Mooney JosephJOSEPH MOONEY (National—Southland): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to take a short call on the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill on behalf of the National Party. The National Party supports this bill. The bill amends the Gas Act 1992 to provide for enhanced information disclosure requirements for the gas market and to ensure that settings around enforcement and penalties are suitably robust. However the bill does not make substantive changes in and of itself but amends the framework to expand the scope of regulation-making powers. A number of the changes require gas industry participants to report forecasts of supply and demand of gas reserves. This is in response to the 2018 Pohokura outage but it also can be linked to the Government's decision to ban offshore oil and gas exploration.If enacted the bill will clarify that the gas Government regulations could (a) specifically provide for arrangements relating to gas outages and other security of supply contingencies in relation to any markets for gas and (b) require data and information to be provided and disclosed for any industry participant or consumer. National supports more transparent disclosure around current pending or possible gas outages but we need to remember why we are here. This bill is needed because New Zealand is fast entering a gas supply crisis. The Pohokura outage wasn't an issue of a lack of information but ultimately an issue of a lack of gas. This bill will allow New Zealand to understand just how bad the situation Labour has put us in is—it's why we support it.It's also important to state why we are here. This is a direct result of Labour's 2018 oil and gas ban. When the gas ban was implemented Minister Woods said Don't worry we have 100000 square kilometres of gas exploration already permitted." She said "We have permits that go out for 30 years; the sky isn't falling in." What she didn't say is that gas doesn't come out of the ground by magic. Businesses need certainty to invest big sums of money and they need to invest money in things called plant and equipment to get gas to our houses and factories and our electricity generation. Our trading partners have reduced emissions by using natural gas and turning off old coal-fed power stations and industrial heating. We instead are reducing significantly our supply of gas and discouraging investment in exploration of new gas fields. In Otago Beach Energy made a decision to abandon existing exploration permits off the South Island as a result of the Government's oil and gas ban. And while the Government call it a just transition the plan for the future was nothing but a short-sighted policy to appear as a leader on the global stage in climate transition. Officials warned the decision would cost billions in royalties destroy thousands of jobs and likely increase global emissions yet the Prime Minister and energy Minister Megan Woods still ploughed ahead with ideological policy. This is something we need to be cautious of in this House. We do need gas; we don't need hot air.This Beach Energy decision to abandon the existing exploration permits effectively ended any offshore exploration outside of Taranaki. It is a blow to Otago's economy and it will mean significant job losses. Gas exports could have also helped our recovery from the COVID-19 economic crisis. A significant gas find in the South Island would have allowed industries presently reliant on coal to transition to lower emissions fuel—which is what other countries are doing—while boosting New Zealand's exports.I note that in the last year alone New Zealand imported 1.1 million tonnes of coal and we're on track this year to import 2 million tonnes of coal and a lot of that coal is what's known as dirty coal. So instead of reducing our emissions profile we are actually increasing it by short-sighted policies that don't focus on the fundamentals. I note that the previous speaker Steph Lewis spoke about the pride at seeing wind farms being built and I certainly encourage the growth of wind farms but we need to be conscious that this is a complex energy environment. Today alone wind is operating at 10 percent of capacity so we need to have an alternative energy supply and this is why this bill is here because we need to have gas to supplement our energy supply. So we need gas to reduce our energy profile to reduce our emissions profile and ensure that we can power our economy and make sure New Zealanders have electricity to turn on the lights.So this is a small step that is required in the environment we find ourselves in but I would encourage the Government to reconsider its short-sighted ban on the exploration of gas around New Zealand so that we don't have to import dirty coal from other countries."