Court SimonSIMON COURT (ACT): Thank you Mr Speaker. I appreciate the Green member's passion. However I'm still not entirely clear whether they support this bill or not but there was certainly a lot of information offered to the people who may be watching at home. ACT opposes this bill unless certain changes are made to make it more effective and actually to deliver on the outcomes that the bill proposes to deliver. The purpose is apparently to strengthen the regulation-making powers in the Act to provide for enhanced information disclosure. It assumes that there's some problem with information disclosure with the current system but I want to offer members an opportunity to have a look at some of the information that's already being disclosed. But before I do let's just come back to the reason why this bill came before the House. It's because there were a number of recent gas outages primarily the 2018 outage that came as a surprise to some gas users and certainly the Government at the Pohokura station. We know that outages can affect gas availability and prices and they also affect the electricity market which relies on gas because energy made with gas supplies about 20 percent of New Zealand's energy. Now this regulation appears to be another example of Government overreach. Essentially it's an industry where the Government has already shown a record of reactionary and failed policy driven by emotion chasing clickbait and favourable headlines rather than actually delivering policies which benefit business and create jobs and make communities more sustainable. The Minister made some comments or their delegate did when this bill was introduced about whether ACT has a full tank or not. I can assure the Government that ACT is fuelled up and we are here for the long haul and we are standing up for better regulations to make sure that businesses are able to deliver what they need to do for our economy and jobs for communities. According to the Government this bill does not provide any changes that impose immediate costs on business. However there are costs likely to be imposed on industry and therefore consumers. This bill is actually a threat to industry. It is threatening those businesses which employ thousands of people and are already fulfilling their disclosure obligations. This bill ignores the fact that there is a voluntary regime that is working very very effectively right now. That is why ACT is opposing this bill in its current form without the amendments that we've tabled—that's Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 41—which make sure that an adequate cost-benefit analysis is undertaken before any further regulations are made. We took on board the feedback from stakeholders during the select committee process to come up with this amendment because the stakeholders were concerned not just that they're going to lose jobs and lose production and that their businesses are going to be affected; the stakeholders are concerned that gas supply issues are only going to get worse and even though the Government claims that this gas information disclosure bill is designed to create more stability and provide more certainty what we know is that the single-largest disruption to the gas supply industry is going to be due to the Government's oil and gas ban. Whether that's taking effect now it is certainly the intention of the Government to eliminate gas as a fuel. They've started by eliminating exploration permits and we've seen every permit outside of Taranaki surrendered and that's where we're going. So adding further regulation to ensure visibility on the supply side seems bizarre given the Government has signalled its intention they don't want any supply at all. So ACT believes that it's a disingenuous bill and actually it's a knee-jerk reaction to being caught on the hop only a short time after making their flawed clickbait headline-grabbing oil and gas exploration ban announcement that lo and behold—lo and behold—there's a gas shortage. Now some may have tried to connect the two and sometimes it's difficult to connect bad Government policy to bad social and economic outcomes; sometimes it takes years before we see massive brain drains of people going to countries like Australia or just not bothering to come back to New Zealand even though it's some kind of safe haven some kind of oasis that we hear from the Government. So who knows how long it will take for their bad policy to kick in but we certainly have a shortage of gas right now.But look in terms of what the stakeholders told us some of them said they strongly support the bill and of course that raised immediately the risk of commercial information being disclosed between market participants. Others said that there should be significant restrictions in place to make sure that commercially sensitive information is protected. They also suggested there's already a voluntary regulatory code and I'll give you an example of that. [Holds up a graph] Here is the voluntary information that tells Government and tells energy consumers and other producers how much gas is being used by businesses large and small. [Holds up another graph] Here is the current disclosure and you can go on the Gas Industry Co. website and you can click and download this right now. This tells you when the next outage is going to be. Again it's very difficult to see why this piece of regulation is needed. [Holds up another graph] This also tells you how much gas is being stored right now in the Ahuroa field and the fact that a lot of gas is being stored to take care of our dry-year risk this dry-year risk that the Government believes it actually needs to build a multibillion-dollar dam at Onslow flooding a UNESCO-level wetland—the largest hydroelectric dam on what will no doubt become a very technically difficult construction site and unlikely to be delivered within the lifetimes of any of the current members of this Parliament. But that's how much gas is currently being stored. This deals with the dry risk. Hon Simon Bridges: Hmm the gas chart. SIMON COURT: This is a gas chart. It's true that ACT is gassed up. We're fuelled up. We're here for the long haul. We do our research. We don't come to this House and just make wild statements and wild guesses about the kind of policy that should be promoted by this House and should be passed. So that's why ACT has actually proposed amendments to this bill through our SOP 41 because ACT believes that when the Government makes laws it should only make laws that are absolutely necessary. Where a business is demonstrating social responsibility and when they're operating in an environmentally friendly way in a transparent way in an efficient way and in a way that provides highly paid jobs in communities like Taranaki supporting industries in places like New Plymouth the Government should recognise that and recognise their value to the regions and to manufacturing in our major cities. ACT says the Government should leave those businesses alone. That's what we say and that's why we're opposing this bill unless our amendments are taken up. So with that Mr Speaker I will say thank you for showing me some flexibility today with the previous comment that I made. But I will finish by saying that the ACT Party opposes this bill unless the amendments as tabled under SOP 41 are made. Thank you very much.