Swarbrick Chlöe; Woods MeganCHLÖE SWARBRICK (Green—Auckland Central): Thank you Madam Chair. I'm really pleased to hear the Minister speaking to how the broad kind of impetus behind this legislation is working for all users in making sure that our system is ready for innovation. With that in mind I have a few questions for the Minister pertaining to the actual legislation which I'm sure she will welcome. So to that effect and perhaps to give some background—because I'm not an expert in electricity or the electricity authority as probably next to none of us in this Chamber are—a few months ago I was sitting in Morra Hall on Waiheke in June at the very grandly titled community energy resilience symposium and indeed it was grand. It was there to educate the community on Waiheke about something called multiple trading relationships. This pertains particularly to what actually we just heard from members of the Opposition with regard to the electricity code and the opportunity to amend it. So to that effect it's worth unpacking what multiple trading relationships are currently by virtue of the 2010 energy participation code. It is the case that you as a consumer can only have a one-way relationship with your energy provider who you contract and you pay to provide that energy to you. By virtue of the 2010 code there is an inability for you to also contract with another electricity provider who also has a contract to use those electricity lines. But if you for example are somebody who has solar panels on your roof you are prohibited from having the ability to put the excess power that you may generate back into the grid and potentially sell that off or share it to those in your community or others. In order to do this a framework is currently I understand being trialled or piloted by Ara Ake. It began in 2020 and is something which would require amendment to the 2010 electricity code if it were to be applied on a broader basis. So here's a big shout-out to those from Energy Alternatives to Dana and to Silke but also to Vern Whitehead from Electric Island and to all of those on Waiheke Island who have been doing the most when it comes to decarbonising Waiheke Island. I do ask the Minister if she sees in this legislation that there is the opportunity for smoothing that pathway to making multiple trading relationships legal more available and therefore our energy grid more resilient and more equitable fundamentally by virtue of those opportunities to amend the electricity code.Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): There's a couple of questions that I will address that have come through in the speeches. The member Stuart Smith said that what I failed to mention was what was happening in real terms to the cost of industrial electricity. So I'm happy to add to the minus 2.3 percent for residential and the minus 1.2 percent for commercial. Industrial did rise; it rose by 0.1 percent in real terms. So what we can see is that we're not seeing those elevated costs of energy that we're seeing in other jurisdictions around the world—particularly the UK and Europe—and I'd note that that the 0.1 percent increase to the year end of March 2022 is largely driven by spot prices. That isn't pertaining so much to those that are on contract. We also had a question around why it is that we're putting the backstop provisions in this bill. Well the backstop provisions are just that—they're there if we need to use them. Initially in the regulatory impact statement that the member read from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) did give advice that it wasn't required. They'd like to see the other measures so that we'd hope that we wouldn't need to use the backstop but I think if you have a look at the departmental report that followed on there actually MBIE recommended bringing forward the dates of when the backstop would apply. So originally it was two years and in the departmental report we see that MBIE is saying Actually let's make that one year after enactment." So it is a time-limited power and it's the kind of thing that when we're making regulatory change it's prudent to put in so that that backstop power is there should it need to be used.I'd like to thank the member Chlöe Swarbrick for her questions around the multiple trading relationship trial that's going on with Ara Ake that they're currently undertaking. Of course this is one of the reasons why the Government funded and set up the new energy development centre in Taranaki that went on to become Ara Ake. It is because this is the kind of innovation that we need to see. Certainly this is something that we are following very closely and working very closely with the data coming out of that trial with Ara Ake. Indeed some of our own Government programmes around how it is that we're rolling out the trials for solar panels or renewable energy more broadly actually on public housing and in Māori housing some of them will utilise multiple trading relationship scenarios. I think that the member can take comfort that we can see the provisions of the bill that are actually all about promoting competition in evolving markets. There are whole sections of this bill that do look at that and I think that's increasingly necessary as we're seeing the blurring of the traditional boundaries that have existed within our energy and electricity sectors where we see the idea of what is generation what's transmission and what's distribution all collapsing into one in many of these scenarios. So specifically clause 47 of this bill moves key provisions from Part 3 of the Act into the code and clause 13 provides that the code may impose obligations on a non-participant for the purposes of restricting relationships between the two classes of industry participants. So really this bill is an example of our legislation needing to keep up with innovation that is going to be required for decarbonisation."