Lee Melissa; Woods MeganMELISSA LEE (National): Thank you Madam Chair. It's a pleasure to rise and support my colleague Barbara Kuriger on this side of the Chamber and I'll start off with a comment to Minister Woods who just took her seat. I completely agree with her in terms of our Government having a plan to have a greener future and I think all of us actually want to make sure that our carbon emissions are reduced and we all sort of buy in to that rhetoric. Having said that when a Government starts talking about having the obligation to the taxpayers and actually imports more coal than we used to because of their policy settings you have to wonder whether we should start believing anything that the Government is talking about. When the Minister says having an obligation to the taxpayer" it's not just the consumers who pay tax. It is actually the businesses who pay tax as well and you need to make sure that the settings are fair. I think we want to represent the people who have submitted to the select committee and I'd like to quote from the chief executive of Energy Resources Aotearoa John Carnegie. There were many submitters who said that they support the ideas that the Government is talking about in terms of the new rules for decommissioning. They totally support it—many businesses believe in the commercial and the corporate responsibilities that they have when it comes to decommissioning. It's not that all of us on this side are saying "Oh no let them leave everything that they've put in place and dirty our environment and just leave it and the taxpayers and the Government should actually pay for it." We're not actually saying that. What we're talking about is in terms of the flexibility which this doesn't seem to have. It's an overreach and not a balanced one. When we're holding operators liable for things that happen after they sell the business and they are held continually responsible in what other sector do we have this responsibility? It's like having a factory owner who sells the factory and for unforeseen circumstances something happens in the factory after he's actually sold it and then the person who sold the factory is held accountable for it when the transaction's already happened many years ago. It doesn't happen in a normal commercial transaction. I mean I said this in the second reading. I think it's sort of like when you look at the very idea of rugby we all love rugby. It's like when somebody kicks for goal and then the goalposts are shifted after the ball has been kicked. I mean that's ridiculous and it certainly goes to show that people on that side of the House don't understand about business or about contracts. It's about the obligations that people have when they sign a contract. You don't let people who have invested under a particular condition in an industry to all of a sudden find that the goalposts have actually shifted and the responsibility that they now face is completely different to when they invested. Who would invest in New Zealand in the future when that actually happens? I think when Governments make law we need to make clear law that is actually fair and not shift goalposts in the middle of it or after the transactions have happened. In terms of the Tamarind case yes it is very unfortunate. It shouldn't have happened but it has. But the thing is that when you look at businesses sometimes they fail. Operators go bankrupt and we have circumstances in all businesses where that does actually happen. But to think that that one incident should sweep the whole industry into being responsible in a sort of obligation that backdates even to after when they sell their business seems very much a huge overreach. I would like the Minister to explain how this bill isn't an overreach and how she thinks that it's going to fix the problem when sometimes businesses do fail even with this in place. Hon Dr MEGAN WOODS (Minister of Energy and Resources): I'll address the question that was in that member Melissa Lee's contribution. Most of the points she's raised have already been addressed in earlier contributions that I've made in answer to previous members but I will reiterate once again why it is that we require this bill and why it is not an overreach. I think the members are talking very generally about an overreach but I'd like to point the members to the provisions of the bill—new sections 89K and 89L in clause 17—that actually build in the flexibility that is required around perpetual liability and how that will be assessed. It provides a wide range of tools within the legislation for the Minister and for the regulator designed for this flexible approach because we understand that one size will not fit all. I think one of the things that the members of the Opposition are failing to understand is that in the life cycle that we're at in terms of New Zealand's oil and gas industry we are having a number of late-life field operators come in and we're seeing a lot of the large companies move out and onsell their permits. So to just write off what happened with the Tamarind purchase as unfortunate is really a dereliction of the duty that is required by a Government to New Zealanders to protect them from the potential liability that fits here. What we do have is a number of smaller companies that don't have as much of a balance sheet behind them that specialise in late-life assets—in squeezing the last drops of oil and the last petajoules of gas out of a field. That is their speciality but they tend to be much smaller operators. They'll often have subsidiaries that sit under a parent company that dissolves when their interest in New Zealand finishes and that's certainly what we saw in Tamarind. What is acknowledged internationally and not just in New Zealand is that when you have an industry that is moving into this phase you have to put in more protections for the domestic economy in which those companies are operating so that there isn't just an upping sticks and leaving behind of the chattels and the assets that the 1937 legislation put an obligation on those holding a licence to remove. This is not a new duty. This is putting in place protections for New Zealanders so that we don't have multinational companies just exiting New Zealand taking the profits that they've been drawing out of those oilfields and gasfields and leaving the New Zealand taxpayers—both consumers and businesses—to pick up the tab. That simply is not fair. Now I recognise there are a number—most—of our oil and gas operators in New Zealand that fully and well understand their obligations around decommissioning. They understand what is required of them with their permit. They understand what corporate responsibility means and what they will need to do. But that does not remove the obligation on the Government to put in place the protections for the New Zealand taxpayer around this so that we're not left with another $349 million tab coming to the taxpayer rather than the people that have been not only extracting the oil and the gas but the profits from New Zealand and leaving what is their obligation on New Zealanders. Bear in mind that New Zealand and the New Zealand taxpayers already have an obligation under all of our oil and gas permits in terms of picking up some of the costs of decommissioning but it's not the full cost. All we're asking for is a regime that puts in place some protections so that those that hold the permits will fulfil their obligation that is set out under legislation that has been in this country since 1937. Now it's not unfortunate we got into the Tamarind situation. If the previous Government hadn't created the loophole that allowed it to happen we wouldn't have been left with that $349 bill. We've fixed that. This is the second stage of the fix to ensure that we further protect the taxpayers of New Zealand."