Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. In taking a call on this bill this afternoon it was really interesting for me that about a month ago I was at the New Zealand Energy Excellence Awards and this bill was the reserve bill for that evening and thinking that it may come up. We've been waiting for a month for this bill to actually come back to the House and given some of the self-proclaimed long-winded speeches that we've heard from in the previous bill this afternoon and some of the motions between the group on the other side I'm just not sure that the Government really wants to hear the correct story on gas.So what this bill is about is strengthening the regulation-making powers of the Gas Act 1992. It has a unique regulatory model where the gas industry company regulates the industry so they have the power to recommend to the Government following the passing of this piece of legislation. Now the sad thing is that by the time it goes through that process and it then comes back to the Minister hopefully we might have some gas left in this country. I have got my fingers crossed really hard that some of our current permits are going to turn something up because I'm really worried about the next 10 to 15 years.So the background to this bill: in 2018 multiple major outages at Pohokura gasfield which provides 40 percent of all natural gas and an inspection and shutdown at the Kupe gasfield resulted in a shortage of gas. Now that's the story and that's the only story that we're hearing from the other side but that is not the only thing that happened in 2018. In 2018 the Government put a ban on all future oil and gas permits which drove investment away from this country. I want to commend Minister Little who's currently on the other side of the House. He was the only Minister that fronted up at the time. He was brave enough to come to Taranaki and we didn't see any of the others—not even a select committee group came to Taranaki.So once upon a time in 2018 our Prime Minister said I'm going on a jet-fuelled flight to the other side of the world and I am going to stand there and tell the world how good we are because we have banned future oil and gas permits." The sad thing is the same Prime Minister thought that she would wave her wand and we would have all of these new technologies ready to go. And the sad thing is we don't have all of these new technologies ready to go. I think probably what was even worse than that was that our Prime Minister picked up the wrong wand and now the new technology that we seem to be using the most of is going back to the past and using huge supplies of Indonesian coal.So if this is being done in the interest of climate change I would like somebody on the other side to stand up and tell me what this is doing for climate change. I mean it's the silliest thing in the world to take away current technology when you haven't got the new stuff. Most of the world is relying on gas. Look we want the climate change to improve as well but we know that most of the world is using gas as a transition fuel and everyone knows that you need a transition fuel to get yourself to the new future.We keep hearing about just transition—there isn't even a transition. I'm trying to get a plan out of the Minister; I cannot get a plan. There is no transition plan from this Government. There are no solutions. The lights are going to go off. But in typical style this bill comes to the House because the Government wants to regulate the industry because everything's business's fault everything's the industry's fault so Government knows best. What do we do to regulate the Government when they make a mess right? Because they have. And look when I went through the submission processes on this bill the industry actually have a self-regulatory process now which they developed after the Pohokura outages. And I asked if there had been any breeches of that and the answer was no there had been no breeches of that. But of course this Government doesn't tend to trust industry and doesn't trust business.So my biggest concern about this bill—and look we are supporting it because it's going to go through and they're doing it anyway and what the heck—is that the gas industry companies are going to have a look at this and they are going to decide whether they are going to make that recommendation back to the Minister. And what I am going to put a heavy caution on in supporting this bill is to be very very very careful with sensitive commercial information because we've already got a situation out there where we have the generosity of companies like Methanex who are contracting gas back to Genesis so that we can keep the lights on this winter. So we've got companies out there that are helping this Government to keep the lights on and still the level of trust is not there. So my warning right through this whole process is please be very careful of commercially sensitive information because it's very important that we don't put that out there.So I just want to talk a bit further about really this Government—they've created uncertainty they've destroyed regional jobs they've pushed up electricity prices to the point where we were talking about in the last bill that we're struggling for timber in places now because of the industrial heat problem. This bill's actually a meagre measure to somewhat address this.Look it might be helpful having a disclosure but actually I don't think that this bill's going to do any more than the voluntary disclosure. And as I said before I do hope that we have some gas left by the time we get to the end of it. What happens when Governments stick their finger in and meddle in places where they shouldn't go they look at an industry and they go "Oh this is really cool. So we'll ban the gas here and then we'll look out the other end and we'll put this great big thousand pound gorilla"—which the industry is calling the battery project Lake Onslow—"out the other end." They've been too quick to jump to a solution. They now have been spending all this money on a working group. At the same time Ministersincluding Minister Parkerare going out there and going "This is the solution. This is the only way this will happen." So why spend $100 million on a working group if you've already made up your mind?So you throw these curveballs in one end and you throw these curveballs in the other and then you come out with an industry where not only have you killed the investment in the gas industry but you're now actually frightening off people by putting this thousand pound gorilla out the other end. And I just want to quote because I haven't heard anyone in the industry talking about this battery project as a good idea. So Mercury director Dr Patrick Strange called the Government's $100 million advance to the project "mindboggling" and labelled claims it'll lower power prices as "dreamland". Meridian chair Mark Verbiest said "Public investment in pumped hydro could lead to uneconomic generation overbuild crowd out private investment and push up electricity prices slowing down the electrification of the economy." Genesis chief executive Marc England is concerned that spending $4 billion on a new dam would scare off renewable investment by the private sector. And let me tell you that $4 billion when you talk about $4 billion—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Order! The member will not bring the Speaker into the debate.BARBARA KURIGER: Sorry. When $4 billion from a project is talked about you can guarantee it's probably going to end up $6 billion—could end up $8 billion.There are two wetlands. Every time we talk about water storage it's like oh no that's a bit of a no-no. There are wetlands involved in this project. It will take at least 10 or 15 years and it'll take years to get through the Resource Management Act (RMA)—an RMA which we can't even get through the House at the moment because the Government's been dragging the chain on that for four years as well. So we can't even get that through the House. So we're never going to get this dam built. So I would challenge anyone on the other side of the House to stand up and tell me what is the transition for the next 10 to 15 years to keep our energy solutions happening to keep the lights on and to keep us going? Because quite honestly I've got no faith that they even know. Thank you Madam Speaker."