Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call on the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill. Now the Minister just said as she started the reading of this bill that this bill is very technical in nature. It's just a shame that Labour shut down the committee stage of this bill so that we were unable to ask all the questions that we wanted to. But I'm wondering how this bill gets to be so technical in nature when the industry had already set up a voluntary regime and had it working quite effectively to the point where there were no breaches. The Minister never got around to answering that question in the committee stage either due to it being shut down. So I just wonder what the penalty is for not being open and transparent for the Government as they are expecting from the energy industry—because the Minister also said in the committee stage that this is what she had to do because the voluntary regime didn't work in 2018. What she omitted to say was that the voluntary regime came into force in 2020 and that there had been no breaches of the voluntary code. So look I would have liked to have seen the committee stage going a bit longer because I certainly had more questions to ask as I know others did. I'm disappointed that that didn't happen.So National supports transparent disclosure around current pending or possible gas outages. But we need to remember why we're here. We're here because New Zealand is fast entering a gas supply crisis. The power outage wasn't an issue of a lack of information; it was an issue of a lack of gas. There were some technical issues within that well which the company are currently working through and they are going to do some more drilling to work through the process where some water actually got into places which impeded getting gas out of the ground. So it wasn't about lack of information.The Minister did make a comment in one of the readings of the bill that they had to fly drones over to have a look. Well if it's actually under the ground and the water is actually the problem it's going to be pretty hard to see that with any sort of disclosure regime and in particular with the drone. So what this bill will do—and we are supporting it because largely the industry was doing it anyway. They're quite happy to volunteer what they have as long as there's no commercial information disclosed. That was something Mr Court tried to get through with his Supplementary Order Papers in the committee stage which the Minister wasn't too fond of picking up either. But this bill will allow New Zealand to understand just how bad a situation Labour has put us in with gas. That's why we support it—because actually when it's disclosed the decisions of 2018 will become very apparent. It's important to see where we are and it's really important to see where we are because this gas crisis is in part a direct result of Labour's 2018 oil and gas ban. Whether they like to admit it or not when they banned oil and gas Minister Woods said Don't worry we have 100000 square kilometres of exploration already permitted" she said. "We have permits that go out 30 years" she said. "The sky isn't falling in" she said. What she didn't say or doesn't understand is that gas doesn't come out of the ground by magic. Businesses need to invest something called money and things that they call plant and equipment to get gas to our houses factories and electricity generation. Labour doesn't understand how this works: businesses need to invest big sums of money. And so this has dried up and we've seen gas production fall 40 percent in three years. This has resulted in job losses at Methanex and timber mills and New Zealand Steel have reduced production.Huntly is burning four times as much coal and greenhouse gas emissions are up. Wholesale electricity prices are four times higher than they were in 2018 and this is from a Government that has declared a climate crisis. So not only is the electricity price up and energy security in jeopardy but the climate change results are at risk as well. So measuring the gas could be a good thing because it will show the damage that this Government has caused because if you can't measure it you can't manage it. Now remember the industry was already measuring it and already managing it. The Government can't manage it so now they need to measure it. They don't have a plan. They don't have a transition as they claim to have. The Gas Industry Company says that existing wells will only get us to 2026 or 2027 and that's not very long left to measure given that we're now in 2021. Once this bill is passed—and it will pass in the House either tonight or next time it comes through the House—it needs to go back to the Gas Industry Company and then it needs to go back to the Minister for final approval. That operation is going to have to be relatively swift otherwise by the time it goes through all of that process there won't be anything left to measure.We face an energy crisis in 2027 where we may not have enough gas to process milk which is our largest export. The Gas Industry Company is investigating importing LNG—liquefied gas—so we can keep our factories going and that's a disgrace. That's a disgrace in a country with multiple high likelihoods of basins off our coast and we'll be paying billions to Australia to import their gas. Somebody might want to tell me from the other side: what is the rationale around that?So this is all evidence of a poorly managed transition. Gas is the key to our transition to our zero-emissions future and the Government cancelled gas before they ever developed an alternative. They say a pumped hydro scheme is the answer and without getting into all the problems of that scheme that's going to be at least 10 years away the officials say. Yet our gas isn't going to last that long.I noticed recently in a press release Minister Parker said that Onslow pumped hydro was the answer to our renewable energy future. When I asked Minister Parker in a written question how long the Onslow dam would take to refill in year two of a dry-year risk did he know? His answer was yes. Not forthcoming with any information just saying yes he did know. So then in passing I said to Minister Parker "You may like to finish the answer to your question." and Minister Parker said "Well come up and see me and we'll have a discussion about it."ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.BARBARA KURIGER: Sorry. Minister Parker said "Come up and see me and we'll have a discussion about that." Now I'm still making an effort to get up to Minister Parker's office so we can have that discussion because it seems pointless to do away with the gas to put in regimes that do away with the gas to then put in a pumped hydro dry-year risk when no one can tell me if we have two dry years in a row whether we're going to solve our dry-year risk. So Minister Parker I'm still after the answer to that question and any time you would like to stand up and take a call I would be very happy to have the answer.So National is supporting this piece of legislation. I sat on the select committee for the submissions for this bill and as I said the industry is already doing it. They are happy to disclose. They already have a voluntary regime. They know it's in their best interest but they are very very very nervous about the commercial sensitivity of some of the information. So this bill needs to be done very carefully and I ask more so the Gas Industry Company actually rather than the Government to ensure that this is commercially sensitive watertight legislation so that we don't have any oopsies in that department because we know how easy it is for things to leak and things to get out when it comes to some of these regimes. We've already seen in the last couple of days all of the cyber-attacks that go on and as an interest in the security of this country we need to make sure that this regime is tight and that it works and I leave that responsibility with the Gas Industry Company and the Government. Thank you Mr Speaker. I commend the bill to the House—Madam Speaker sorry.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): The question is that the motion be agreed to."