Woodhouse MichaelHon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to take those four minutes and 21 seconds. I must say the Hon Paul Goldsmith was very exercised at the fact that I got the call ahead of him late last night and I know that he will be wanting to make a contribution to this debate as will Jonathan Young—Hon Ruth Dyson: Is he out of bed yet?Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: —you can't reference that—that hard-working member for New Plymouth and many others I have no doubt. This could be a very robust debate.SPEAKER: OK all right. And what we're going to get to straight away is relevant matters. Thank you.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: Thank you Mr Speaker. When I started my speech last night I made reference to an amazement that I had at the Hon Iain Lees-Galloway's comments in explaining why the Government is moving this motion. I paraphrased it and he looked very confused at my confusion. So I went back and I had a look at what Mr Lees-Galloway actually said. He said The shorter than usual select committee process will allow the public and the industry to have their say on the proposed changes to the Act"—that was the bit that confused me. That needed to be read in conjunction with what he then said which was it "will ensure [the] tender documents for the block offer can be made available in early 2019." The presumption there is that it's absolutely imperative that this legislation be passed by early 2019 and the best that the Government can do is have a shortened select committee process. Now what that presumes is that there is no choice but to pass this legislation in a hurry.Now I contrast that with the comments of Dr Megan Woods in her first reading speech when she railed against the history of ramming change through. She talked about the Thatcher Government in the 1980s.SPEAKER: Order! Order! The member will resume his seat. We are now on a very narrow motion—a very narrow motion. I listened to the debate last night and I think it's fair to say that my deputy was kind and generous to members including a very senior member of the House. This is a very narrow debate. It has gone on much longer than is normally the case and I'm going to ask the member now to get right to the question before the House.Hon MICHAEL WOODHOUSE: The question for the House is this: if the Government is so keen to avoid the ramming through of changes and taking as Dr Woods said a 30-year time frame for this—a measured change—what on earth are we doing in urgency on a Thursday morning debating a shortened report-back date on a bill that the Government says is going to set the agenda for the 21st century? Those were the Government's own words.I cannot believe we're doing that. It's an outrage and that's why at the end of this intervention I will be proposing an amendment to the motion which is to extend the report back to change the words from "29 October 2018" to "1 March 2019" because that is five months. Actually as Mr Seymour said what we probably should be doing given that we are talking about a change that will be for the 21st century—for the next 30 to 40 years as Dr Woods said—is giving the public a longer period of time not a shorter period of time in which to debate this extremely important bill. It is going to change things in Taranaki and it is going to change things in Otago where there are massive gas reserves that would create a very important contribution to a transition to a carbon-free economy in the second half of the 21st century. These are vital things that we need to hear about and it is without doubt because it is already affecting people's jobs and livelihoods—the very thing that the Government said in a 30- to 40-year time frame they wanted to avoid. We have to give the public the chance to contribute to this and hear from them about why that is important. So for that reason I move That the date "29 October 2018" be replaced by "1 March 2019". That is the shortest possible time within which we can hear from the public give them the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to this extremely important change and make improvements to the bill because that's what the select committee process is about and I cannot see how we could possibly do that in four weeks."