Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you very much Madam Speaker. I rise to speak on the Fuel Industry (Improving Fuel Resilience) Amendment Bill. It's one that National supports although there are some concerns from the National Party at the speed with which this is progressing through Parliament. We note that the bill was introduced as recently as June and gave the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee just two months to report back allowing stakeholders only two weeks to submit their views which is a very short time line considering that the Marsden Point oil refinery closed a bit over 15 months ago. So we do have some concerns that they didn't provide adequate time for stakeholders and the public to share their views on what is a significant piece of legislation for New Zealand's fuel market. There's a lot of discussion obviously around fossil fuels and alternative fuels etc. but the reality is we still require fossil fuels there is no alternative—for example for jet fuels—at this point that's financially realistic. And so we are going to need these and that's why we have this bill here today recognising that these fuels are critical for New Zealand's export economy for our connection to the world and for the ability for us to send things to the rest of the world and for other things that we need from the rest of the world that we can't produce here to be sent to New Zealand to keep our planes running to keep our tractors running etc. There is an energy transition happening but there are sectors of the economy which just can't operate without these fossil fuels. So this bill will require minimum stockholding obligations calculated on the previous year's consumption of litres per day. So it's 28 days consumption of petrol on average 24 days of consumption for jet fuel on average and 21 days of consumption for diesel on average. It's also recognising I think that fuel security is like I said really important for the economy and the wellbeing actually of New Zealand and New Zealanders. There is unfortunately some significant geopolitical instability in the globe at the moment that we've obviously seen with the war in Europe which would have been unthinkable only a few years ago. But we do need to have security of supply particularly for diesel—only 21 days of consumption of diesel. If we don't have diesel we don't have trucks moving around the country taking food around the country to supermarkets we don't have tractors out there tilling the soil and getting goods to market etc. etc.So it is a relatively short time but it's important that we have this disclosure and we have this understanding of the fuel stocks on hand in New Zealand. Just on the point of this being rushed it is important that we have a good discussion and a good debate about these issues because they are quite challenging and they are very very complex. I note for example that back in I think it was 2021 the Minister of Finance I think it was asked ACC to accelerate its moves to divest from investments in fossil fuels and obviously ACC held at that point around 10 percent of Refining NZ's shares. There was some clarification sought from the Minister about his position in relation to ACC and other Crown-related funds investing in Refining NZ. I don't believe the Minister wanted to get involved with that. Obviously now Marsden Point oil refinery has closed and we have lost those jobs and those opportunities in Northland I just think it's really important that though we have this goal of carbon zero by 2050 and the steps towards that that we make sure we do this in a sensible and careful way and that we don't have unintended consequences along the way. For example banning gas when other countries are using gas as a transition fuel to move away from coal—Glen Bennett: No one's banning gas.JOSEPH MOONEY: —and we've seen that in New Zealand. For example we've actually been reporting a record amount of Indonesian coal in recent years as opposed to countries say Canada which have been moving very heavily into using gas as a transition fuel and a lot of investment being put into that and recognising that has a lower carbon component and a lesser impact on the climate than coal does.So as a country we need to have ambitious goals but we also need to be very careful about how we progress towards them and that we don't send ourselves backwards along the track and unfortunately I think we actually have done that in the last few years with using more coal. Because fundamentally we need to keep the lights on we need to keep people warm we need to keep our economy moving and so we do need to have some good discussion and debate around these issues. That's why it is disappointing that more time wasn't given for stakeholders to have more input into this bill so we can make sure we have all relevant information before Parliament as we take this important piece of legislation through the House. But with that like I said we do nevertheless support this bill and do on that basis commend it to the House.