McClay ToddHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Madam Speaker I wish we had the TV cameras rewind and listen again. I'm sure I heard the last member Naisi Chen say A clean green energy future for New Zealand". If she'd stopped to take a breath she could have then carried on to say "And we're importing 2 million tonnes of coal from Indonesia this year". They're helping the Indonesian economy they're not helping climate change in New Zealand because actually if there was more gas in New Zealand they wouldn't have to import 2 million tonnes of coal. We may be looking at a clean green energy future but certainly not under this Government.The reason that this piece of legislation is important the Government says is because of a shortage at the Pohokura gas site earlier in this term. In fact they said it's because they weren't measuring properly; that's not the case. It's because of gas shortages that actually the gas was not available. So this isn't a solution to not having gas. All it's going to do is ask people to measure something that's not there as much. I say it again; this is a Government that stands here and talks about their vision but where the rubber hits the road it is not happening. In the first three months of this year they imported and burnt more coal than the last two years combined. Nothing to do with gas at all and this piece of legislation won't fix that. They will import 2 million tonnes of coal from Indonesia this year on ships that run oil to get it here. They'll take it off in the port in Hamilton and they'll then put it into trucks and they'll drive it to Huntly where there are three coal-powered boilers generating electricity and we heard last week that in Huntly they turned on a diesel one as well. How can this be about a clean green energy future for New Zealand? The Government can say it again and again and again but their rhetoric runs short. All you have to do is go and stand by the port in Auckland and see the coal coming off as fast as it can to be burnt for energy.The last speaker in this debate had a lot of energy. It's almost as if she was involved in the Huntly Power Station she'd been gobbling the coal because that's the only way we're getting energy at the moment—electricity—when it comes to what the Government says they want to do. Look everybody in New Zealand wants a cleaner greener future. They don't want their costs to go through the roof unreasonably or unnecessarily because the Government decided a few years ago to ban oil and gas exploration and in so doing means that there is a shortage of gas and it cannot be used as a transition. Because here is the reality: if there was more gas available then in Huntly they could be using that gas at the moment to be generating electricity rather than coal from Indonesia. So when members opposite say they want a clean green energy future and when they say opposite that actually they are changing the way we produce energy in New Zealand and that they want to tax people that have utes but they want to give subsidies to use electric cars what it actually means is more coal will have to be built to charge the batteries on those cars which is worse in the short and medium term than it would be if there had been more gas exploration. This is something the Government don't want to talk about. It's something that they like to deny. But the statistics are there—2 million tonnes of coal this year imported from Indonesia. And you know what? The last piece of legislation we adopted and this piece of legislation here that we're about to adopt does nothing for climate change and as far as Indonesia is concerned—where the blimmin coal is coming from to go to Huntly—it might make them feel good here in New Zealand on that side of the House but it isn't actually helping at all. We are supporting this because it's important we have measurement of gas but the public should not listen and believe the Government's rhetoric. It's not actually going to do anything about climate change it's not going to actually do anything about gas supply and it's not going to do anything about energy security in New Zealand. It's another piece of bureaucracy. What we should have done at the committee stage is add something to it that says Megan Woods goes and stands by the Port of Auckland and counts all the trucks that roll off as they head down the motorway to Huntly with coal on them to generate electricity for New Zealand. That would be a much more useful use of Megan Woods' time at least in as far as talking about climate change is concerned because under her watch more coal is being burnt to create energy—electricity—which means we are worse off not better off."