import coal from overseas to provide electricity. I'm wondering if the Minister is looking at contingency plans considering the fact that in Taranaki the exploration actually was cancelled. I know that Mr Court has actually just mentioned two of the 2019 block offers are coming to fruition today. But the thing is that I think all good Governments need to provide contingency plans whether it is actually about population and what the population require in terms of health services. But in terms of power if we are lacking in gas supply we need a contingency plan. If we are lacking in hydro dams we need a contingency plan. What contingency plan does she foresee as a result of this bill coming into fruition?Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I have already addressed this question on two occasions in this committee stage. The member may not have been in the House for that but happy to provide a further answer to that. In terms of the member asking what contingency plans are in place for the provision of energy in New Zealand given that what we're witnessing this year is not only a dry year in terms of our hydrology—in terms of our hydro dams that we know are at about 78 percent of historical average in our dams which is a marked increase on where they were—but we're also seeing the failure of gas supply that security of supply. What we're seeing is production problems coming off one of our fields. So we have the convergence of these two things. One of the things that I think everybody needs to understand is that the way in which New Zealand stores energy for a dry year is in its most expensive form in New Zealand at the moment. It's in the form of fossil fuels whether that be in the form of coal or whether that be in the form of gas. So what I'm happy to tell the member is that this is not a situation that this Government is content to see into the future for New Zealanders. This is not the way for New Zealand businesses and households to realise the potential and the benefits and the comparative advantage that we hold as a country in terms of our renewable energy. So what we are doing is we are investing in how it is that we can address dry-year storage not through expensive fossil fuels but through the cheapest form of electricity in the form of renewables. That's exactly why we've invested $30 million into the New Zealand Battery Project the first phase with another $70 million already budgeted. What we have to do is find a way to move beyond fossil fuels not just because we have to do that for our climate goals and we have to do that for the planet—I'd be very interested to know if the National Party currently thinks that we should keep burning fossil fuels into the future and if so how it is we're going to reach the climate goals that they signed up to in Paris—but we also need to have renewable contingencies in place in how it is we store energy in the cheaper form of renewable energy if we want our businesses to flourish and if we want to seriously address energy poverty."