Hughes Gareth: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeHughes Gareth: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 10 July 2013. Volume:692;Page:11928. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]GARETH HUGHES (Green):Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker.Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill unlike the illogical ramblings we heard just then. What is this bill about? This bill is about cheaper electricity this bill is about greener electricity and this bill is about jobs and exports and here once again National is voting against jobs against the vision for our country and against exports. That is not surprising but it is disappointing because cleaner and cheaper electricity jobs and exports should be things this whole House can agree with.This bill is about reducing carbon dioxide emission for all of our kids’ futures. This bill is about a simple easy costless step New Zealand can make towards the target that everyone in this House agrees with. I cannot for the life of me believe that National members are voting against Moana Mackey’s bill. I know they have voted against it in the past but this is a chance for them to say that they made a mistake. It is all right to make a mistake if you look at the evidence if you look at the statistics on the table. Moana Mackey’s bill brings back that thermal ban that the Greens support obviously. Actually we would like to go stronger than the Labour Party but it is light years away from National’s energy vision which is simply to drill it mine it frack it. That is the extent of its vision for the country.Sure members opposite will talk about supporting renewables. They talk about it; they just do not walk the walk. You know they have got a renewables target. They should support renewable energy. But when we look at the renewables we have in our electricity generation mix at the moment we are the envy of the world. We are exporting expertise at the moment. We have got cheap hydro wind and geothermal energy which we are benefiting from at the moment yet in New Zealand our emissions from electricity have increased by 40 percent since 1990. The Government sits on its hands paying lip service to this 90 percent by 2025 target yet if you look in the Government’s own data at the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment reference report on New Zealand’s energy outlook we are on track for only 78 percent by 2025. We are failing in the Government’s own data.The Government talks about energy a lot but all it talks about are oil gas and fracking. We heard the Prime Minister say that at the recent opening of the gaspeaker in Taranaki. The Government talks about acting on climate change. What we see from this Government is it walking out of Kyoto II weakening to almost an irrelevancy the emissions trading scheme and even laying doubts on the science. It is not taking climate change seriously.This bill is doing what we should be doing. It is a first step. We are blessed with options. We have got more than 20 wind farms consented including the Castle Hill one. We have got huge opportunity to save energy—demand side energy efficiency. But of course there is a risk that we are not going to get to that target. We are not on track to get to that target yet 100 percent renewables is possible it is desirable and it is affordable. As we have heard there is a risk of gas taking out the reaching of that target. We know that gas is expensive. With the way the Government decides to price the electricity market the long-run margin on pricing electricity what we are seeing is all New Zealanders paying for expensive gas. Because it is expensive we are seeing it used more than it should be.Debate interrupted.