Kuriger BarbaraBARBARA KURIGER (National—Taranaki - King Country): Thank you Madam Speaker. Look it's a pleasure to speak on this bill partly because I come from Taranaki and I know that the last couple of years have been very difficult for the gas industry. Now despite what our previous speaker Melissa Lee says I don't cook much with gas simply because I don't cook much at all but I do realise the value that the energy sector has added to Taranaki. I can remember when the Maui pipeline was actually brought onshore in 1976—so those of you who might want to start making some calculation that was quite some time ago—but what I often say to people because I find that the gas industry falls into a similar category often to the agricultural category—and my colleague Tim van de Molen has mentioned that—is that actually I've grown up in a province where we've had the bulk of dairy farming we've had the energy industry and we've had a range of things going on. People can judge me for what they like as to whether any of that has affected me. You can judge as to whether I'm a normal person or not but my children and my grandchildren certainly are. So it's been part of using the resources of our nation. At this point that we find ourselves in right now with COVID-19 one of the things that our nation has is that we are rich in resources. We are going to need those resources like no time in history before.So this bill: yes it supports transparent disclosure and I don't have any problem with transparent disclosure; in fact on this side of the House the National caucus is always asking the Government for more transparent disclosure—it's really interesting that it's expected of the energy industry but we don't always get it out of the Government; so maybe we could get some alignment here. So the problem that I have is not with transparency but that the level of information that's often asked for is on the level of sensitive information. There are some commercial realities around many of these things and we hear it all in the House all time—This has been redacted because it's commercially sensitive." These businesses have no different requirements than a Government to protect commercially sensitive information. So we've got to be a little careful what we're asking for here.The thing that really concerns me the most and others have mentioned it is the supply and demand. I've been to Pohokura and you know for some people it's a word on a piece of paper but to Jonathan Young and myself it's very much part of our life in Taranaki and what we do. We all know what happened when the problems happened at Pohokura. We burnt more coal—I was at the port of Auckland at the time and the coal that was coming into the country was much more than it had been before. So supply and demand is a big issue.We can go through all of these processes to try and get the industry to be more transparent and disclose but look every piece of disclosure is not going to replace any molecules of gas. So my plea to the Government—and the reason we're supporting this is that we want to take it to select committee we want to have a good discussion about it. We didn't really have the opportunity to have a big discussion when the Government in a four-week process virtually shut down any future gas explorations. There are only 10.4 years of natural gas reserves and we've got to be careful what we wish for because these organisations—our energy companies—are the people that are going to find our new technologies they're the people that are going to find our pathway to cleaner energy and they're the people that are going to fund the research because they're not going to want to do themselves out of business.With all due respect to all of us that sit here in Wellington and make decisions we are not the energy experts. No Government of either side of the House will ever find the answers to this new energy; it is these energy companies themselves. So we shouldn't be actually constraining them and stopping them from finding the new solutions that Gareth Hughes mentioned before because otherwise it just turns into intentions. It's all very well to have intentions and we all have intentions. If you asked any politician in this House what they wanted the world to look to in 30 years' time we'd probably all tell you the same story but most of the arguments and the disagreements that we have in this House are actually about the path and the way to get there. So we need to make sure that we protect these organisations because they are our path to the future. Politicians are not the path to the future; it's the people in these energy organisations—exactly the same as agriculture. It's the people that are actually in the industries who know them they understand what goes on and they will find our path to the future. So we have to work with them. We don't have to do the whole "Government knows best" and "let's control you" and "let's restrict you".So I'm probably going to leave it there saying that you know National is supporting this bill to select committee. I hope that when we get to that point it gives us a really good chance to have a discussion because we need to protect our resources in New Zealand like never before because the amount of things that are going to get dumped into our country at a cheaper price—and it could be oil and gas we're hearing about potatoes at the moment there's a whole lot of global dynamics that are just going to completely come and swipe our economy if we're not careful. Thank you Madam Speaker."