Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill be now read a third time. This bill is an important part of the Government’s work to improve the efficiency of our energy use and to meet our climate change commitments. We need a shift in focus to reduce our emissions and improve our energy productivity. Transport, energy, and process heat are key areas where gains can be made. This bill makes small but significant changes that will assist the Government and New Zealand to make that shift in focus.

Much of the energy our industries use to create heat for processing is non-renewable. Process heat makes up one-third of New Zealand’s overall energy use and contributes 9 percent of gross emissions. Sixty percent of process heat is supplied using non-renewable fuels, mainly coal and gas. The industrial sector is the largest end-user of process heat; 80 percent of total process heat occurs in this sector. There are opportunities for some businesses to switch to more efficient non-renewable sources of energy, like gas, or to improve the efficiency of the energy that is currently used. I today released a replacement New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy, which includes process heat as a priority area as well as an action to develop a plan to unlock the energy efficiency in renewables potential in this sector.

Another priority area in that strategy is transport. Greenhouse gas emissions for the transport sector make up about 20 percent of New Zealand’s total emissions, and over 40 percent of New Zealand’s emissions from the energy sector. With 99 percent of transport energy coming from non-renewable sources, there is a huge opportunity to reduce emissions in the sector. The high amount of electricity that is generated in New Zealand from renewable energy sources such as hydro, geothermal, and wind means that electric vehicles (EVs) provide an excellent way to make the most of this opportunity to reduce emissions. EVs can leverage greater value from New Zealand’s renewable energy and electricity, of which electricity was 88 percent in the 3 months to December 2016, reducing emissions while ensuring economic growth. Last year the Government announced the Electric Vehicles Programme, a package of proposals to increase the uptake of electric vehicles. Substantial progress has been made in delivering the programme, and the number of electric vehicles on our roads has increased significantly, from around 1,300 when the programme was announced to around 3,500 now.

The bill contains two further initiatives from the programme. The bill clarifies that a road controlling authority may use its bylaw-making powers to give electric vehicles access to special vehicle lanes. While road controlling authorities wish to use this power, electric vehicles that are powered solely by electric batteries, as well as plug-in hybrid vehicles that operate on a combination of externally charged batteries and a petrol-diesel motor, will be able to use special lanes. This measure has proved a useful way to encourage the uptake of electric vehicles. I recently travelled to San Francisco, where there has been a substantial growth in EV ownership. There they have provided rebates, but also use similar measures to those we are introducing, such as access to special vehicle lanes.

The bill also encourages the uptake of electric vehicles by extending the road-user charge exemption to include heavy electric vehicles such as electric trucks and buses. The exemption already applies to light electric vehicles. This change is a transparent and efficient financial incentive to encourage heavy electric vehicles over equivalent conventional heavy vehicles. The exemption for heavy electric vehicles will be in place until they comprise 2 percent of the heavy vehicle fleet. The Government has a target of doubling the number of electric vehicles every year to reach approximately 64,000 by the end of 2021, and this bill will help to ensure continued progress towards that target.

The bill also makes some important changes to the way the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) is funded. EECA is the Crown agency tasked with encouraging, promoting, and supporting energy efficiency, conservation, and the use of renewable sources of energy. It is important that EECA can focus its activities where the gains are the greatest—for example, on transport energy and process heat. The bill does this by giving EECA access to funding from three levies: the existing electricity efficiency levy, the gas levy, and the petroleum or engine fuel monitoring levy. This will enable the cost of EECA’s levy-funded activities to be spread across these three fuels instead of being confined to electricity.

An example of the sort of work that EECA will be able to progress using this funding is the electric vehicles promotional campaign and the low-emission vehicles contestable fund. The first round of the low-emission vehicles contestable fund saw 15 projects funded, including the delivery of at least 100 new public charging stations around the country. It also saw support for an electric car - sharing scheme and electric trucks, buses, and supermarket delivery vans. These types of projects are bringing electric vehicles and charging stations into New Zealand neighbourhoods, encouraging and supporting the uptake of EVs.

The bill also makes changes to ensure that legislation is keeping up with innovative changes in the energy sector. For example, the bill clarifies how electricity industry regulation applies to secondary networks. These are electricity networks that are indirectly connected to the national grid. The changes will ensure that when owners of secondary networks undertake activities equivalent to those of an electric distributor, they should be subject to, and benefit from, the same regulatory requirements.

I want to acknowledge my colleague the Hon Simon Bridges, the previous Minister of Energy and Resources, for the work that he has put into this as well. The bill has had only minor changes through its passage. I think these have improved the bill, and I would like to specifically thank the Commerce Committee and the members of this House for their excellent consideration of, constructive engagement with, and support for this bill. I would particularly like to acknowledge the chair of the committee, Melissa Lee MP. I would also like to thank the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment and Ministry of Transport officials for their very good work on this bill.

This bill will encourage energy innovation such as emerging energy technologies and will increase variation in energy-related business models, along with a significant shift in how we power our cars and trucks and buses. This will enable us, as a nation, to respond to our environmental and energy objectives. I commend this bill to the House.

It is my pleasure to take a call. Labour is supporting this piece of legislation, as we have in its various stages throughout its passage through this House and into law.

Broadly, the aim and the policy objective of this bill is to encourage energy innovation and to allow the emerging energy technologies to increase variation in energy-related business models. It also implements the Government’s electric vehicle (EV) programme, as the Minister has outlined. But is this a piece of legislation that is allowing the kind of transformational change we need in order to meet our climate change obligations and to do the transition to a low-carbon or net zero carbon economy, which New Zealand needs to be on a pathway to doing? No, it is not. It is a very low-ambition piece of legislation. It makes some changes that we support—because why would you not—but does it go far enough, and does it set out the kind of transformational change agenda that we need in this country as we are getting through the 21st century?

The Minister has identified that process heat and transport are two very critical areas in which we must address our greenhouse gas emissions and where we simply must cut our carbon dioxide emissions. While this bill does address one of those areas in terms of the EVs, and it makes some changes around that, there has been modelling done that shows that what will actually happen as a result of this legislation is pretty much what would have happened without it. This is standing-still legislation. It is not putting in place the kind of transformational change that will see the uptake of EVs happen faster because the Government is getting in behind it, because it knows it simply has to in order to meet its climate change objectives and because this is actually what the 21st century is going to look like.

One of the other important things that this legislation does is amend the Electricity Act 2010 and the Energy (Fuels, Levies, and References) Act of 1989 to allow the Government, through the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), to focus levy funding on the areas where the greatest impacts can be made. The Minister said that it is in this area of transportation and industrial process heat that the Government sees that the greatest gains can be made, but this is an “or” for this Government, because in order to do this, some areas where we could make some really good gains in terms of our energy efficiency as a country, and where we could address the amount of energy we use and the efficiency with which we use it, along with the great co-benefit of addressing energy poverty, is being cut to make way for this scheme. So whereas EECA was once the champion and the agency through which we did some very fine work in terms of insulating our houses, that scheme is being cut and the focus is moving.

We have over 600,000 homes in this country that are still not adequately insulated. That is over half a million houses, and well over half a million families and people who are living in houses that simply are not warm and dry enough, and we know what the impact of that can be. So while I think that it is good that we can see that EECA is turning its attention to industrial heat and to the issues of electric vehicles, we simply cannot lose sight of some of the other core objectives that it should be performing. That is why Labour has said that in Government not only we will not stop the subsidies but we will not deny homeowners access to the subsidy, as this current Government has done, because we recognise that there are a lot of hard-working New Zealanders who struggle to buy their first house, and it is not particularly well insulated, but they are simply not eligible. This Government does not think that they are worthy of having any assistance from the Government, and we think we can both help families and also address the issue of how it is, in a transition to a low-carbon economy, we are going to have to make the transition from fossil fuel to renewable energy.

Not only do we need to increase the proportion of renewables that we use within our economy but we also need to dramatically increase the capacity of our renewable generation as we make that transition, because as we transition cars away from petrol and on to electricity, we are simply going to need to consume more electricity. If the industrial processes of electricity are one of the solutions to transferring that industrial heat from a fossil fuel to a renewable future, then we simply will need to increase the generation quite markedly. That is something that the Vivid Economics report did some really good scenario planning around—about what that future can look like.

So I am a bit disappointed, because I actually think this is really exciting change. This transition is such an opportunity for New Zealand. If we do this properly and if we put this in place, it will actually be an economic transformation on the scale of the Industrial Revolution that the world will be looking at as we make these changes. But, instead, what we have is a low-ambition Government that just does not get it. It does not get what the opportunity is there, it does not get what the future can hold, and it certainly has not come out with the kind of fresh thinking and the fresh ideas that we need to take us further into the 21st century, when we, as a country, have to grapple with these things.

The most vexing thing in this legislation was how it was we were going to identify electric vehicles in the bus lanes. That was the most vexing issue we could find in this legislation. Where are the big ideas, where is the vision, and where is that thinking? The Commerce Committee did spend a reasonable amount of time trying to work out whether a coloured number plate or a sticker on the car was the best way to have the observation of whether or not a car belonged in the bus lane. That is an important issue, and we need to be able to police that issue, but it certainly is not the biggest issue. When we think about modernising our energy sector to face the future, that should not be the biggest issue that we spend our time on. What we have seen is that we are saying that local authorities have the power to allow electric vehicles to travel in high-occupancy lanes. This is not a long-term solution, because, as we see the uptake of EVs at the rate that I hope we see, simply allowing those vehicles to go into the lanes that are meant to reduce congestion will only add to it. So, again, we have a Government that is just looking at band-aid solutions and not thinking about what the big-picture answers need to be to some of these problems.

The other thing that this legislation does, and it is an important change that this legislation makes, is it amends the Electricity Industry Act of 2010 to clarify how the electricity industry legislation applies to a secondary network. This is a really big, growing business model in this sector. One of the things that it sets out to do is understand what it means when owners of secondary networks undertake activities equivalent to those of an established electricity distributor. They should be subject to the same regulatory requirements. This is an area where technology is changing all the time. The way in which we distribute electricity and the way in which that is done is constantly on the move, and it is an area where we have to have legislation that can keep up with that technological change. The days of just transmitting power down the power lines and it arriving at a house or a business and being utilised—that is changing at such speed, so it is really important that we ensure (a) that we have got the right regulations, and (b) that we have a legislative framework that can meet those requirements as the change occurs.

Labour is supporting this bill. We do not think that it is ambitious enough. It does not have the fresh kind of thinking that we need in this very important area for our economy as we enter further into the 21st century. There is so much opportunity for New Zealand. We have a real strategic advantage in this new world in the amount of renewable energy we have access to at a low cost, and this is a Government that cannot imagine a future where that opportunity is maximised.

I hope Dr Woods is actually feeling a little bit better than she was before.

💬 Dr Megan Woods: So do I.

You were coughing, and I was a bit concerned about you. I have to say that was a pretty good effort, considering, but in that 10 minutes I am not so sure whether I actually heard any solutions that she was actually talking about—but good effort.

It is a great opportunity to take a call on the third reading of the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I would like to pay tribute to the important work the Hon Simon Bridges, Minister of Transport, and the Hon Judith Collins, Minister of Energy and Resources, have done towards this important bill, which will support the greater uptake of innovative, new electric vehicles around New Zealand. Thank you also to my parliamentary colleagues across the House who have worked very diligently to bring this bill back to the House. While it was before the Commerce Committee, I have to also say, we worked very well together, and I would like to thank the secretariat and the advisers who have guided us through the process.

The Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is actually an omnibus bill that will amend several Acts of Parliament to encourage energy innovation and the uptake of new energy technologies, support all New Zealand families and businesses to embrace 21st century technology, and support New Zealand in responding to its environmental and energy objectives. While this bill was before the Commerce Committee we had 40 written and 11 oral submissions on the merits of the legislation, with submitters including Auckland Transport, the Electricity Retailers’ Association of New Zealand, and the Motor Industry Association, and I thank those organisations for their advice and their careful consideration.

The committee proposed a number of changes to the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill to better ensure its purpose. These included clarifying the definition of “secondary network provider” to better match the policy intent of the bill, which the Minister of Energy and Resources actually talked about earlier; amending the Land Transport Act to permit images taken by approved vehicle surveillance equipment to be evidence of the unauthorised use of special vehicle lanes; supporting Orders in Council to exempt road-user charges for a time when the Minister is satisfied that may encourage the uptake of heavy electric vehicles; and amending the Energy (Fuels, Levies, and References) Act of 1989 to allow regulations to be made to provide exemptions from the gas levy and place liability for the gas levy solely where the gas is sold by the retailer.

The National Government has been a leader in ensuring New Zealand meets our international targets for climate change and protecting the environment, and in encouraging innovative new technologies and their uptake among Kiwi families and businesses. As a country, as a nation, as Kiwis we believe in the “clean, green” Kiwi image, and a key way to continue the growth of this brand is to promote the uptake of electric vehicles and develop energy efficiency across commercial sectors through practical policies that work for those businesses and Government without an undue burden on the nation.

Across the world and across New Zealand we are embracing innovation, and the uptake of new technology is one way of achieving that. Whether this is in the work of entrepreneurs out in Māhia Peninsula with Rocket Lab, or the work of local Kiwis buying a top-end Tesla or family-style Nissan Leaf, we are still a country that continues to be at the forefront of embracing new ideas and new opportunities, and supporting new aspirations not just of this generation but of the ones to come, as well. New Zealand will always be a great, environmentally friendly country, and a country friendly to business. The Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill will help continue to support our way of doing things.

Talking about our way of doing things, I have to actually say that the secret to our America’s Cup win apparently was a surfboard maker. I think this kind of innovation that Kiwis are so good at is in this, as well. I hope that more people will take up energy-efficient electric vehicles, and I hope that people are encouraged by this legislation to do so. It is a good bill, and I commend it to the House.

I would like to respond to a couple of comments that the honourable member Melissa Lee has just made. First of all, she said that this bill is responding to the Government’s commitments, and it is just not so. As my colleague Megan Woods said, it is a good bill. We support the bill, but it just does not go far enough. There is nothing aspirational or visionary about it. I know that the member Chris Bishop said that Labour seems to be captured by vision, or that we talk about aspiration too much. This is one area that I have a real passion for, because I think this can play into our global brand on such a big scale and in a way that adds value not just to our country or our brand but to our whole sector and the way people view us.

Let me give you an example of that. Simon Bridges, who has talked about the electric vehicle policy, I must admit, for quite a long time now—I remember when he went to cut the ribbon. I think it was for the 1,000th electric vehicle to be registered on New Zealand roads. He turns up in this huge big diesel BMW. He gets out, cuts the ribbon for the electric vehicle, smiles for the camera, has a couple of words, and then he jumps back into this huge big diesel BMW and drives back to Parliament. To me there is a—

💬 Meka Whaitiri: Irony?

It is just wrong. There is an irony. I was going to say “hypocrisy”, but there is an irony in that. The thing is that when we want to make these sorts of changes, it is often that the Government has to lead the way. A lot of press releases and a lot of commentary to do with this bill talk about the fact that the Government has to work with the private sector to make this happen, and I could not agree more. But often what has to happen is the Government has to take the first step to give the private sector the confidence to actually invest.

Let me give you an example. My understanding is that there are around about 17,000 vehicles in the wider Government fleet, and let us make an assumption that they are all on 3 by 1-year leases—that assumption will not be correct, but it is just easy for mathematics. Let us say that 15,000 of those can be converted to electric vehicles (EVs). After 8 years you have got about 40,000 vehicles on the road, simply because the Government made a decision to convert to electric vehicles. There are a whole lot of assumptions amongst that, but I suppose the point I am making is that if the Government led the way in this—if the Government was really serious about driving a change towards electric vehicles—then the first thing it would do is convert the Crown fleet.

Imagine if we picked up dignitaries in a Tesla. Imagine turning up at the airport—CR1 is a big Tesla, and it is an electric vehicle. That would send a very, very clear message. I have got a friend who knows Elon Musk quite well, actually. I mentioned this to him, and he said that, knowing Elon and the fact that he is a fantastic self-promoter, if the New Zealand Government went to Tesla and said it wanted to convert the whole Crown fleet to Teslas, Elon Musk would probably go: “Absolutely. Tell me where you want them and when you want them, and let’s put them in.” It would not only look good for us, it would look good for Tesla.

The thing that, I suppose, disappoints me about this is that we go to the world with a brand—we go to the world with a brand that says “clean, green”, “100% Pure”. The interesting thing is that this brand started out as a tourism brand, and it was so successful that it sort of morphed into our national brand. In 2005 the then Ministry of Economic Development tried to place a value on this brand. It is very difficult to value a brand, but they came up with a figure—this was 12 years ago. They came up with the figure that the “clean, green”, “100% Pure” brand was worth about $20 billion a year to our country.

At the same time, a group—I think it was Deloitte—came out with another survey that said 80 percent of companies, when they are exporting products overseas, leverage off that clean, green, pure brand. When Melissa says that we are an environmentally friendly country, well, our brand says that—that is how we go to the world—but it is actually not the reality. You know, 60 percent of our rivers are unswimmable at some point in time.

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): Order! Back to the bill.

No, Mr Assistant Speaker, this is about energy efficiency—[Interruption]

The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Lindsay Tisch): This is about—back to the bill.

💬 Hon Member: Do as you’re told.

Who said that? The arrogance—9 years of arrogance, and you end up with that. But anyway, what I am talking about is—we are talking about energy innovation. Energy and innovation—it is what drives this country. It is about where we see ourselves. It is about how we sell ourselves to the world, and we are just not doing it well.

I am a huge fan of the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA), and this allows EECA to actually derive its fees, to drive energy efficiency, from not just the electricity sector, which it can at the moment, but from the gas and petroleum sector as well. That is a good thing. But when I hear Government members stand up and say “Isn’t it wonderful. We’ve insulated all these houses, and we now live in a much better world.”—well, we do to a certain extent, but 50,000 New Zealand kids are admitted to hospital every single year with respiratory disease. That is a disease of poverty, so let us not pat ourselves on the back until that 50,000 figure gets down to zero. That is aspirational. I know Chris Bishop does not like aspiration, but that is aspirational.

There is one thing I would like to talk about in this bill, and this has sort of been overlooked. That is the fact that we have changed the way that the gas levy is going to be collected. In the past, the collection of the gas levy sat at the wholesale selling point, and what we heard from the officials was that this was woefully inefficient and quite complex, to the point that the levy just was not being collected. There was never any suggestion of any form of illegal activity, fraud, or anything like that; it was just so complex that it just was not being collected. What we decided—or what the officials decided, and we teased this through and we agreed—is that, in fact, we would change it so that the gas levy would be collected by the retailers as opposed to the wholesalers.

This makes sense. I understand this, but the one concern I do have—and I have brought this up a couple of times when speaking about this bill—is that we are all aware that if Parliament decides there is going to be a levy placed in a certain point in the supply chain, often retailers or wholesalers or whatever businesses are involved use that as an excuse to put up the bill or to charge more. What we do not want to see, and what we have specifically put in the report for this bill—we will monitor the way in which this levy is implemented, to ensure that consumers are not unduly or unfairly charged. What we actually heard from the officials is that the amount that this levy represents to each consumer is just an infinitesimal amount—barely a cent. The last thing we want to see—and I suppose the committee is putting the retail sector on notice—on any consumer’s gas bill, especially in the middle of winter, is an increased charge because Parliament has decided that this is the point in the supply chain at which the levy will be collected. We just want to put it out there—we do not want to see any increase in the gas bill because of what Parliament has done here.

Let me get back to electric cars and energy efficiency. What Mr Bridges has said is that we want to double the number of EVs to 64,000 by 2021. If the way we are going to do that is simply by allowing electric vehicles to drive in bus lanes, well, I do not think that is good enough. I would love to see 64,000 electric vehicles in New Zealand by 2021. It is an aspirational target—I hope he did not check with Mr Bishop, because he would not have liked that. We have just got to be—when I say “we”, I mean a Government, so I suppose it is going to come down to us in a couple of months—has got to be more proactive in the way it does this. I must admit, in this area I am actually not for subsidies. I do not think we should subsidise electric vehicles, because I think all that does is—it has the potential impact to distort the market, much to the market’s overall detriment, certainly in the long term.

But as mentioned, what we can do is—Governments can influence behaviour or influence outcomes by their own behaviour. What I think we have said—and I do not think I am releasing any policy now, because I think it has been out there—is we would actually convert the Government fleet to electric vehicles, or the majority of them, because that is about walking the walk. I think that what happens is the general public tends to respond and take us, as politicians, seriously when we say “This is what we would like to see in the country.”, and then we go and do it. Too often, what happens—and this bill is a classic case—is we say: “This is what we would like to see—64,000 electric vehicles; fantastic.” Then, quite rightly so, people ask what we are doing about this. Well, nothing—we are just driving these big German diesel BMWs. It is the wrong signal.

We are supporting this bill. Labour does support anything that drives energy efficiency. We are supporting anything that drives energy innovation. We just think that this bill could have gone a whole lot further. It actually could have been innovative, it could have led the way, and it could have, once again, put us at the forefront of global leadership in this space, but it fails yet again. We need fresh ideas in this space.

What a great bill the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is, which is in the forefront of the development in this space, which is world-leading, which is innovative. Indeed, it is so emphatically so that not only is National, obviously, supporting it but Labour is supporting it too, which I think is fantastic. I want to acknowledge Judith Collins as now the responsible Minister, obviously Simon Bridges before her, and Melissa Lee and the whole Commerce Committee that worked on this; I myself am pleased to be part of that committee.

This bill has four main elements to it. We have heard a little bit from the last speaker, Stuart Nash, about the changes to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA). First and foremost, the levies for EECA will no longer be solely from electricity but actually on the lines of gas as well, and fuels, which will also broaden the mandate of EECA, which I think is fantastic. A lot of talk has often come around how electric vehicles will now be able to access special vehicle lanes. Importantly, we are not mandating, as Parliament, that that must happen, but we are allowing individual councils to make their decisions in that regard. The third element is exemptions to road charges. We are very keen to make sure that electric vehicles, particularly the larger ones in the fleet—trucks, effectively—will not have to pay road-user charges (RUCs). I suppose within all—well, particularly those two elements around RUCs and around special vehicle lands, it is an incentive to the public.

The last speaker spoke a lot about what the Government can do, and I am sure we can continue to explore options, but this is about empowering New Zealanders to make a variety of decisions in this space, and I think that is remarkably positive.

Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to support this bill, but I wish there was some independent Office of Parliament we could go to to actually double-check the names of pieces of legislation before they are passed tonight. The last thing we should be calling this bill is an energy innovation bill, because there is not really much innovation in it. There is no innovative thinking.

Look, we support it because all this bill does is move around some Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority levies, it allows electric vehicles in bus lanes—which experts have actually told us could, in fact, be counter-productive where it happens—and then that is pretty much it. It deals with secondary networks for apartment buildings, for example. But when you look around the world at all the real innovation that is happening in energy, you would not call this bill an energy innovation bill if you knew what was happening around the world, or knew of the potential for New Zealand. Recently, we heard there was $3.6 billion in missed energy efficiency and conservation opportunities facing the country.

So if we wanted to talk about the real innovative energy sector, there is a lot of stuff we would be talking about that is not contained in this legislation. I wish it could have a more accurate title.

I guess you can see it in Minister Judith Collins’ energy strategy, which has just come out today, which is meant to chart our energy efficiency work for the next decade. You know, it is a big deal. So what did we see? We saw three things—only three things—in this big, multi-year strategy. The first is a 1 percent process heat intensity reduction—1 percent. It sounds pretty good, right? But when you look at the data, that is what we have achieved since 1990. That is like me saying to you: “I’m going to lose weight. I’m going to go on a diet, but I am going to do exactly the same thing I have done for the last couple of decades.” That is not an ambitious target. That is like a pole-vaulter setting the pole down at about a foot and saying: “I am going to get to the Olympics if I can do this.”

Then we saw the energy intensity target that was in the previous strategy dropped entirely. I think I know why. I think it was dropped entirely because, under the current Government, we have dismally missed the target. In fact, we are seventh-worst in the entire developed world for energy intensity as a percentage of the economy. That is a big deal, because what that means is that all of us as individuals, all of us as families, and all of our businesses are paying more for one unit of economic output than the vast majority of other equivalent OECD countries are.

So, again, we have an un-innovative energy innovation bill and an un-innovative, unambitious, business-as-usual energy strategy being released today. I think anyone watching the parliamentary broadcast tonight will see a lot of politicians criticising other parties’ policies or inaction, but what they want to see, though, is other parties’ solutions, and that is what I would like to lay out with the bulk of my time.

If we wanted to have a conversation about what an innovative energy bill would look like, I suspect it might look a little bit like the energy policy the Green Party released recently. We did not just sit in a room and think about it and talk to ourselves about it; we went out and actively consulted business. We worked with Business New Zealand. We were talking to electricity retailers, big and small, and to the lines companies, the generators, the new incumbents, and the entrepreneurs. We actually talked to people who are out there innovating, like Flick, and there are other different models like Vector—which is using batteries, solar panels, and peer-to-peer electricity networks, which is absolutely, fundamentally disrupting the way we have done electricity for the last hundred years—and what we found is that there is a better, smarter, cheaper way we could run an energy system in New Zealand.

Let us start with energy poverty, which this bill does not address entirely. We know that one-fifth—20 percent—of New Zealand families are classed as being in energy poverty. They are spending more than 10 percent of their weekly disposable income just to keep the lights on or keep the heating on. At the same time, we have got 40,000 trips to hospital being made by New Zealand children because they are sick as a result of their housing—40,000 trips to hospital by Kiwi kids because they are sick from our housing.

In fact, 1,600 additional deaths are attributed to our cold, damp housing in winter. That is more than the road toll. Our houses are killing more New Zealanders than the road toll.

So if we are talking about energy poverty, what I would like to propose is a winter energy payment. What we have proposed is recycling the dividends the power companies give to the Government—recycling that to households earning less than $50,000 a year. We could be helping 530,000 households next winter by smoothing out their power price spikes over winter through having a winter energy supplement, which is what they do in Canada, which is what they do in the UK, and which is what they do in some Australian states.

So that is cheaper electricity. What about cleaner electricity? This innovative legislation does nothing directly to get us towards the 90 percent renewables target. What the Green Party would like to do is actually have a little bit more ambition, acknowledge the threat of climate change, and say that we can get to 100 percent renewables in average hydrological conditions by 2030. What we have also done is publish a model from Rocky Mountain Institute researchers showing how 100 percent could look. It is affordable, it is achievable, and—I would put it to the House—eminently desirable to set that target a little bit higher.

But what about embracing new technology? What the Green Party would like to do is, at the lines network area, which is around 40 percent of a customer’s bill—these regional distribution monopolies. That is a huge area where we could see real innovation, which is missing in this legislation. We have got 29 separate lines companies across the country, in many cases reinventing the wheel and duplicating costs. Many of them have only a tiny customer base, so they do not have the scale, the expertise, or the capital to embrace new technologies. What I have proposed is that we could make it easier by using some analogies in the Local Government Act to have lines companies work together, merge where appropriate, and then have communities support it. I am not talking about forcefully amalgamating our lines companies, but about giving them better, easier options to work together to save all their customers, and the whole country, money.

The other thing is that our lines companies are very good at installing poles and wires. That is kind of how we have done electricity for a hundred years. We have got pretty good at it now. What we need to do is get better at finding the cheaper alternatives to traditional poles and wires. They are out there when you look across the world, from lithium ion batteries to energy efficiency and conservation methods, through to demand side measures. The Rocky Mountain Institute research that I mentioned we had published showed that a negawatt—using a unit of electricity less than a megawatt, which is a unit of electricity more—is 10 times cheaper than the cheapest new generation we have in New Zealand, which is our dirt cheap wind resource. We could be doing it 10 times cheaper if we encouraged people to find easier ways to use less. That could be insulation, that could be smart appliances, and that could be sending price signals so that people choose when they use electricity to save money and save the rest of the grid in carbon.

I would also put it that our lines companies could be publishing more information around where their network constraints are, so that new entrepreneurs and new businesses—the true innovators we are not really seeing in this legislation tonight—could say: “Well, we could invest in a big distribution line that is going to cost X millions of dollars here, but we’ve got a cheaper option. Can we put it to you?”. So we have proposed a comprehensive series of measures to support our distribution network to save money, save carbon, and run a smarter grid.

In terms of our electricity market, we have proposed opening it up to more transparency and sunlight, because we heard a very clear message from our smaller retailers: they do not feel we have competitive market—and, in fact, that is what the International Energy Agency said earlier this year in a comprehensive report into the state of the New Zealand electricity system. We would like to propose more transparency on what is actually happening on the hedge markets, so that all retailers can operate on a level playing field. I want to see smart new companies come in, offering their consumers better solutions to manage electricity and to save them money.

So what we have talked about is a smarter way to run the electricity system, more transparency, and fundamental reforms to our distribution networks. But if we are going to talk about energy innovation, in fact, what we are seeing by inaction is one of the least innovative things and the most detrimental things happening in our entire electricity system. That is the solar tax, on which Judith Collins has sat by, while Unison Networks, a local regional lines monopoly, is charging its customers an additional charge just for having a solar panel. It is entirely arbitrary and entirely ridiculous.

There are better ways we could deal with the pricing impacts of greater solar penetration in New Zealand. But taxing it—“taxing” is a bit of an unfair word. Having a specific solar charge is incredibly unfair. It is simply trying to hold back the solar growth that we have seen in New Zealand. I want to see our power companies compete based on the products, the services, and the price they are offering their consumers, and not competing just because they have got a monopoly position and they want to stop customers from making a specific technology choice. If we allow this to happen, it could happen to customers who insulate and who invest in efficient appliances.

What this bill is is not an energy innovation bill. What we in the Green Party have, though, is a suite of comprehensive, consultative policies that are innovative, which is a fantastic choice for the public of New Zealand, because it is important that we get cleaner, cheaper, smarter electricity. It is just around the corner. We are seeing fundamental disruption to the electricity system, but token bills like this, which are really false advertising, will not cut it.

Kia ora, Mr Deputy Speaker. I rise on behalf of New Zealand First and my colleague Fletcher Tabuteau to contribute on the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. We would have to agree with our colleague from the Green Party Gareth Hughes: there is no innovation in this bill. While New Zealand First will be supporting this bill, it is as close to next to nothing as you can do without doing nothing. What it does do is it combines three levies so that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority can improve, supposedly, the operation and administration of those levies. It does not provide any other transparency over the operation and administration of those levies, and it does not change any of the rates of those levies. It merely allows them to join together into a larger pot.

With regard to encouraging the uptake of electric vehicles by extending the road-user charges exemption to include heavy electric vehicles, first of all, let us be clear for the New Zealand public that there are currently 70 vehicles in the New Zealand public fleet. I think it is worthy to note Z Energy’s submission to the Commerce Committee: “Z notes that the proposed definition of an Electric Vehicle (EV), namely ‘a motor vehicle with motive power wholly or partially derived from an external source of electricity’, departs significantly from more traditional global definitions which typically refer to the vehicles propulsion system being electric rather than focussing on the primary source of the energy.”—e.g. external source of electricity.

This little change, this diversion from what is the globally accepted definition, will affect heavy electric vehicles—those that are self-creating or partially electric, which is the Z Energy fleet it had submitted on—as it means that the opportunity of uptake for the delayed road-user charges is going to be minimal. So not only has the Government chosen to do very little with regard to innovation, it has very, very much limited the capacity of those currently inside the fleet to actually take any advantage of this lower road-user charge.

If we look at the suggestion that the answer to incentivising New Zealanders to pick up electric vehicles is by allowing them to drive in a bus lane, firstly, let us be clear: the bill does not do that. The bill allows a local transport authority to decide whether people in an electric vehicle can use a bus lane, and the Commerce Committee recognised—there was quite a major conversation on this—that it would be difficult to identify the type of vehicle. How would they identify an electric vehicle over a non-electric vehicle travelling in the bus lane? Before any local transport authority is going to allow an electric vehicle to travel in a bus lane—and Auckland has already said it is highly unlikely—it is going to have to install some sort of photography system so that it can check whether the people currently travelling, or who would possibly use that access, are actually electric vehicles. It is going to have to take photos of them, and it is then going to have to go through the motor vehicle registration files to see whether they are actually electric vehicles or not.

Can I just read that right now—actually, it is not right now; it was in December 2016—Norway, which has a population of 5.2 million people, which is a million more than us at the moment, hit 100,000 electric vehicles on its roads. But it did it with several different ways of incentivising. If I can read from the submission by ChargeNet NZ: “The nation of Norway allowed Electric Vehicles into high occupancy vehicle lanes. This was part of a policy package that included significant tax breaks at point of purchase for new Electric Vehicles. Norwegian policy should be considered at a city level … a national level (where Electric Vehicles were seen as critical to meet the nations carbon reduction goals in a petroleum focused economy, and a clear fiscal case was presented as part of this policy development that allowed the policy to be considered as part of an offset of Emission Trading Scheme costs), and a regional level (where European Union policy in regards to carbon, and Norway’s bilateral trade agreements with for example Germany … should be considered). It should also be noted that Norway is now politically struggling to phase out the high occupancy vehicle lane incentive, which has become a congestion issue.”

So it is as close to nothing as this Government could get to incentivise the uptake of domestic electric vehicles. It will have to be phased out within a 5-year period. I note that there were amendments by the select committee. It suggested, as the commentary on the bill states, an amendment to the Road User Charges Act: “We also recommend inserting new subsection (2A) to provide that the initial RUC exemption would expire no later than 31 December 2025,”—which is 8 years away—“and any subsequent exemption would last for no more than 5 years.” So that is a total of 13 years away, and yet if we look at the Government’s own statistics, we see that in May 2016 we had 1,394 electric vehicles registered and in May 2017 we had 3,576 electric vehicles registered. What this Government has put inside this bill, supposedly to incentivise electric vehicles, will need to be undone—if any local authority actually puts it in place in the first instance—because of downstream congestion.

What might have been smarter—and I have got to say I am disappointed by the submissions by Z Energy and by other organisations in that they did not push harder for this Government to actually incentivise charging stations. Distance anxiety is one of the largest blockages to New Zealand citizens actually picking up and taking on board a second-hand electric vehicle. They worry that they will not be able to get to the next charging station before they run out of juice, as such. But this Government went nowhere near that.

Just imagine if every Z station in the North Island had a super-charging station inside it. Imagine the distance that you could get to. Right now Northland is fairly covered—and thank you, Northpower, which I forgot in my previous contribution. But if you go past the Brynderwyns and you keep on going and head south, if you are trying to get from Auckland down to Tauranga you have got an enormous gap in there. You actually need to go to a caravan park, book into a park there, and see whether you can somehow run an extension cord.

This Government had an opportunity. It would not have cost it money, necessarily, but it would have cost it some time to think about how it could have created a greater electric vehicle incentive plan for this country. That would have gone a long way to our commitment to the Paris Agreement and to our carbon-neutral footprint.

This bill is an opportunity missed. We will support it because it does no harm. It amalgamates some levies, and away we go. But let us be clear: there is no innovation inside this bill. There is no vision here and there is no aspiration. New Zealand First, I think we are, what, 86 days away from having a Government that just might have some aspiration with regard to shifting the petrol-driven fleet, the diesel-driven fleet, that we currently have into something that is fit for purpose for the future. Kia ora.

It is a pleasure to rise in support of the Energy Innovation (Electric Vehicles and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. It is quite incredible: speeches in general pieces of legislation often go to show the fundamental philosophies that parties in a Government or potential Government have. The previous speaker from New Zealand First, Tracey Martin, pointed out—she has just been talking about special vehicle lanes—the highly centralised, top-down, authoritarian control model of a New Zealand First Government, or a Government New Zealand First might be a party in. Instead of celebrating and supporting giving choice about the use of special vehicle lanes by electric vehicles to the local roading authorities, which were either the councils for local roads or the New Zealand Transport Authority (NZTA) for highways—instead of giving them the choice to make a decision for what is relevant for a given town or a given stretch of highway—no; the answer over there is to get Government to have a blanket rule, presumably for everyone to do what it wants.

Well, I celebrate the idea that we are saying “Let us do some things, make some incremental changes, and offer some incentives that will help to shift some of the fleet away from non-renewable energy—fossil fuels—to electric vehicles, and, in this particular case, heavy vehicles.” We have already done work on light passenger vehicles. It is the incentives that can help people to make that decision to switch to these sorts of vehicles, giving them a bit of an exemption for a period of time on road-user charges, which are a real charge for them, and also giving them the potential use of special vehicle lanes.

But if we are going to permit special vehicle lanes, then I agree wholly that it should be the local authorities that get to make that decision. For example, just here in Wellington, most of the bus lanes—those special vehicle lanes in Wellington—are already permitted to be used by buses, obviously, but also by taxis, cyclists, and motorcyclists, except for a couple and they are restricted to bus only. If you had central government going to set out an edict for the use of these lanes across the country, what is the chance that it will catch those particular instances around the country? I would say zero.

The best way of making sure that you can potentially open this lane usage in a way that makes sense is to let the local authorities make that decision and apply it as best for their localities. The reality is that it is a small incentive. Having lived in Wellington for many years, with very narrow, windy roads, let me assure the House that if there were an incentive to be able to use a special vehicle lane, I would consider that, as a road user here, a very real incentive. Having been stuck in places like Glenmore Street just up the road here in rush-hour traffic, I would welcome the ability to be able to use a bus lane and would see that as an advantage of choosing that sort of a vehicle.

This bill also does some work around the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority levy, which will make sense about broadening the potential uses of the levy that is collected, all with the idea, of course, of helping to reduce emissions and promote energy efficiency. It is a bill that is meant and intended to give only incremental improvements, but those incremental improvements will provide small reasons for people to look to shift their vehicle usage—in this instance, particularly around heavy vehicles and domestic light vehicles, as I previously noted. It is a very sensible, pragmatic way forward, and I commend the bill to the House.

Well, it is great to know that Brett Hudson has got the resources—sorry; this is so bizarre—to swap out and buy a brand-new car for $20,000 to $30,000, because he thinks that he will now be able to use a bus lane. It is ridiculous if National thinks that being able to use a bus lane with your car is going to drive people to sell off their current cheapies and buy a brand-new electric vehicle just so they can drive in a bus lane. Is that seriously how National thinks people operate in this country? That is the craziest thing that I have heard in a long time from someone in National, and I have to listen to you guys every day, so, you know, it is quite out there.

We will support the bill, because it is this tiny little step forward. It is the most minuscule little step that National could possibly make in trying to encourage people into electric vehicles. There are so many other things that it could be doing that make it actually reasonable and feasible for people to be able to make the shift. One of the great things that it could be doing, as the Government, is shifting its own fleet to be able to help build the second-hand market in electric cars in this country. That is one of the things, right? Lots of people would really, really love to have an electric car and really do understand that in the long term for them there are savings both to their own pockets and their families’ pockets but also to the environment and the climate, and they want to make that shift. But these cars, at the moment, for most people, are pretty expensive.

So let us make sure, let us do what we can, to build a second-hand market in these cars. The fact is that one of the best ways to do that is to find encouragement for companies to change their fleet. It is those big companies—the Government included, as a large organisation—local governments, and other big companies that we need to shift their fleet into electric vehicles that will help to build the second-hand market, and it is just one of those useful things to do. It helps to reduce climate pollution. It helps to improve the state of vehicles in New Zealand, and it makes more and more electric vehicles more available to ordinary families who really would like to make the shift. It is these kinds of things, amongst others, that are actually being driven not by National, with its silly little bill, but by other organisations and communities.

I want to do a shout-out, actually, to all of those communities in New Zealand that have worked really hard to improve and increase the amount of solar on the roofs of their communities. Where I live in Dunedin, in Waitītī, in this little community down there, there has been a huge uptake in solar panels, for example. The school has got solar panels on it. It was supported by a community trust for that to happen. Some of the businesses that run out of Waitītī have been doing that as well. There are normal households that are trying to do that, because they know that they can help save money for themselves and also improve their environment and climate. There are people there who have got little single-dwelling windmills, wind turbines—just little ones—for their own use. There is a community trust there that is trying to build a community wind turbine for that community, as well. There is even a guy—this great guy—who takes second-hand petrol cars, turns them into electric vehicles, and makes them available at a reasonable price to people in the community. Yes. It is amazing. It is amazing what people will do when they work together because they believe in saving money in the short and long term and saving the climate and our environment.

It is that kind of innovation that we want a Government to be supporting. It is communities like that that are leading the way on what can be done to improve access to electric vehicles—in this case, second-hand ones—to make it possible for people to really be able to make the shift. Communities are leading the way in this country with the shift to clean, renewable energy and technologies, and then National members—with all the resources of Government that they have available to them—instead give us this tiny little bill that lets electric cars drive in the bus lane.

It is a disgrace. They are gone in 80-something days, eh? They are gone in 80-something days, and New Zealanders can rest assured that the new and progressive Government of which the Greens will be a part will make sure that there are genuine incentives and opportunities for this country to make that change to a genuinely renewable, sustainable technology that will save families money in their back pockets and save the climate at the same time—win-win. Thank you.

I too look forward to having a change to a Government that will actually do something innovative in this space and will actually commit to improving the uptake of electric vehicles in New Zealand, so that we can honour the commitments that our Government has given—which this side of the House fully intends to honour properly—about reducing pollution, reducing greenhouse gases, and reducing carbon emissions.

Sadly, this bill is not the thing that will actually address those very important issues. It is the most woefully inadequate piece of window dressing I have seen for quite some time, and that is saying something, because that Government is fond of bringing window dressing pieces of legislation before this House all of the time. We know that the Minister of Transport specialises in photo opportunities with electric vehicles, and this is really the legislative version of a photo opportunity with an electric vehicle. It purports to do something and then it does not actually do it.

We know that this Government has a woefully inadequate target of having 64,000 electric vehicles in the New Zealand fleet by 2021. It calls it ambitious. Well, what Treasury said about it was that, actually, if the Government did nothing, there would likely be more than 64,000 electric vehicles in this country by 2021 anyway. That is how uninspiring its target is. It is only 2 percent of the vehicle fleet by 2021. How aspirational is that? Not very. So it is no surprise, really, that this Government comes up with this type of measure.

I want to talk about the bus-lane initiative, because it is daft idea, actually. I am certain that the way the Government has drafted this bill, no territorial local authority will, in fact, make a decision to go down this path. No local authority with any sense will go down this path, because if it is a local authority like Auckland, say, and it has got congestion issues already—that is why it has bus lanes—why would it clog them up with other vehicles that are not about public transport and are not about sharing vehicles? Why would Auckland do that? The answer is that, almost certainly, Auckland is not going to do that. So where is this initiative going to be used? Which is the local authority that does not have a congestion problem but has bus lanes, or T3 or T2 lanes, and actually wants to spend ratepayers’ money trying to find out whether the vehicles in those lanes are electric vehicles or not? That is what this bill actually asks them to do. It says that if the local authorities want to take advantage of this poorly thought-out piece of policy, they are going to have to pay for the enforcement of it. No local authority is going to do that.

So the one thing, the one bad idea that this Government has come up with in order to try to make it look like it is interested in electric vehicles, is actually not going to be put in place anywhere. That is the reason why Labour is prepared to support this legislation, because, while it does not do anything, I think Tracey Martin is right: it does not do any harm. It could have done harm with that particular proposal, but I know, and I think everyone in this House knows, that no local authority is actually going to implement it, because it has been drafted so poorly.

It is very clear that this Government has no intention of making that innovative move to electric vehicles. How do we know this? We know this because between April and December 2016—so the Government makes this grand announcement in April about its new policy to increase electric vehicles. By December 2016, out of 2,039 vehicles purchased by that Government’s own procurement panel, how many of them were electric vehicles?

💬 Hon Ruth Dyson: How many?

Just eight. Just eight out of 2,039—and there is the proof of the pudding that that Government has no intention of actually doing the right thing to meet our climate change commitments and actually increase electric vehicles, therefore managing down our reliance on fossil fuels. This Government has just produced a piece of legislation that is the equivalent of a photo opportunity with an electric vehicle.

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak and participate and support this bill. First of all, I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate Emirates Team New Zealand on winning the America’s Cup. That was a proud moment for every Kiwi.

This bill gives a lot of options to enhance how we can improve on the technology. Tracey Martin touched upon the fact that the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) has got a limited scope, but this will give it the opportunity to ensure that there is more innovation in this area. EECA is a Crown entity responsible for encouraging, promoting, and supporting energy efficiency, energy conservation, and the use of renewable resources of energy. Under EECA’s current funding model, its entire levy funding is recovered from the electricity efficiency levy, which can be spent only on electricity efficiency activities. This bill will enable the cost of EECA’s activity to stretch across the levies of transport, fuel, and gas, as well as electricity. That will help to bring more innovation and more activities, so that EECA can spread its wings.

The previous speaker from the Labour Party, Sue Moroney, mentioned that local bodies will not implement that change in the using of bus lanes, because they feel that there is already congestion. But the fact is that the Government is giving an option to local bodies to ensure and feel what is for their best advantage. We do not want the Government in the centre to implement the policies and tell them what is best for them to do. They should decide which things are best for them, and they will implement those things accordingly. I think the points being raised by Sue Moroney were totally contradictory and did not have any logic to them. I think we should give authority to local bodies to ensure they can implement the policies in the way they feel is best for their local areas.

I would also like to mention that new emerging technologies are on offer, where we can have more efficient ways where we can save energy. These economical ways are the way to go forward. This bill will help to invite more innovation into New Zealand, and having electric cars is one of those. For example, the heat process in the dairy industry creates a lot of carbon emissions, and we want to have efficiency. Most of the fuel used in the transport sector is from fossil fuels. We want to encourage cars to use electric vehicle processes so that we can reduce—because we know that 80 percent of the energy produced in electricity is from renewable resources. I would like to commend this bill to the House, and I look forward to participating.

I think that this side of the House, right across the Opposition, has provided logical and reasoned arguments as to why this bill is, quite frankly, pathetic. It pains me to say it, but it is true. We are supporting it because, I think—as somebody said earlier—it does no harm. I think it was you, Tracey Martin, who said that it does no harm, and it is slight steps in a direction. But in terms of a vision, there is absolutely none. In terms of whether or not it will make any real, substantive difference to New Zealand’s emissions—probably not or certainly not in the short term. It shows no ideas—no sense of a bigger picture.

I want to get a sense of a bigger picture by reading out to the House part of an article that appeared in Newsroom—that new media, quite interesting entity—

💬 Michael Wood: Great stories.

—that does quite great stories. This was written yesterday by Rod Oram, and is basically saying that New Zealand is missing a chance to transform its economy by not speeding up the move to electric vehicles, according to the head of one of the country’s big electricity generators. That is Mercury Energy chief executive officer Fraser Whineray, who says, quite rightly, that “New Zealand has secure food, water and electricity supplies but not energy freedom because we still depend on imported fossil fuels. In order for us to transition to that, electric vehicles (EVs) are an imperative.” Mercury Energy—and I will also give a big tick to Air New Zealand—is spearheading a programme to increase the number of companies switching their fleets to electric vehicles. Thirty companies have signed up to a pledge to convert 30 percent of their fleet to electric vehicles in the next 3 years.

Those are companies actually showing some oomph in this area. What this Government could be, and should be, doing is showing leadership. Instead of this piecemeal, bitsy piece of legislation, why has it not made a commitment to the public sector, to the Government fleet, to transition to electric vehicles within a certain time period? It is because it has got no vision. That is basically the point.

Let me tell you about another country that does have vision, and that is Norway. The fleet of its plug-in electric vehicles is the largest per capita in the world, with Oslo recognised as the electric vehicle capital. In July 2016—so almost a year ago—the market concentration was 21.5 registered plug-in cars per 1,000 people, which is 14 times higher than the US, which was then the country with the largest market. So I think, by earlier this year, Norway has ended up with 5 percent of all passenger cars on Norwegian roads being a plug-in. The highest ever monthly market share for electric vehicles was achieved in January this year, with 37.5 percent of new car sales.

Electric vehicles are now overtaking those monthly sales of regular cars. That is something, and that is because that Government is showing leadership. Let me read to you what the energy and resources Minister said last week in a select committee. When I put it to her “Why isn’t the Government making a policy to convert its Government fleet?”, she said “Well, good golly. That’s probably a good idea, but I don’t make the policy and, you know, I don’t really know.” And she is the energy and resources Minister.

What that tells us is that this Government has no vision—no vision, no idea, no plan. It pays lip-service. This is a lip-service bill—an absolute lip-service bill. It is pathetic. The Government has had 9 years to do something, and this is what it can come up with—9 years to do something in this area, to actually show that it means business, to show that it is committed to truly reducing emissions. We are a country that is based on hydro. We have got the resource to use for electricity. Where is the plan? Just like in so many other areas—housing, education, health, you name it—the Government has got no plan in this area, where it could be visionary. It pays lip-service. I think Sue Moroney said it was a photo opportunity. It is even worse than that. This is a pathetic piece of legislation. We are supporting it. I feel a bit embarrassed, really, to even be talking about it. So I think the Government should be truly embarrassed to be putting this before the House.

Bill read a third time.