Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora Mr Assistant Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou kia ora. I rise to take a call on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I do not know whether there has ever been a more misnamed bill put in front of this House. This bill is not about energy innovation; this is about energy tinkering around the margins. This is about energy bureaucracy. This is not about energy innovation. I do not even know whether the Minister has actually looked up in the dictionary what the definition of innovation" is because it is not contained in this legislation.Look the bill does three things—three pretty reasonable small things. We will vote for it because they are pretty reasonable things but they are small things. They are not innovation. The bill moves around the levies that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) can use. That is not innovative. It allows an extension to the road-user charge exemption to include heavy vehicles. Look it is reasonable but it is not innovative—not when you look at what is happening in Europe and America and Asia. Then it clarifies how the electricity industry legislation applies to secondary networks. Again that is just a bureaucratic tweak and hardly innovative.Let us go through it. Sure EECA can now access some old levies and put them together which is probably a good thing. The big problem is though that EECA has been consistently underfunded by the Government. We now see the home insulation scheme run very well by EECA at the lowest point ever in 9 years. I am proud of what we achieved in working with the Government to insulate 300000 homes but now we are doing only 6000. The funding is running out. It has been left up to absolutely no one at all. The fact is we still have more than 700000 substandard homes in New Zealand—homes where our kids are getting sick from the damp and cold. There are 40000 trips to hospital made by New Zealand children because they are sick as a result of their housing and 1600 additional wintertime deaths. If we are going to be innovative let us set a target of upgrading the million substandard homes in New Zealand. It is not innovative to just cap the funding and move some levies around.We have got a huge opportunity in the energy efficiency and conservation space. The fact is that experts have shown the economic cost of investing in energy efficiency is 0.6c per kilowatt hour. The cost of new generation for New Zealand is on average 8c per kilowatt hour or higher. It is an order of magnitude cheaper. This is why instead of focusing on burning coal at Huntly or on new gas-fired power stations in the Waikato built from gas drilled from fracking and new megawatts we should be looking at what are called new negawatts or using electricity more efficiently. So it is hardly innovative.When we look at encouraging the uptake of electric heavy vehicles by extending the road-user charge exemption this is surely one of the most modest electric vehicle initiatives around the world for countries that are adopting it. Look that is a reasonable thing but I would point out the deep irony that at a time when the Government is waving a bill around the House and calling itself innovative when it comes to energy we are seeing our fully electric trolley buses disappear from Wellington's streets and we are seeing diesel locomotives and the de-electrification of our main trunk rail line.On the other side of the ledger regarding this bill the Government is trying to encourage electric vehicles by opening up bus lanes. I know that my colleague the Green Party transport spokesperson Julie Anne Genter is going to touch on this and on how it can be detrimental to mobility in our cities. I would point out that we did hear this message very consistently in the Commerce Committee. Why I called it an energy bureaucracy bill is because what we heard from councils was that because this legislation will not give them easier common-sense ways to enforce it we are basically going to be once again putting another fiscal burden on to local government. Local government is going to go out and will have to buy expensive cameras and will have to monitor which vehicles are in the bus lane or not in order for us to use electric vehicles. Instead of spending money to support electric vehicles by for example investing in infrastructure—and I note that some of our councils are doing a fantastic job of doing that—we are going to be seeing the money being spent instead on bureaucratic monitoring.If we were really going to be innovative about electric vehicles we would be looking at measures such as changing fringe benefit tax rates we would be looking at having a modern State highway infrastructure network and we would be looking at a symbolic step from this Government—instead of seeing it buying and driving around diesel limousines we would see it going to the future and driving perhaps the Tesla S. This is why—Hon Simon Bridges: We're doing all of that.GARETH HUGHES: Simon Bridges you know has launched the same policy eight times because it is more about spin right? The Government is looking like it is spinning its wheels and that is simply all it is doing. It is not really moving anywhere; it is simply spinning its wheels. It is a Government based on spin.The third thing is that the bill is clarifying how electricity legislation applies to secondary networks. Small reasonable—but look you cannot call yourself innovative when you are standing by when solar homes and businesses are under attack by the old power incumbents.Look across the country—we have got citizens in Rotorua Taupō and the Hawke's Bay facing solar taxes from the companies that are scared of solar and what has Simon Bridges done? What has Judith Collins done? Absolutely nothing. You cannot wave around a bill and call yourself innovative on energy when you are standing by while the old-fashioned incumbents are trying to squash a competitor.If we were going to have an energy innovation bill I think it would be more along the lines of the energy policy the Green Party launched recently. Here are five areas where we could be innovative when it comes to energy. We could be dealing with the inefficiencies in our distribution sector. We have got 29 different lines companies across the country all duplicating things duplicating back-end services reinventing the wheel—29 different pricing schemes which means we maybe have 100000 different retail accounts from the electricity retailers because there are so many electricity lines companies. What we see is that they are very good at investing in expensive poles and wires but less so in investing in cheaper smarter—Simon Bridges this is for you—more innovative options like batteries energy efficiency and conservation initiatives and solar. What I would like to do is encourage them to be able to work together to collaborate to amalgamate. I would like to give them a requirement that they must consider smarter more energy-efficient and innovative ways of doing business before investing in traditional poles and wires.I would like to see a more transparent electricity market. I want to see a competitive market where people are operating on a level playing field but what we hear very clearly from the smaller retailers is that they do not have the ability to compete because they cannot access the hedge markets in Australia which limit and lack serious liquidity compared with Australia or the US. What we would make sure we can bring is transparency to the wholesale electricity market so that those cheaper prices can flow through to retailers. When it comes to pricing what we see is instead of focusing on the real issue—which is how we encourage more cost-reflective real-time pricing for example in the lines networks; for example encouraging what Flick does. The Green Party would like to see the big retailers offer that as a tariff because that way we can see consumers save money and we can see the country save tonnes and tonnes and tonnes of carbon.But what is the Government focused on? Well Judith Collins announced yesterday that she is going to review the low fixed user tariff. This is the only price signal a consumer faces in the New Zealand electricity market to use electricity more efficiently to encourage conservation. If we can do that particularly at the peak we do not have to burn coal at Huntly we do not have to burn fracked gas in the middle of the Waikato because we would have smarter ways of doing business. We want to see inefficiencies reduced alternatives encouraged more transparency and fairer more realistic pricing. Just lastly if we can get them right we can not only have a more innovative electricity system but we could be saving consumers money—those consumers who we know are going to hospital; who we know sadly are dying during winter those who should be using more power. Also we could see a cleaner electricity system.The Green Party has got a vision that we could get to 100 percent renewables. It is affordable it is achievable it is eminently desirable but what do we see under National? We see Huntly continue to burn more coal into the next decade. We see a new massive application get a consent because climate change could not be considered and National refused to use the power to consider climate change which is going to increase our emissions by a full 1 percent at a time when our emissions are already going in the wrong direction. What we see is fewer renewables than we had under Sir Robert Muldoon fewer renewables than we had in 1990. We could get to 100 percent renewables. This is the Green Party vision: cleaner cheaper smarter energy—this is the real innovative approach when it comes to energy."