Debate on Crown Entities, Public Organisations, and State Enterprises — Solid Energy New Zealand

Solid Energy is not a solid story; it is a sad story, especially when we know that our environment is our economy. We do need our State-owned enterprises to be solid and no one could describe what has happened to Solid Energy in the last financial term of Parliament as being solid at all. It is a sad story, from the failed lignite project through to the recent 170 redundancies at the Stockton mine, which is costing families dearly. Solid Energy is in a slump for two reasons: one is mismanagement, and the other is that the coal industry globally is in a serious slump. Solid Energy has been badly managed and is wrecking the environment, without any employment security for the people of the West Coast. Even coking coal is not holding up as the Chinese steel industry also slows down. We have only to talk to Australia about the state of the coal industry as the basis for your economy to know that it is not a stable basis for a good economy.

But, as George Monbiot said this week: “An ounce of hope is worth a ton of despair.” There is perhaps not a lot of hope associated with Solid Energy’s current performance and its reliance on fossil fuels. Many people, including the Greens, recognise that coal is the past and it kills the climate, and that clean energy and looking after the environment is our only viable future. We have a beautiful country. We have relied on coal in the past, and what we have seen is that the global coal price and environmental damage shows this State-owned asset is in a bad way. I attended the Education and Science Committee when Solid Energy came and spoke about the state of its books, and it denied it was thinking of trying to get overseas buyers to take over, including some of the Indian State coal people.

But whatever is its future, its present is very shaky, and no one will deny that. Solid Energy, like all of us, needs to build a future that is based on clean energy, renewables, and meaningful sustainability. It cannot keep trying to relive the past. If we do what we have always done, we will get what we have always gotten, and that is a boom-and-bust economy for the mining towns, including Huntly and on the West Coast, where despite many years of coal extraction there is still severe poverty in those communities. I have driven through those communities and seen the homes. If coal was ever going to deliver, it would have. Instead, coal has damaged the environment permanently—and Stockton is a dreadful sight—but it has not created the sustainable work that the people deserve. No community should be at the mercy of an international price that can destroy and make the difference between employment and survival or despair.

We are for a positive and hopeful view of what companies like Solid Energy could be, but in order for them to be that, we need change. In a progressive Government the Greens would oppose new coalmines. We are proud to say that we have launched a climate policy that would make polluters like coalminers pay, and our climate policy has been well-received. As people would have heard at question time when Russel Norman talked about it, there are many commentators from all sides of the political spectrum who do not believe that coal is the future, do not believe that fossil fuels can be managed the way they have been managed, do not support emissions trading schemes—because they are “clip the ticket” failures—and do support the positive moves that we have made for a transition to a just economy based on a sustainable climate.

There is much hope to be had in protecting and valuing our environment. It is a very tough call for coal communities. We can have no illusions about the price of transition, but we here in this House have a responsibility to the future and to those communities, and we have to build that transition. We can do that. We can innovate. We can set up a Green Investment Bank. We can protect the climate through sensible and fair climate policies that do not hurt people. We can support Solid Energy to change. We can say to Solid Energy that we will support a real, genuine investment in those things. We can say to those communities that regional development is a real thing. The Government has a role to play as a partner in supporting the parts of the country that have been dependent on companies like Solid Energy, which cannot deliver to them reliable jobs in a clean environment for the future. I am under no illusion how tough that call is. This is not said lightly. This is not said with disrespect to the people who have lost their jobs. I come from a community that was once dependent on mining, and we have built our way out of it. We are fortunate to have done that, because we can survive on ecotourism. We can survive on—

Report noted.

Bay of Plenty District Health Board