McKelvie Ian: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill — First ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeMcKelvie Ian: Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill — First Reading[Sitting date: 04 September 2013. Volume:693;Page:13302. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]IANMcKELVIE (National—Rangitīkei): A little bonus time on my feet tonight this time to speak against a very short-sighted—in my view—bill the Electricity (Renewable Preference) Amendment Bill which re-enacts the ban on thermal energy generation. I fully understand that it re-enacts the ban for 10 years. But I think there are a few other things that need to be pointed out in the course of this discussion and I just want to pick up on one of the points that Andrew Williams the previous speaker made. I see no reason for this bill to be forwarded to a select committee. It just takes up a whole lot more of this House’s time to decide something where frankly we will end up with the status quo because common sense tells you that it needs to.This type of bill this type of action along with the promotion of an advanced emissions trading scheme system puts a significant amount of pressure on the average New Zealand energy consumer. I am certainly not in favour of that. I am also not in favour of either the previous speaker’s single generator or the proposal for a single buyer for electricity.I want to explain briefly why. In rural New Zealand our biggest power charges by far are our lines charges. They have nothing to do with the electricity supply. If you want to go and live in a place like Taumarunui National ParkŌhākune or any of those little parts of New Zealand that are most important to our tourism industry and to the future of this country you will find that your lines charges are significantly higher than your electricity proportion of your bill. In fact they do not get the lines charges in the electricity portion of the bill; they get them separately. So I guess that part of New Zealand clearly understands where the cost of electricity is. It is in the distribution cost for those of us in rural New Zealand. That is the challenge for the electricity industry in my view.To ban thermal industry at a time when there is potential for modern efficient environmentally friendly methods of thermal generation becoming available to us—and it is quite possible that they will—I think would be irresponsible. It is a resource that in my view we should use if we can use it safely and sustainably as a country. Again the previous speaker referred to some of the reasons for that. Clearly some of us have longer memories than others and can clearly remember the time when electricity was not something you took for granted at your gate because some days it did not turn up. In fact in rural New Zealand we still find that on the odd occasion but not because of a shortage of power supply.My region is covered in windmills and although I do not object to them I can only see them. I do not have to live beside them or put up with the noise and the vibration of them. I also think that in the future we are going to see windmills dotting New Zealand’s landscape like derelict dairy factories in Taranaki. There will be one on every corner and they will be rusting. That is another reason that I am not particularly in favour of fiddling with the electricity generating process.Not so long ago in fact about half an hour ago we were talking about a bill that is preserving our native and natural environment. I do not think that it is efficient for us to use more of our—and I know they are called sustainable resources and things that willlast for ever but in fact a lot of them do not and I referred to the windmills earlier. I think we have a responsibility to future generations to look at alternatives and to use those resources that we have in abundance in New Zealand provided we use them responsibly and use them in a manner that provides for a sustainable future for this country. I do not think it is our business to run Parliament as a type of a game of monopoly. I think bills like this tend to do that to some extent.This bill achieves little as there will be no new thermal generation or electricity plants built in New Zealand in the next few years—probably for 10 years—because we have sufficient electricity in this country to sustain our future. I would not like to be the person trying to obtain a consent to build one of those plants under the current environment anyway. I cannot support this bill and that is me.