Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Mr Speaker. In listening to the Minister's speech on this bill that we're discussing today it was rather interesting for a start that the Minister said he intends to move at the appropriate time that this bill is reported back by 31 March 2022. So I just did a quick count as you do and realised that's six months and I thought Whoa that's a bit of a change for this Government—to actually be giving people time to come in and do some submissions." I will give the Minister a tick on that one.Hon Stuart Nash: Thank you.BARBARA KURIGER: The ticks are going to start running out soon or later though. [Interruption] Exactly. So this is a bill that is partly put in place to protect consumers and no one would have any problem with that. No one on this side of the House has a problem as it is very difficult often for small consumers who have a problem to be able to be heard. The question is whether we need another body to do that—we have the Commerce Commission. So that's one of the questions that we will certainly be looking at having answers to as we move through the select committee process.Residential and small businesses do struggle to be heard. But the big problem we had this year actually wasn't with the small consumers wanting to be heard. We had awful problems this winter partly because the hydro dams were low partly because the gas was low and we'll have serious debates as we move forward in time as to the causes or not of that problem. Some of them were in the gas fields and some of them were brought on by Government decisions. The wholesale prices that happened in the electricity industry this year were horrendous for our processing businesses and we have businesses that know that if they have to put up with that for a series of winters to come they're probably likely to pick up their processing and take it offshore if indeed that is possible. If one is a milk-processing company then it becomes less possible to take raw milk offshore to process it.Since I've been the spokesperson for energy which was around last November I've talked to a lot of people in this industry and I think there's one word that is probably used above any other word and that is "uncertainty". The big problem that we have with this piece of legislation is the fact that it gives the Minister permission to stick her fingers in the gearbox of the electricity sector once again. And it appears that every time the Minister and this Government start interfering with the electricity market the electricity suppliers it goes wrong. So we can start with that awful decision around removing the oil and gas permits. As we know the climate commission has said that we're going to need gas as part of our transition for a number of years to come and it was a very short-sighted decision that led to that. So that was the first piece of uncertainty.The second piece of uncertainty is this project that's going on costing $100 million deciding whether or not to do a project called Lake Onslow. Very few people are in favour of Lake Onslow and that's the other thing that is constraining the market from investment because when the Government goes and puts a proposed project out there with a proposed cost of $4 million we all know that's going to be a joke; it's more likely to be double that as it is with most projects. And it's centred around a couple of wetlands and we all know how that goes under the current Resource Management Act. So we're 10 or 15 years away. Even if that idea was to eventuate we are 10 or 15 years away from having that done.The third thing that this Government is doing to create real uncertainty in the electricity and the energy market is that they're taking their time around what the climate commission has pointed out to them which is that the 100 percent renewable electricity target is the wrong target to be going for. I think the Minister probably would have seen graphs similar to the one I'm holding that show that you get to 95 percent and then all of a sudden the costs go up and I ask myself every day—and I ask the Minister—and I would like to get some answers around this. If we took that away money that was spent trying to get that last 3 or 4 percent of electricity that was used in the energy sector—where we have real problems with emissions from transport and heat processing creating a big problem—took it away from that sector we would get to our climate change goals much faster.So what we are seeing as a result of this Minister putting her hands into where—they should stay in the governance process and not in the management of this. Back in 2016 on 9 August—9 August has become a really significant day in the electricity industry because that was the day the lights went off on the coldest day that we've had this year. So that's to that point. That's when the communication outage took place. It turned into a power outage but it started off as a communication outage one which the Minister found out about from a 1 News reporter calling the office which doesn't really give me great heart that anyone communicates in the Minister's office or in the office of the Minister for State Owned Enterprises. So the Minister initially strikes out at Genesis Energy and says "Oh they made a commercial decision." When we find out what actually happened Genesis Energy had no time to heat up the Rankine to burn more coal which by the way is the result of Government decisions. Hence the lights went off. So it didn't turn out that that was the problem at all.I have asked the Minister in written questions as to whether she intends to apologise despite a slight back-down by Minister David Parker in the House at the time on that statement which wasn't his. The Minister has not been very keen to front up and apologise to Genesis Energy for making that statement.So going back to another 9 August 2016 "New Zealand heads towards 90 percent renewable generation". Currently and this is just one page from 18 July from the system operator "Renewable generation for the last four weeks 76.7 percent." I think last week it was actually down under 75 percent. So this Government has taken renewable energy—and we know that the Government can't make it rain; we accept that. But there are a lot of decisions that the Government's actually taking that have had huge effects on this. So that is why the National Party will not be supporting this bill at first reading. We do believe that yes there are some consumer issues in there that could be improved but we don't believe that the Minister needs any more power in the electricity industry than what she's already had to cause the problems that we've already got. I just want to make a quote. Back in 2019 when the Minister said we won't die in a ditch over the last couple of percent of renewable electricity if it places unreasonable costs on households and puts security of supply at risk there was no announcement on Onslow made at that time. But by the following year it doubled down on the target and it moved that the Onslow project was going to take part. It's not specifically related here but we do have concerns about the technical ability which we've raised a number of times of the people in that group. So just looking here at the bill in terms of the departmental disclosure statement "The Panel considers that the level of analysis is sufficient for most of the proposals as it's commensurate with their size and expected risk and impact. However the analysis of costs and benefits and of safeguards is incomplete around the proposals to: extend the Electricity Authority's power to regulate monopoly businesses' involvement in emerging contestable markets; and to provide a regulatory 'back-stop' mechanism. The Panel recommends that MBIE do further analysis of these two proposals and update the RIA prior to tabling legislation in Parliament." So this is another poorly thought-out bill that will have bad results. We oppose it. Thank you Mr Speaker."