Dyson Ruth: Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeDyson Ruth: Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 11 November 2015. Volume:710;Page:7911. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Hon RUTH DYSON (Labour—Port Hills): I am very pleased to speak in the first reading of the Electricity Industry (Small-Scale Renewable Distributed Generation) Amendment Bill and I want to begin my comments by congratulating Gareth Hughes. He is a very hard-working MP; he is also one of the luckiest MPs in terms of getting member’s bills drawn. I do not know what the trick is—I do not know whether he is a betting person or whether he does Lotto—but every time he has had a member’s bill drawn it has been worthy of debate at least and I think worthy of referral to a select committee as is this one.I want to briefly comment on the member who has just resumed his seat Brett Hudson. It must be very fortunate for him—lucky perhaps—that he has come to this House after just a year with so much knowledge about so many things that he is able to give a 5-minute speech saying why this bill should not just be rejected but should not even be considered by the Parliament because it is not perfect. I just think that demonstrates a lack of confidence and a lack of commitment. I think that members should have the courage of their convictions to send a bill to a committee where it can be debated and if their view is correct well they may well want to offer some improvements to the legislation or if they totally reject the principle of it then they will win that debate in the court of public opinion as well as in a House where they know they have got a predetermined majority.So put it to the test National Party members of Parliament. Let it go to a select committee because we know that members of Parliament in the Opposition do not have the advantage of having a huge department at their disposal where they can say “I’ve got this brainwave of an idea.” as clearly some Ministers do and then they get their department to draw up the legislation. We have to do it pretty well on our own. But usually there is a germ of a good idea that can be built on and we should at least have that debate because we know that the biggest challenge facing our planet is climate change and we know that we have a lot of capacity that is not yet captured in New Zealand to increase our use of solar power. So if that is an agreed problem—I should not pre-empt the member. The member who just resumed his seat may well be a climate change denier but most people on our planet think there is an issue with climate change and this is one of the many contributions that could be made towards our contribution to a fair response to climate change.So the current situation is that electricity companies have the sole ability to say at what price and under what conditions a small-scale power generator can feed their surplus electricity into the grid. That is called the feed-in tariff or the buy-back rate. At the moment electricity companies are the sole determiner of that position. What this bill seeks to do is address that issue because it is clearly not a balanced position. Energy companies can change the buy-back rate at short notice. They do not have any independent oversight of that. They do not have to explain why they have changed the buy-back rate; they can just do it. Although to be fair some of them do and give good reasons but they are not required to.So what we have got is a lot of uncertainty in this area. People who are planning to install solar do it on what the current market assumptions are but not knowing whether those might change within an hour or a day or a week. Or people who have already installed it might say “We don’t know what the future position is.” so they are buying a product without knowing what the repercussions are. This bill just has a very simple amendment to the Electricity Industry Act. It empowers the authority to amend the code so that there is a mandate to act as an independent body in terms of setting prices the terms and the conditions for those buy-back contracts.As I said at the beginning I want to commend Gareth Hughes not just for this bill but for the consistent work that he has done in this space. It is something that New Zealand can do better. I think we should take every opportunity to say: “What are the options available to us?”. For members of the Government they should say: “Well we don’t think this is a perfect solution but we have the courage of our convictions to send it to a select committee and have it debated.” But instead of that all we have had from Government members is: “No no no.” I do not think that is the sort of response the New Zealand Parliament should be giving to a good idea. We should be supporting it to a select committee debating it and let us see whether we can make some progress on these really important issues.