Pugh Maureen; Rurawhe AdrianMAUREEN PUGH (National): Thank you Mr Speaker. It's very opportune that I stand to speak to this bill today in its first reading. Look we've heard plenty of comments from my colleagues on this side of the House about the mess that the electricity industry is in. Actually it's not just the electricity industry it's the energy sector entirely. It's quite coincidental as one of the members referred to before that we have just experienced yet another blackout in this time and the whole of the West Coast goes out. I'd just like to read one of the updates that happened after that. It was nearly an hour following the blackout where the local power authority Westpower says that All of South Westland has power restored due to local generation from Amethyst." Now Amethyst is a small power scheme in Westland and it's a sister project to the Waitaha power scheme that has been sitting with the Government for a concession—originally turned down but we continue to lobby for it to be granted. Today has given us an absolutely classic example of why places that are remote like the West Coast need to have local generation. So we on the Coast were without power for about 45 minutes but other parts were without power for an hour and a half. Does this bill help generate electricity? Does it help the energy sector to give them confidence to invest in more generation? No it doesn't. What it does is sets up yet another level of bureaucracy. The consumers actually don't care about that level of democracy and we think that we're going to do those small users small businesses private individuals a favour by having another level of bureaucracy!But guess how it's going to be funded? That's right. There will be a levy. There will be a levy paid by consumers to fund this new level of bureaucracy. And where does that cost fall? It falls back on the consumers the very people that the Government assumes it's going to be helping. But in actual fact they are going to create another layer of cost but we don't know what that cost is going to be. And the reason we don't know and I'll read it out of the debate notes on this bill is because it says "The analysis of costs and benefits and of safeguards is incomplete around [a couple of] … proposals." One of them is "to: extend the Electricity Authority's power to regulate monopoly businesses' involvement in emerging contestable markets; and to provide a regulatory 'back-stop' mechanism." And it even says in the recommendations from the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment (MBIE) the recommendations to the Minister "that MBIE do further analysis of these two proposals and update the RIA prior to tabling legislation in Parliament." Did that happen? No it did not happen. This bill is incomplete. It has not got the assessment that is required to make a decision on implementing policy unless the costs and the safeguards have been completely analysed. And so once again we've got the Government looking for sound bites in the media to make it look like they're doing stuff. But actually ask the people on the West Coast this morning what they would rather have. Would they rather have another bureaucratic body set up that they are going to have to fund or would they rather have the lights stay on when they turn the switch? I think I know what the answer to that would be. There's been a few comments made and I refer to one that my colleague Barbara Kuriger made this morning saying that the Minister stuck her finger in the gearbox. Actually I think she stuck her fist in the turbine because what she's doing is grinding the energy market in this country backwards. And it's very clear to see because we've got our "clean green" and our "nuclear moment" philosophy from this Government and they're the very people who are importing coal at record numbers. Last year in 2020 over a million tonnes of coal were imported into New Zealand and in the first quarter of 2021 that number has been 300000 tonnes of coal. So for a "nuclear moment" we are actually going backwards. I think the Government has its priorities completely back to front if they think having this bureaucracy set up is going to make any difference to electricity security or energy security in this country. And according to the preparation I did for this bill the Minister still hasn't completely explained why it's necessary to set up a Small Electricity Consumers Agency rather than boost what we've already got which is the Commerce Commission. So why isn't the Commerce Commission charged with being a voice for small businesses and for domestic users? They're the very people with the skills. They've already got an established system in place and the Minister could quite easily ask them or instruct them and fund them to undertake the work to be that voice for small business and domestic users. Basically what MBIE was saying too in their preparation for this is that MBIE does not consider the cost as being worth the benefit. Isn't that interesting. So when we're told by the Government that they always follow best advice and that's always their fall-back position for some of the decisions that they make—yet when they don't want to listen to that expert advice they completely ignore it. And we've got now MBIE themselves saying that they do not consider the cost of this new body to be set up the Small Electricity Consumers Agency as being worth the benefit. And one other thing that this bill is going to do is it's going to give the Minister powers to intervene. At the moment we have almost an arm's length relationship there. And that separation between the Electricity Authority—and they are an independent entity—and the Minister has to be respected. But once again we've got this Government overreaching and sticking its fist in the turbines and grinding things to a halt because they are continually of the belief that they know best. Well we've seen the disaster that that's creating in this country and the energy sector is now facing enough issues of its own without having the Minister spooking the sector yet again. If you think about the spontaneous decision that happened to stop oil and gas exploration in this country it spooked the investors and they're gone. And even though we might say we'll unwind that decision actually the investment has gone with them. So there are a lot of things that cannot be undone once the mistakes have been made. But the other one that has spooked the industry is the announcement of the Onslow project. Now the Onslow project is touted as being New Zealand's answer to electricity shortages and security of supply. So we've got a body of eight people set up; that's the expert advisory group. Twenty-five percent of that group comprises of an activist from Greenpeace and the person that set up the School Strike 4 Climate. They are part of a $300 million budget providing expert technical advice on a multi-billion dollar project. It just beggars belief to think that we are relying on such input to make major investment decisions for this country. So while we've got the Government over here on one hand saying "We've got the answer; we're investing hundreds of millions of dollars into a feasibility project." and on the other hand we've got potential investors saying "We don't need to do anything because the Government's in competition with us and we'll just leave it to them." who misses out? The consumer.DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! The member's time has expired."