Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): There's something really strange about this bill. It is strange in so much as it's hard to understand why it is that on a day the Government reads the Budget on which it crows about the efforts it's making to reduce the cost of living for New Zealanders the first bill as I've said earlier that they bring into the House is a bill that will raise the cost for many many New Zealanders. Not just those who have gas reticulated through their homes mainly in the North Island but also for the many thousands who rely on the energy source for the jobs that they're doing today for the incomes they receive.Looking at the bill—again it's a very very simple sort of structure. The main part of the bill is not much more than a hundred words. We've had it described by members on the other side as being minor" as being a "solution to anomaly" as "closing a loophole" as "getting clarification for"—apparently—"large numbers of industry sources" who were beating down the door of the Minister saying that "we're terribly worried that we're not paying you enough royalty and we need you to clarify in the bill the way in which we can pay even more". I don't believe that for a minute. And then of course there is the suggestion that I've just heard from the previous speaker Terisa Ngobi "it's about fairness".I think all of that misses a couple of very important points. The first is any speculation on the discovery of a gasfield or an oil field can be massively expensive if it fails. It really is I think important given that the legislation around the Crown Minerals Act—1937 1976 and then 1991—the Government is very involved up to those points in encouraging the expenditure of that capital to look for gas because it's good for the economy. And while there is a levy and a royalty extracted it is in fact the effect that it's had over a long number of years on our balance of payments which by the way is now completely tatters. That can't be misunderstood in all of this.The Government has tried to say it's not retrospective but I think it's worth just looking back a little bit. You know go back 54 years to the discovery of the Māui field. It was known that the Taranaki Basin was oil- and gas-producing potentially. But it was the Government who got very involved and encouraged the investors into that field. So it was Royal Dutch Shell—and a couple of others; I can't remember exactly who they all were—put their capital—Chris Bishop: Shell Todd.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Shell Todd came in a bit later I think. They put their capital on the line and in 1969 they made that discovery. It was considered at the time massive—an absolutely massive field that was going to transform New Zealand.You could argue that it did. It made a huge difference as I said before to the balance of payments. But more than that it gave a fuel source that was able to be secure for investment in a whole lot of other industries—urea for example. There was the Petrocorp which was Government-owned at one stage—a number of these things that were big producers for New Zealand. It's also worth noting that it took the investors in that field 10 years to get it to a producing state. So it wasn't until 1979 that it started produce that gas.Now I wouldn't mind betting that that's one of the fields that's caught up in this particular argument. What's interesting about it is they made that investment initially on the basis that this massive field might last 30 years. Well as we know it's now 44 years since it went into production—45 nearly—and it now has a situation where it will last at least another 10 years with its economic life. During that time it will produce just under 400 petajoules of gas available for the New Zealand economy.The question would be what if that's not there? What if it wasn't there? There would be massive losses of jobs and a huge price increase for gas across the country. We'd probably end up being much as we are with coal importing liquid gas from other countries. We would be patting ourselves on the back apparently for our low-carbon profile with no regard for the fact that it's been extracted from Indonesia or from anywhere around that part of the world where we might get that natural gas from—no regard for that. So what is happening here I think is a very blinkered approach to the issue of climate change which is also being thrown up as a reason for bringing this new legislation to the House.I think we can't underestimate what the effect would be of losing 18 percent of the country's gas production in one hit. I don't think they'll walk away; I don't think that for one minute. But there is no encouragement to continue looking for gas deposits or expanding existing reserves when it's well known now that at any time the Government may change the rules under which the original extraction was undertaken.I think when people stand up in this House and say "We've got to get a fair go for New Zealanders" there is a complete ignoring of the history of gas extraction in this country and what this extraction has contributed to our economy the jobs that it's enabled tens if not thousands; and the changes that it allowed New Zealand to make at a very difficult time in the early 1970s for this country to completely reverse the dire predictions about our economic state and our balance of payments which were so savagely upset by the EU arrangements entered into by Britain.If we look at the current reserves that are predicted just for that one field Māui the one that was supposed to be extinct 15 or 20 years ago it's around about 15 billion cubic metres of gas; that's the best way to look at it. Most people don't understand petajoules; it's a difficult concept. But you think of 15 billion cubic metres of gas. Think of how many barbecue gas bottles that would fill; an enormous number—probably about 50 billion of those gas bottles.Chris Bishop: Be enough for my barbecue.Hon GERRY BROWNLEE: Well Chris I've seen some of your barbecues and it might just start to run the supply low. I think the point here is that extra reserve is now going to come at an increased cost to the producers. Everyone knows that that cost is passed on.So the question for the Minister today and I'm sure that she's going to answer this in the committee stage—oh look she's nodding her head; this is good. She doesn't even know what the question is but she's nodding her head. That's the way the Labour Government works: "We've got all the answers don't worry. Just come up with a question we can answer it."! There's not a lot of thought gone into this in my reading of it.The first question that will need to be asked is: what is the value that is expected to be gained by this? What are the potential losses to what might be the industries that rely on that gas? Not an easy question to answer but one that I would have thought should have been answered and one that was not answered in the departmental disclosure document. I think that's a bit of an indictment—actually it's an indication that this bill is here largely because the Minister thinks it's a great idea but hasn't taken the level of advice that might be necessary to convince the rest of the country that it's a good thing.I'll just finish by saying to all those people who are at home cooking with gas tonight: from the passing of this bill there's a high chance that the gas bill is going to rise even more than it might have under the inflationary times led by this Government."