Hipkins Chris: Electricity Industry Bill — In Committee 
Hipkins Chris: Electricity Industry Bill — In Committee 
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CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am happy to take a brief call on the title of the Electricity Industry Bill in the manner of the Standing Orders which allow in this particular part of the debate for a summing up of what has been quite a lively debate and that is exactly what I intend to do. In summing up several things can be said about this bill overall. First of all the case has not been made for many of the provisions in the bill. Secondly this bill does not focus on the most important issue which is the price that New Zealand consumers pay for their electricity. This bill does not deal with that issue. It does not deal with the three pillars that Labour set forth in the New Zealand Energy Strategy released in 2007: affordability security of supply and sustainability. The bill does not deal with those issues and in many cases the Labour Opposition has put forward quite a compelling case in this debate that the bill goes the other way. 
The Government has done very little to put forward any alternative arguments in this debate. We had a very brief call from the Minister of Energy and Resources at the beginning of the debate and I think we have had three calls from National backbenchers in total for the remainder of the debate. We started this debate at about 4 o’clock this afternoon. It is now a quarter past 9 in the evening and we have probably had about 15 minutes’ worth of contributions from Government members. They want to just ram this bill through. The reason they have not taken any more calls is that they know there is no justification for some of what they are doing. They know there is no justification for the asset swaps between Meridian Energy and Genesis Power. They have not had the commercial business case and analysis done to prove that it is worthwhile. They know that splitting up the Electricity Commission into all of the different agencies—the Electricity Authority the Commerce Commission the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority and Transpower—splitting up all its functions and scattering them to the four winds is not going to work. I know that John Hayes is very impatient because that is the attitude of the National Government. Government members want to push this bill through. They do not want to hear any argument or any debate on it. They do not want to hear any facts. They do not want to let the facts get in the way of pushing a bill through the House. 
This bill does not do what it sets out to do. It does not deliver on the promise of lower power prices that National made to New Zealanders before the last election. Members opposite are denying it now. They have stood up and said that they never promised lower power prices but that is exactly what they promised. I visit people in my electorate and I ask them what they expected National to do. By their rhetoric they expected National to take some steps towards lowering power prices. In fact we heard in this debate that National not only will not try to lower power prices but is content to keep the increases a little lower than they otherwise would have been. So prices will keep rising under this National Government despite all of National’s pre-election rhetoric and it will still take a dividend from those State-owned enterprises until it sells them off. 
We know that that is the Government’s real agenda. It wants to finish the job that Max Bradford did not finish which is to sell what is left of the electricity system. The previous National Government made a mess of the electricity system in the late 1990s. It is very difficult for any Government now to deal with the challenges facing the electricity industry because of the mess the previous National Government made of the electricity sector. Now we are stuck with what we have. 
This bill does not go anywhere close to addressing the concerns of New Zealanders about the functioning of their electricity system. This is a bad bill.