Parker David: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
Parker David: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Repeal Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading 
[Volume:651;Page:934] 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I would like to begin by responding to what the Hon Maurice Williamson said which was that the answer to New Zealand’s electricity demand problems was to dam more rivers. He gave the impression that damming rivers was an easy thing to do without significant environmental effects— 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: I didn’t say that at all so don’t tell lies. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I raise a point of order Mr Chairman. The member accused me of telling lies. The  
Hansard 
 record will show that he stood and told the House that we should build more hydro generation. He should be asked to withdraw that comment. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: No; he just said “dam all rivers” and I didn’t say that. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: Basically that is a debatable point. The member who interjected really cannot accuse another member of lying so on that account he should not use that terminology. It is a debating point I guess. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Thank you. Well it is not a debatable point as to whether I am a liar. 
The CHAIRPERSON (Eric Roy) 
: The point that the member was making was a debatable point. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Thank you Mr Chairman now that we have clarified that point. The member has said that he would dam more rivers in New Zealand and that he thought the Greens were wrong to oppose the damming of rivers because that was undermining security of supply. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: I didn’t say “dam all rivers”. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: I did not say that the member said “dam all rivers”; I said that he would dam more rivers. 
Hon Maurice Williamson 
: You just did say that. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Sorry; if I said that I meant to say “dam more rivers”. Can I list for the member the number of rivers down my way where we already supply far more power than we use to keep the member’s lights on in Pakuranga. 
 In my area the Taieri River is already dammed—one of our major rivers. So are the lower reaches of the Kawarau and so is the Clutha in more than one point. The list goes on. So too the Waitaki River is dammed so is the Tekapo so is the Ohau River so is the Pukaki River so is the Waipori River so is the Teviot River so is Lake Manapouri the Wairau River and the river system around Manapouri and various other systems in Southland which I must admit I cannot name offhand. In addition consents in recent years have been issued for the damming of the Arnold River for the damming of the Waiau River and for another dam on the lower Waitaki River. When do we stop? 
Chris Hipkins 
: Do we have any left? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well we do not have many left down my way. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Is Labour’s position to oppose any more hydro? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is Labour’s position that we do not need much more hydro that we— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: “Much more”—oh you’re going to dam more rivers. He’s going to dam more rivers. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: No; actually people will not see Labour proposing changes to the Resource Management Act to enable more rivers to be dammed. It has been interesting that Contact Energy has said that it does not need just aided processes to get consent for more dams on the Clutha River; it needs a change to the environmental baseline that is provided by the Resource Management Act so as to undermine the environmental protection that the remaining undammed sections of the Clutha River currently enjoy. 
If members on the other side of the Chamber think they will be able to provide security of supply through damming more rivers and they think that they will do that down our way then they should think back to the Save Manapouri campaign and the Save the Clutha campaign and they will realise that down our way some things motivate people. One of them is that when generators have dammed so many of those rivers in Otago South Canterbury and Southland and still want to do a lot more of that then they ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to civil protest and popular protest against what would be wrong. 
We do not need to do that. So I am somewhat disturbed when I hear that Gerry Brownlee who is on record as saying that we should have quite a bit more hydro lots of little—[ 
Interruption 
] Yes the Minister has. I have heard him say it. He has said that now we have done all the big rivers then we should do quite a few more of the small rivers. I put that on record. 
I will move now to the issue as to whether we need to have some change in the legislation so that we can retire old thermal plant. The existing Electricity Act already specifically provides at section 62G(1)(e) that an exemption can be given where new generation plant “will be connected and operated in circumstances where an existing thermal electricity generation plant will be retired in whole or part” as long as there will be a 20 percent reduction in emissions. 
 So the existing legislation allows for new more efficient thermal plant to be built to retire old coal-fired plant like Huntly but if the Government repeals the legislation then that will not happen. Instead it will get a new gas-fired station at Rodney and it will get Huntly as well so it will get increased instead of decreased greenhouse gas emissions. The existing legislation is necessary. A price on carbon alone will not guarantee where we need to go in respect of renewable generation. 
In terms of what is consented and whether this is threatening security of supply I make two points. Firstly security of supply is a class of exemption. Anybody who has security of supply concerns can get an exemption to the restrictions on baseload thermal generation from the Electricity Commission making a recommendation to the relevant Minister that would then be adopted. But that is unlikely to be necessary because we have so many renewable projects that are already consented. I have heard National members say they are not economic. I ask why these current-technology renewable projects are already being built by in respect of geothermal generation Contact Energy Mighty River Power and up north by Top Energy. Additional wind farms are also being planned for construction by a wide range of generators including Contact Energy Mighty River Power and Meridian Energy which has the Makara project currently under construction with the potential for close to 200 megawatts at that facility. There was an announcement recently of a Mighty River Power project over to the south-west of Wellington and some very large wind farms are being proposed for Otago some of which are consented and some of which are in consent. 
There is ample new generation. In fact there are already more than 655 megawatts of consented projects. To put that figure in perspective 150 megawatts of extra capacity is needed each year to meet increasing demand. In addition to those consented projects there are already an additional 2875 megawatts of other renewable projects in consent processes as of 1 July 2008 and indeed some of those projects have already moved on to be consented. 
One of the things we should remember about National power policy is that it was National that visited upon the country the so-called Bradford reforms which were introduced under the control of Max Bradford but voted for by the previous National Government. It is interesting to reflect on how much easier it would be to go to renewable generation if we still had the old Electricity Department structure. Under that structure all that would have happened would be a meeting between the Minister and Electricity Department where the Minister would say “Hey look is it possible to build renewables instead of thermal please?” and the department would say “Oh yeah that’s economic and that’s possible.” and then the Government would say “Could you please do that and not build any thermal.” and that would have happened. I ask members to look at what we have now got ourselves into because of the ridiculous so-called reforms of the Bradford years and the plan now for Genesis to build more facilities using gas. 
I ask one other question of the Minister in the chair Gerry Brownlee. Last week we had Genesis put prices up and this week we had the Governor of the Reserve Bank say that given inflation pressures in the economy and the fact that we have a recession around the world and decreasing rates of return in virtually every other sector of the economy it is about time the electricity sector decreased its expectation of ever-increasing profits no matter what the economic cycle. He said that electricity companies should not charge so much. Well the Minister is part of the Government that owns on behalf of the taxpayer the major State-owned enterprises like Genesis Energy Mighty River Power and Meridian which produce about two-thirds of New Zealand’s power. I ask why the Government does not simply say its expectations of rate of return from these companies has dropped by 2 percent. If the Minister said that to those generation companies it would immediately cause them to not increase their power prices. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Where were you for 9 years? There was a 63 percent increase in prices. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: Well in the last 3 or 4 months the world’s economy has gone down. In fact I have heard the Government’s own Minister of Finance acknowledge that reality. Maybe the Minister in the chair has not caught up on it. The solution lies in the Government’s own hands. It should not blame it on anyone else. It should get off its hands and tell those State-owned enterprises that they ought not to be putting up their prices because in hard times the Government expects its companies to bear some of that pain to not put prices up and to not expect the same high rates of return during this part of the economic cycle that they expect in every other part of the economic cycle.