Heatley Phil: Standing Orders—Suspension 
Heatley Phil: Standing Orders—Suspension 
[Volume:622;Page:17330] 
PHIL HEATLEY (National—Whangarei) 
: 
 I put it to the House that in a single-House Parliament like we have here the Government must treat Parliament with some respect. We do not have a Senate here to keep this Government accountable—a Government that wants to run roughshod over convention. We do not have a second layer in Parliament to keep this Government accountable as it runs roughshod over the country. Therefore the Government must treat this Parliament with respect. Has it done that? No it has not. It has treated this Parliament with contempt and it has been a comedy of errors. I understand from the member Ken Shirley that first of all the Government treated the Business Committee with contempt: it went there cap in hand to see this legislation presented to the House and would not even present it in written form so that the committee could have a look at it. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: It was suspicious. 
PHIL HEATLEY 
: It made the Hon Ken Shirley suspicious and it made our colleagues in the National Party suspicious and to this day we have not seen one written word formalised in legislative form to tell us what this Government is up to. We find that appalling. 
Normally we would be quite nervous about supporting the Greens in opposing the Government running this legislation through the House. I have to say though that the speech from the Greens gave me some hope. The Hon Ken Shirley will correct me if I am wrong but I think I heard the Green Party member Jeanette Fitzsimons say that she believes that at between 4 in the afternoon and 7 at night Aucklanders should be burning gas and that in order to get efficiency in this country those who own wind farms should burn diesel during the times those wind farms are not in operation which is roughly 66 percent or two-thirds of the time. So in the House today the Greens are advocating for some reason the burning of fossil fuels—gas in Auckland and diesel along with wind generation. They are also joining the National Party in opposing this Government running roughshod over this House. 
David Benson-Pope has arrogantly put to this House that we should set aside Standing Order 259 which has been in existence for some time now—for many many years before I entered this Parliament. It states: “(1) Except as otherwise permitted by Standing Orders a bill must relate to one subject area only; (2) A bill may make consequential amendments to a number of Acts affected by its provisions.” There is a good reason for that Standing Order. There is a good reason why we have due process in this House—not least of all that it is a single-House Parliament. It is a mystery to us why the Minister wants to run roughshod over this Parliament and what is more why it has all came to this. It is not as if the whole country does not know and has not known for many years that our transmission lines needed upgrading. In fact when it comes to energy in New Zealand particularly electricity there are some top issues in relation to that. The Resource Management Act needs serious amendment so that generation and transmission can be done efficiently in this country. 
Our approach in respect of the Kyoto Protocol needs addressing seriously so that generation and transmission of electricity in this country are more efficient and more beneficial to New Zealanders. Not least of all we need upgrades to the transmission lines. We in this House all know that as do the punters on the street and all those who spend no time at all studying electricity have a sense that that is required. Certainly Aucklanders know. Those 1 million people living in the Greater Auckland area know that we need an upgrade. So why is it that in the last 1 year 2 years 5 years or decade has it not sunk into the Hon David Benson-Pope’s small brain that he would require this legislative change in order to see an upgrade to the transmission system? We understand that there are changes in this legislation and I say again that members of the House are supposed to pass this request to suspend the Standing Order without having seen the bill. Instead we are supposed to do it with a nod from David Benson-Pope with a wink from David Benson-Pope and with a slap on the backside from David Benson-Pope. 
We are under the understanding that the legislation will make processes around access to road corridors for high-capacity lines possible. The National Party knows that is necessary that we need to upgrade those lines and that we need high-capacity electricity lines that cross over or go under roads or level crossings when it comes to railways. We support the need for that and if a bill came into the House we would undoubtedly support it. In fact there would be support right across this House—except from the Green Party members who oppose everything. So why does the Minister not just do that? We would support it as I am sure ACT would. ACT likes to see the fine print just as the National Party does. We would generally support that. But this arrogant Government is abusing the rules of Parliament to limit debate and the scrutiny of these law changes. 
This Parliament may not have been around for many hundreds of years but it has been around for many many decades. The processes in Parliament are there for a very good reason and they should not be set aside just because it has not occurred to David Benson-Pope that we would need legislative changes to see upgrades to electricity generation in this country. As I have said the Government used its majority to overrule the Business Committee when a deal should have been done there. This Government is running roughshod over this process. It is not the first time the Government has done that. We saw it do it when it rammed the 2003 amendment to the Resource Management Act through Parliament with no public submissions—and we wonder why it got it wrong and we are back in the House today with the Minister cap in hand asking us to let him ram through these further changes. 
Just because this Minister’s Resource Management Act process is running late just because he has not grasped the fact that the electricity transmission industry needs serious attention and just because he does not understand Standing Order 259 or many other Standing Orders we are being asked to agree to Parliament being held in contempt and we oppose that. The National Party supports upgrades in this country for transmission lines but we do not support this Parliament being treated with contempt.