Court Simon; Dean JacquiSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Madam Speaker. Well the ACT Party comes to the House this evening energised to talk about the benefits of regulatory reform. While we support this bill in principle and will vote for it there is some stuff that you could expect we find unnecessary because the ACT Party is all about targeting legislation and regulation to solve real problems. There are real problems which the regulator and agencies identified such as allowing provisions for distributors of electricity—we call them lines companies in Kiwiland; the lines that carry the electricity from the substation to your house are the distributors—to be involved in generational retailing. That's a significant problem that for many years particularly in smaller communities where they might have a local hydro power station—for example like down on the West Coast of the South Island or up in Northland where they have geothermal resources and are in places in remote communities which can rely on solar or renewables if they want to distribute that electricity to householders each one of those has to have an individual installation control point number that that identifies the householder. Now it all sounds very complex; it is overly complex and what the ACT Party hopes is that by moving the regulation of stuff like that—who gets to carry the electricity from the power station to your house and should they be allowed to generate electricity and send it down the lines at the same time—if we can move that from the regulation to a code it should be much simpler for people to get on with actually building generation delivering affordable energy to people's homes. The ACT Party agrees that it's a good idea that the access arrangements for generators and retailers the regulation of distribution actually—that there are easy pathways for people who want to produce energy and deliver it to their customers.But there are some parts of this legislation we don't agree with. We just don't think there's a need for a small consumer advocacy agency. I mean there's been no real case made for that through the committee stage that hasn't been addressed by all of the stakeholders in the industry. This is an industry which has accepted in the past that it hasn't had good processes to give customers a good customer experience. But they pointed out that hundreds of thousands of customers a year change service provider to look for cheaper rates better deals packages that include not just electricity but gas and fibre telecommunications; in fact that this could be one of the most flexible customer-friendly electricity markets in the world at the retail level. Yet there's nothing this Government and the Labour Party—abetted by their not entirely necessary Green Party supporters here on my left—like more than to create regulations and agencies so they can say We're looking after people; we're compassionate about their needs. Even though they maybe didn't get the deal they thought they were from their electricity company and they can ring up another company and change providers just like that we're going to set up an agency to look into that and meddle in that relationship between the customer and the provider." The ACT Party says it's just not necessary.But there are some things that are missed from this current Government's policy. If the stated intention of this legislation is to amend the Electricity Industry Participation Code for the purpose of protecting household and small business customers in relation to relation to their supply it's not entirely clear that household and small business customers are at risk of being cut off unless it's because of their economic situation. That's something which this Government through their tax and spend and tax more and spend more policies have certainly contributed to an increase in the cost of living and to a wage spiral and a price spiral. That's called inflation and it's a terrible situation that this country finds itself in which is largely at the feet of this Government. This bill doesn't solve that problem although it claims to be protecting household and small business consumers in relation to their electricity supply.There's another problem it doesn't solve because if we really wanted to make electricity more affordable to give more choice and to make the system of supply and distribution more efficient what ACT would say is the Government needs to get right out of it as far as possible. That's why in our alternative Budget we propose to sell off 49 percent of the State-owned electricity companies that are currently amongst the worst performing companies in New Zealand. They have billions and billions and billions of dollars' worth of assets and they return a fraction of their value—a fraction of their value—to the Government. What that means is for Labour MPs who never studied economics who never went to university to study something that actually is human behaviour—if we have incentives this is what people will do. They wouldn't necessarily understand that by accepting lower dividends and poorer performance from wholly owned State generators what they're doing is they're asking taxpayers including my kids who work at low paid jobs to save a bit of money in between lectures to subsidise the poor performance of these companies rather than saying "Well look actually is there private sector funding—hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars circulating around the world—which could invest in public infrastructure like electricity? Maybe that would free up some Government capital to build things." Like we've just heard that the Lower Hutt hospital's going to have to be evacuated because of seismic issues. I mean imagine. It could free up funds through privatising State-owned electricity generators to build things like hospitals or even complete the scope of works for the Dunedin Hospital.So what the ACT Party says is this electricity amendment bill does improve things around the fringes. It delegates powers from regulation to a code of practice. ACT thinks that's a good idea. But what it doesn't do—what it doesn't do—is fundamentally change the playing field which would make energy and electricity more affordable for consumers for farmers and for people who live in remote communities who are already having to pay high costs to connect. That's because it actually doesn't deliver what New Zealanders need. In the midst of a cost of living crisis there's an opportunity to craft legislation that enables a healthy economy and thriving communities. This legislation only goes a fraction of the way towards unlocking the potential that New Zealand has. So ACT will support this bill but when we have an opportunity if the New Zealand people think that we should be part of a future Government there will be aspects of this legislation that will need to be looked at to see whether they're actually delivering what the Government says it is and if they're not we'll repeal it. We'll repeal it. Hon Dr David Clark: Sell it off! Going once going twice!SIMON COURT: To respond to Minister David Clark who suggests that ACT will propose and deliver the partial sale of additional State electricity generators yes we will if we have the opportunity to be part of the next Government. We will free up billions and billions of dollars to spend on assets that New Zealanders need us to like hospitals and schools—vital infrastructure—and we'll reduce taxes to give New Zealanders a tax break. Thank you.Vanushi Walters: Can we have some more policy announcements?SIMON COURT: The Government members have offered me an opportunity to deliver some more policy announcements. That's all in our alternative Budget. But of course this is the final reading of the Electricity Industry Amendment Bill so we'll stick to the rules and what we'll say is: ACT will be back for the next one energised as ever. ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Members the time has come for me to leave the Chair for the dinner break and the House will resume at 7 o'clock this evening.Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m."