Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill

I move, That the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill be now read a second time.

I am very proud to rise in support of this important bill, which contains amendments to the Crown Minerals Act 1991, to give effect to the Government’s policy announcement on the future of offshore petroleum permitting. In April 2018, the Prime Minister announced that the Government was taking an important step to take action on climate change and begin a just transition to a low-carbon economy by halting the granting of any new offshore oil and gas exploration permits. This decision is about New Zealand’s future for the next 10 years, the next 20 years, the next 30 years, and the next 40 years.

This bill is about futureproofing our economy. We know the world is changing. Placing all our economic eggs in the basket of fossil fuels is simply not a long-term strategy for economic development. It sets us up for economic shocks, and we’ve seen in this country, when rapid economic transformation takes place, where that gets us. On this side of the House, we will not let that happen. We will not let New Zealand become a place that pulls the rug out from beneath workers and communities because we did not have the courage to think about the future. That’s why this is a long-term, managed transition.

This bill will not end oil and gas exploration, nor will it halt existing production. Existing rights and existing privileges for permit holders are being preserved. In addition, to support the just transition, the Government has established the just transitions unit within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) to help prepare for a future that will look different than today. The team is already on the ground in Taranaki, supporting local leadership to chart out a long-term course for the local economy beyond fossil fuels.

This Government is supporting this transition. We’re investing millions of dollars through the Provincial Growth Fund, and we’ll be investing millions more through the Green Investment Fund. Just this week, we introduced the bill to put $1 billion into innovative Kiwi businesses through our research and development tax credit. That will support new energy resources and sources like hydrogen, which will create jobs, improve living standards, and help us tackle climate change.

I now want to talk about the select committee process for this bill. To those who argue that the process was too short or was inadequate, I would like to point out that over 7,000 submissions were received in the response to the Environment Committee’s call for submissions. Over 7,000 organisations and individuals made submissions, and the vast majority of those submitters either supported the bill or felt that it did not go far enough. That is worth repeating: the vast majority of submitters either supported the bill or thought that it did not go far enough. I think this shows that we got the balance about right.

The Environment Committee heard from submitters voicing their concerns around climate change and the need for New Zealand to take immediate action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. The committee heard about the opportunities the bill will create to help stimulate innovation and increase uptake in alternative energy sources, and the committee heard about New Zealand’s desire to show leadership in the global effort to address climate change—leadership that is particularly important for our Pacific neighbours. While the vast majority of submissions supported the bill or felt that it did not go far enough, the Environment Committee also heard from submitters who had concerns. I would like to take this opportunity to address some of those concerns.

The committee heard from submitters concerned about the impact of the bill on the economy. To those submitters, I’d like to say that without this bill, we would only be postponing and intensifying an inevitable economic shock. The long-term picture is like this: the world is changing. Climate change is happening, and, with that change, our planet and our economies are changing. The world is racing to adapt and to stop its most damaging effects. This means that the same old ways of doing things don’t work anymore. We cannot expect to rely on fossil fuels for jobs and for prosperity for ever. The world is moving away from them, and we, as a country, have to be ready. If we don’t change and if we keep relying on these fuels, we’re going to get left behind. We must have the courage to lift our sights beyond the three-year electoral cycle and to plan in the long term.

To the submitters that were particularly concerned about the impact on communities in Taranaki, I want to reiterate our reassurance that this Government has a long-term plan for economic growth in our regions. As part of that, we’ve already started to invest in the regions through the Provincial Growth Fund in Taranaki. The Provincial Growth Fund has already earmarked more than $21 million in funding for the region, including almost $1 million in support of developing hydrogen as a zero-emissions hydrogen fuel, as well as support for other clean-energy technology projects.

During the committee, we also heard the tired old arguments—that I’m also hearing shouted out across the House—from the oil lobby that the only way to decrease global emissions is for us to continuously burn more and more carbon here in New Zealand. I’m sure we’ll hear the Opposition continue to sing from the oil lobby’s songbook today, but the reality is the rest of the world is taking action on climate change.

The MBIE’s analysis makes very clear that any oil or gas from Block Offer 2018 would not come into the system until 2027 at the earliest. By that time, major decarbonisation shifts will have occurred in the global economy as many countries work to meet their Paris Agreement targets. New technology such as battery storage and hydrogen will change the energy outlook.

💬 Jonathan Young: When’s that going to happen?

The overblown fear of carbon leakage is simply 20th century thinking in a 21st century world. To ask when that is going to happen shows how backward-looking the Opposition is. It is happening now. It is happening around the world. We are not talking about something in the never-never future; we are talking about a change that is happening in front of our eyes, and one that the Opposition refuse to open their eyes to.

But we need to get serious about planning for the next 30 years, and we need to begin that now. As our Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has said, climate change is this generation’s nuclear-free moment—our opportunity to once again lead the world, to follow in the proud tradition of New Zealand as a bold, visionary, and progressive country, and to begin the transition to a low-carbon economy that will create jobs and ensure prosperity. I am proud to commend this bill to the House.

Just a couple of points before I start on my substantive comments. The funding to hydrogen projects first started from this side of the House—Minister Megan Woods may forget that—and, secondly, if she is aware of what’s happening in Australia in terms of developing a hydrogen-based energy system, the Australian Gas Infrastructure Group have said that this will take them 20 to 40 years, and the New Zealand expert in this particular field has said to me that the development of such a system in New Zealand will take several decades.

My concern is that what we are seeing here is the ending of an industry and an energy source before we have a substantial replacement. We are going to be left with a substantial energy gap, which will affect not just households in New Zealand in terms of price increases in electricity but it will also affect major industries such as Fonterra, who are already quite nervous about where they’re going to get gas, particularly at this point in time right now, when they are hitting peak season. We do know, as does the spokesman over there for economic development, that we do have a gas supply shortage at the moment. We may not have a gas shortage just now, but we do have one coming. In fact, as we listened to the Ministry of Business, Innovation, and Employment (MBIE)—and they came to our committee to give us answers to our questions—they said to us that our gas resource and supply in terms of that which is proved, which we have 90 percent confidence can be delivered to market, is just under six years.

So when you look at a hydrogen-based system that can take 20 to 40 years to develop, or—from New Zealand experts—three decades, and we have a pending shortage of gas supply for companies like Fonterra that could come within six years, we’ve got an issue here. We’ve got an issue in New Zealand that I don’t think, you know, a 100-megawatt wind farm in Waverley—even though I support that project—is going to be able to rectify.

💬 Hon Nathan Guy: When are they going to wake up?

When are they going to wake up? You know, it’s not as if we disagree with renewables. We don’t, but we want stability in New Zealand’s economy. We do not want more jobs lost, as an example of what’s already happening in Taranaki, with companies disappearing offshore, leaving this country—oil and gas companies selling up because they have no faith in this Government for their future.

What we want is stability. What we want, potentially, is a cross-party agreement, understanding energy and resources so we can have stability that does not chill off international investment. But not once—not once—did I get a phone call from the Minister of Energy and Resources. Not once did she ever approach me and say, “Let’s talk about it.” You know, I’ve had better conversations with the Green Party, who are probably on the far end of the spectrum, and Gareth Hughes has had the decency to say to me that if we wanted to go to Taranaki to hear people there, he would support that. I want to commend him and Chlöe Swarbrick for those positions of what I consider decency of Parliament to the people of Taranaki, who would be most affected by the decision that this Government is making.

Can I also say that we received a submission from OMV. They are the company in New Zealand who have already invested $2 billion and have paid probably a billion dollars of royalties to the New Zealand Government, who have the highest number of permits offshore than any other company—a company that is highly respected by MBIE; that has world’s best practice in operation. What they have said in their submission to the Environment Committee is that unless they have a commercial discovery in the 2019-20 summer drilling season—so that’s just over 1½ years away in terms of their thinking—and unless they have success, and we need to understand the chance of success is probably less than 10 percent, they will cease investment in New Zealand.

So when I say that there is a pending shortage, what we are saying is that MBIE’s figures say that we have confidence—90 percent confidence—for the next just under six years, but our biggest operator is saying they have confidence for two years, and I say that that has got to be a concern. Minister, that has got to be a concern. I would say that we will not have renewable generation in place to cover this gap by then. In fact, as I said today in questions to the House, today we are seeing massive increases in the wholesale cost of electricity because lake levels are low. Yes, and we face this—we’ve had two shortages, two lake-level issues, in one year. Potentially, this summer will be another, and we’ve also had an outage at the Pohokura field. Firstly, it was an issue around their pipeline, and, secondly, it is the shut-off valve that they are attempting right now to repair, and, because of that, that field has been operating at 50 percent capacity. Because of that, today we are burning 5,000 tonnes of coal to keep these lights on.

I’m asking in terms of the energy, complexity, and integration of our system here in New Zealand, what are we doing to ensure that New Zealand homes, schools, hospitals, and businesses can have access to affordable and reliable electricity? I believe that this decision by this Government wanting to address an issue around climate change is actually not achieving that, but is putting our economy and our jobs and our homes at risk, and this is why we actually protest. Yes, it’s jobs; yes, it’s the Taranaki economy; and yes, they have failed to consult, but it is an issue that will spread over New Zealand, and right now if this Government were to deny those issues, then they are not facing facts.

We are seeing a huge spike in electricity. We are seeing a massive increase in greenhouse gases today because of gas shortage. Is this a picture of the future? Well, it might not be if renewables can step in, but I don’t think they can. In fact, I have driven from this Parliament to Wellington Airport and I have looked at Transpower’s dial on their website to see that at that particular point in time, when 6,500 megawatts of electricity was being consumed on the coldest night in winter, we had zero megawatts from North Island and South Island wind because there was a high over the country, and that’s the vulnerability.

If we want to see more and more renewables, what we’ve got to understand is that the reliability factor around the technology to bring reliability is not with us yet. In fact, the Wind Energy Association have said—and I went to their conference—that they think that by 2026, they might be able to have an economic solution for batteries and turbines. Well, you know, that’s eight years away. That’s a long time away. I don’t take it—when the Minister of Energy and Resources says that we are looking back in the past, we’re dinosaurs, and they’re the 21st century Government, that is not true. I think we’re the smart ones, who actually are not prepared to be driven by ideology but want to get down to the facts and get down to the issues and we want to consult. We want to talk to the industries involved, and that is electricity, that is hydrocarbons, that is geothermal, that’s wind power, and that’s the solar generators.

We want to have an integrated system that is reliable, that New Zealanders can count on, and what’s happening with this bill is it’s creating a flaw—it’s creating a vulnerability in our energy system. It’s not that we are champions of hydrocarbons, but we are champions of energy for New Zealanders—energy for life, energy that will equip and enable our enterprises to succeed, energy that will continue to flood our schools and our hospitals, and energy that will enable our economic activity to grow and increase.

This Government has been criticised for lack of consultation. Let me say, if you consulted, you would have learnt a lot more. I have consulted far more, I believe, than the Minister of Energy and Resources, because she’s turned her back. When Treasury looked at the MBIE report, what did they say? They said “We looked at this report.”, and the statement that they said was that “Due to the time limitations and the analytical constraints arising from Cabinet’s previous decisions, MBIE had not consulted the petroleum industry or the public on the proposals.”

What is an analytical constraint? It’s a decision by that Cabinet to not analyse, to not get the data, to not get the information, and to not learn the truth, but to make a decision based on ideology, to make a decision that’s formed together to form a coalition that has been purely what they call leadership—I call it the lack of leadership. They have made a decision to weaken this country, instead of taking a pragmatic and a practical, a systematic, and an evidence-based and scientific-based decision—and I invite dialogue with us, because the time will come when we are in Government and we might have to fix up what you’ve started. We stand against this bill with everything in our being.

I rise to support the comments of the Minister of Energy and Resources, the Hon Megan Woods, and to thank her for bringing this legislation to the House. I’ve been around this place for 16 years now, and those speeches that we’ve just heard from the Opposition—I’ve got to say I’ve heard it all before. I was Minister of Energy from 2005 to 2008. I arrived at a time when New Zealand’s renewable electricity was decreasing. It was down to 64 percent of total and it was decreasing. We turned that around by a range of measures that led to investment certainty for the generation sector. We priced emissions—National opposed that.

💬 Todd Muller: Nothing to do with the National Party. It’s all you.

Well, actually, on this occasion it is actually us, Mr Prebble—ah, Mr Muller. Mr Muller—sorry. It is. I’ll come back to that. We authorised the necessary investments in the grid to bring distant renewables to market to give investment certainty. We brought forward new forms of renewable regeneration—at that time, wind. We encouraged the generators to invest in renewables. We had a ban on baseload generation from thermal, which the subsequent Government repealed.

Now, at the time, the spokesperson for energy from the National Party was the Hon Gerry Brownlee. For those who want to look at this online, you just google “Sexy Coal Brownlee”, because he put up a blog, which I’m sure he now regrets, which was called “Sexy Coal”. He did that to gain attention, and he said that New Zealand, if we turned our back on thermal, would face an energy gap. This is one of the slides or the images from that video clip that is still there, and you can see that he has this growing wedge of energy insecurity in New Zealand that he predicted could only be filled with thermal—coal and gas.

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m sorry to interrupt the member, but the second reading is actually supposed to focus on the main purpose and the contents of the bill. Speakers’ rulings 108/2-5 all deal with that. So I’d ask to the member to relate the history to the contents and the principles of the bill in front of the House, please.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. In fact, I considered those rulings before I took my call, and Speaker’s ruling 108/3 says that “the broad principles … are a proper subject of discussion [it’s] relevant to”—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: That’s right.

Now, I’m responding to the comments of Jonathan Young, the energy spokesman from the National Party—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I’d like you to actually focus on the broad principles of the bill in front of the House.

The broad principle of this bill is that we need to have a transition away from fossil fuels. The argument that the member opposite has been making—and I’m in debate now, Madam Deputy Speaker; I’m not making point of order, and I haven’t been making a point of order—is that we can’t do that because security of supply will be at risk. I’m saying that’s not correct, and this is the same argument that is always run by the National Party whenever we move along this transition away from fossil fuels. In simple terms, you cannot start a transition without starting a transition.

💬 Jonathan Young: It’s already started before you put this bill in.

Well, after this legislation goes through, 100,000 kilometres, approximately, of prospective territory already permitted for exploration which can be taken to conclusion—that is the most prospective 100,000 square kilometres that New Zealand has, which is why it was offered first. That’s the equivalent of the area of the North Island.

The contradictions in the last speaker’s contribution are clear. On the one hand he said that we’ve heard that takes till about 2027 to bring on any gas from new block offers, assuming they were explored and then drilled tomorrow, and yet he says we can’t rely upon the comments from the Wind Energy Association saying that if we want battery storage it won’t be here till 2026. That’s far too far out. These are long time frames. The system has time to adjust. I would make some predictions as to how the system will adjust, because what is happening here is we are creating investment certainty for those who have to make the generation investments that we need over the next couple of decades.

The work that’s been done by Transpower and others that have modelled the extra electricity generation that’s needed to electrify transport, to take renewables ever closer to 100 percent of total electricity generation, and to start replacing some industrial heat—there’s roughly a doubling of electricity generation capacity needed in the next 20 or 30 years. We want that to be renewable. We are, by this decision, making it clear that it must be renewable. Who will invest? The people who want to make a buck out of renewables.

Now, the next argument we hear from the National Party is that that will increase prices. Well, we don’t agree with that on this side of the House, and we point to the fact that since those decisions were taken by the last Government—and they were taken mainly by the last Government—the investment that flowed as a consequence lifted New Zealand’s renewables from that declining percentage at 64 percent up to 85 percent or 84 percent in a recent quarter. That’s because we’ve created the right investment signal for people to invest in renewables. Actually, the last Government said they were going to abandon the 90 percent renewables target that we’d set. In the end, Mr Brownlee was moved on and Hekia Parata had the good sense to keep it. That ambition was maintained, and we are close to realising that because we are 85 percent renewables now. It hasn’t been the cause of electricity price rises. Those electricity price rises in recent years have actually been caused by increments in the reinforcement of the grid that the last Government, wisely, carried on with. The current cheapest sources of new generation are renewables, proven by the fact that that’s what those companies are investing in—in geothermal and wind.

💬 Jonathan Young: It’s not true.

He says it’s not true. Well, why are they doing it, then?

💬 Jonathan Young: MBIE gave us a report last week, and it’s gas baseload.

Well, the latest investment that we’ve had is this new wind farm in Taranaki, and they’re doing that because it’s more cost-effective for them than investing in more gas. That decision was obviously under way before this latest decision was taken.

I think that we’ve got a very, very low-cost transition to a low-carbon future in New Zealand, and I also think that we’ve got more advantages in doing this than any other country in the world.

💬 Jonathan Young: Yeah.

The member agrees we have. Well, then, if New Zealand doesn’t do it, who will? If New Zealand doesn’t do it, who will? The answer to that is no one. And if no one does it, we ruin the planet. So there really is another issue, other than the dollars and cents. I think this will prove to be cheaper than the alternatives anyway, because we’ll replace our reliance on those expensive imported fossil fuels, and we’ll replace them with hydrogen and electricity in batteries. But if New Zealand doesn’t do this—if we’ve got the cheapest transition in the world and we don’t—then no one will. If that’s the sort of leadership that the National Party wants to show the world, well, I’m glad I’m on this side of the House. I believe that this is sensible policy. I believe it will be sending the right investment signal that we want industry to be investing in renewables so that over the next 20 to 30 years, we double generation capacity so that we electrify transport and electrify industrial heat.

The one technology key that we’ve not yet cracked is hydrogen. I thank the member for his contribution, saying that the last Government made some efforts in that regard. Those were good, and we’re continuing on and amplifying those. We’ve had an agreement signed last week with Japan, who are one of the world leaders on hydrogen technology. I’ve got other things here. [Holds up pictures] These have been shown in the House recently. We’ve got hydrogen cars out there in the world now from Hyundai and from Toyota. We’ve got hydrogen buses, we’ve got hydrogen trucks, and we’ve got hydrogen trains.

💬 Hon Member: They’re a million dollars.

The member says they’re expensive. They are expensive, but if you go back 20 years or 30 years, so was wind power. The cost of these are being driven down. The Japanese are absolutely determined to use their point of comparative advantage in these technologies to create industrial opportunities for themselves and to clean up the world. We’re going to help them do it because we’re going to get the investment signal right in New Zealand. We’re going to go to renewables. We’re going to bring forward those new technologies. We did it when last in Government, getting ahead of the curve in wind. If we hadn’t done that as a Government, New Zealand would have developed and burnt more gas rather than going into wind. That’s proven to be beneficial for us, and we’ve been able to take advantage of the cost of wind power, which is still going down even to this day—those new facilities.

I have great confidence that this country will be one of the first countries in the world to get to net zero in carbon dioxide, and I’m very confident that we’ll not only be cleaner but we will be wealthier as a country because we’ll avoid that imported oil bill. My goodness, wouldn’t that be good, if we were a beacon of hope in the world rather than yet another source of despair, as the other side of this House would have our trajectory.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. One of the significant consistent themes across the select committee process and the submitters that the Environment Committee heard from was an incredible frustration and palpable anger that the Government had put in front of this Parliament a policy that was anti - climate change, anti - New Zealand’s economic interests, and anti - Taranaki region and that had absolutely no supporting data that the ministries could stand behind. This is the low tide, in my opinion, of this Government’s performance thus far—low tide in terms of competence and low tide in terms of analysis. This is public policy of the worst sort, because—and we heard it in Megan Woods’ contribution this afternoon—when you strip their rhetoric away, this has nothing to do with climate change. This is about their fundamental view, informed by their relationship with the Green Party, that they are anti - the extractive industries—full stop—because the data says you don’t need to do this, but the Government are doing it anyway.

The Government is anti - big oil. You heard it in Megan Woods’ criticism that by giving voice to a sensible view that most New Zealanders hold—in our opinion—somehow we are captured by big oil. That’s why the Prime Minister stood on the forecourt, signalling that this decision was going to be made, with the slogan “End big oil” behind her. That’s why she went up to Europe and made this decision quickly, despite the fact that the official advice said do not do it from an economy perspective, do not do it from a climate change perspective, and do not do it from a regional development perspective. Your own officials are saying this is woeful policy, but do it you do, because it’s all about celebrity politics. It’s all about the slogan. It’s all about being able to stand up beside Emmanuel Macron and say, “Look. We, New Zealand, are taking a leadership position. We are going to end big oil.” And then, when the communities that you’re going to impact say “Come and see us and talk to us about it.”, you say “No.”, because that is exactly what we have seen: an arrogance of a breathtaking—breathtaking—level.

Let’s step through some of the perspectives that we heard and allowed through our questioning to be put on the table through the select committee process. The economic impacts: 4,000 jobs at risk; $7.9 billion of export receipts lost—they’re all looking down; anyone who’s watching this at home, they can’t look at us—this is the Government’s own official advice on the cost of this policy, and that is a mid-point. It’s up to $23 billion. That’s what the advice says—4,000 jobs.

Now, the other argument—and you’ve heard it here—is “But we have to do this because we must take a leadership position in climate change.” How many of the Government members have actually bothered to test that rhetoric by actually asking the question around the role of gas in the global supply and energy demand in the next 30 or 40 years? I suspect none of them. If you look out 30 or 40 years in terms of energy demand globally, I accept coal is on a negative trajectory. Renewables are on a significant uplift from an almost zero base globally. But the other key energy source that is seen as having a huge future across the world over the next 30 or 40 years is gas, as all those developing countries that are currently dependent on coal have the opportunity to move to gas. Gas has half the emissions profile of coal.

We sit in little New Zealand at the bottom of the world on an extraordinary gas resource that we could extract, that we do extract, that we could extract more of, and that we could assist the developing countries to move from coal to gas and assist the global climate change endeavour, and they say no because they would prefer the slogan of “End big oil” because it goes really well when you give a speech like that at Victoria University, but not so much when you’re out in provincial New Zealand and not so much when you’re in the Taranaki region. It is all ideology.

The whole premise of this bill—and we heard it from David Parker—is for New Zealand to take a leadership role on climate change. Leadership is providing developing countries with a fuel source that reduces their dependence on coal, and all the other gas exporters of the world, those countries around the world—Norway, other Scandinavian countries that have gas reserves—are wanting to fill their boots with that economic opportunity. But not this Government, not this group, because, actually, it’s not what the data says, from their perspective. It’s not a rational response. It is just optics. It is just an “End big oil” slogan that they want to be associated with.

Another area that I want to touch on is that I am currently working on behalf of the National Party with Mr Shaw on seeing whether there’s an opportunity to develop bipartisan support for a climate change commission, a commission that, if it is established—as certainly it has been signalled it will be—is to provide best-practice, science-based evidence on these sorts of issues. The Government, in its haste to get these sorts of issues being thought about by an independent climate change commission, has given an interim Climate Commission two jobs: find us ways of lifting our renewable generation from 85 percent to 100 percent, and find out whether or not it is appropriate to deal with agricultural emissions via an emissions trading scheme mechanism. They have a pre-committee already established for the purpose of these sorts of debates.

So if the Government wants to have a fair conversation around the issue and role of gas and coal and our natural extractive resources in the energy mix of this country and its export profile looking out 10, 20, 30 years, this is exactly the issue that you would give to a climate commission. Not a show, not even interested, and I know why: because a climate commission that is tasked with looking at what the science says, that is tasked with looking at what the economic impacts are, and that is tasked with looking at what the rest the world does would say, “This is flawed policy. Don’t do it.” My view is that they would give the same voice opposed to this public policy disaster as their own officials did, and still they look to the floor. If only this was some sort of theoretical debate, ladies and gentlemen, but, actually, Taranaki is one of our strongest regions: 4,000 people employed directly; 11,000 indirectly.

💬 Jonathan Young: Three National Party MPs.

Indeed—very good ones, Jonathan. And when Bill Simpson from Waitara drove four hours to the select committee to give a heartfelt contribution on what this meant for his community and his whānau, by the time it got to five minutes—“Thanks. See you later. Our decision is made.”

Our future—New Zealand’s future—is symbols and speeches at the UN. It’s not delivering value for the people of Aotearoa and the regions who depend on being part of a global journey on climate change. This party rejects this as retrograde legislation that should be thrown out. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for this opportunity to speak to this legislation. As usual, I am dismayed and upset by the hysteria and scaremongering coming from the other side of the House. In fact, many of the words that Mr Müller said in his contribution to the House—

💬 DEPUTY SPEAKER: I think you’ll find his name is Muller.

Oh, I apologise. I think everyone in the House will find my name is “Tabuteau”. But, anyway, Mr Muller—his words I could have used verbatim, because he’s right. What the National Party have done is sold this story of everything stopping—“It’s the end of the world, and it’s happening now.”—so let’s do a little reality check for those members opposite, shall we? The reality is in the next 18 months or so, the fine companies that the member from New Plymouth spoke about—

💬 Jonathan Young: Mr Young.

Yeah, I was going to pronounce it wrong, so I didn’t want to say it. OMV, Todd, and others have signed up to currently 18 drills over the next 18 months. They’re dropping lines right now. In fact, from memory, there’s a 450-kilometre line being laid right now by one of those companies to get to those gasfields.

💬 Jonathan Young: 450 kilometres?

No, you’re right. It must be 45 kilometres. So the—

💬 Jonathan Young: Know your facts.

Oh, be quiet. The reality is that what we are seeing—sorry, he interrupted my flow of thought—is actually potentially 31 permits, as Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand itself has said, over the next 18 months. There are 31 permits for drop to drill lines right now.

So Mr Muller was talking about the need to get gas, get it now, and make sure it’s part of our transition to renewables. That’s exactly what we’re making sure can be done, and that’s what we said we’ve wanted them to do. In fact, one of those companies just applied for an extension on one of those exploration permits’ time line because they made the argument that they’re going to need more time to do it. Guess what? The extension was approved straight away.

💬 Jonathan Young: By MBIE, not the Minister.

Straight away, by this Government, Mr Young.

So the scaremongering from the other side of the House is just infuriating, because it does generate its own kind of self-fulfilling prophecy by those in that area who believe it—who believe those members of the House who say these things. This gentleman on the other side of the House was trying to make the argument in his contribution today and in question time, as he said himself, that gas supplies were running out, when Minister David Parker himself very clearly outlined that the reason for the price increases was not the supply of gas or the volume of gas available; it was the infrastructure itself that was in need of repair and was at 40 percent capacity. And yet over there they’re talking about running out of gas.

So it is frightening what they are saying and it is incredibly disappointing, because New Zealand First and this Government have written a piece of legislation that ensures—actually, here’s another point for Mr Muller again. Over the last, what, 20 years, with the declining price of oil, Taranaki exploration has naturally decreased, because where’s the profit motive in it for big business? That has been the fundamental decline in oil exploration over the last decade or so—because of the price of oil. Well, guess what’s happening now, now that the price of oil is going up? They’re exploring more. The viability of the commercialisation of those drops is looking better every day, and so the exploration is increasing. So please stop—

💬 Jonathan Young: Exploration doesn’t create a resource.

No, it doesn’t. But there they are—big business doing the numbers, dropping the lines, looking for gas and oil right now out in Taranaki. So I suppose I should stop addressing—it was just infuriating to hear.

This is a good piece of legislation. It is a piece of legislation that is about transition. It is legislation that has put a line in the sand, as it were, and that has said—as Mr Parker actually so eloquently put it in his contribution—we are a country that has been through this conversation before. We are transitioning to renewables. We have sent clear signals to industry, and we have seen investment in those renewable technologies increase such that our renewables is at, I think, 84 percent. That is fantastic. We need to do more, and industry itself wants to do more—new wind farms, new solar plants.

Mr Young made the argument that we’re not there with solar and battery technology yet.

💬 Jonathan Young: Of course we aren’t.

Well, he’s saying it again, and yet one of our biggest electricity suppliers in New Zealand is installing solar and battery combinations into new builds in Auckland and has been doing it for over a year because the numbers make sense, Mr Young. The numbers already make sense, and what we’re seeing—like the microchip in computers; the processing chip—is the exponential increase in power with the correlating drop in price. That’s exactly what we’re seeing with battery technology. It’s an incredibly exciting time to be a part of a Government that has said that it’s time to consciously make that decision to transition, to encourage those big businesses who see renewables as the way forward for this country.

Mr Parker said “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were a beacon.”, but, actually, Mr Parker, we are a beacon in the world already with our 84 percent renewables. The diversity of renewable technologies that we use is a light for countries around the world. They are excited by what they see here.

This House has been having a conversation about hydrogen. I’d like to add to that because, personally, I find the technology incredibly exciting and so have been doing a lot of work with businesses in Taranaki, for example, and around the country who are looking at accelerating the hydrogen time line as we speak. Mr Young, did you go to Aberdeen with that group to speak and watch as the energy industries from around the world had this exciting conversation about hydrogen and the way forward? In fact, Minister Woods was in Japan just recently having a very similar conversation with Japanese officials and Japanese business. Mr Parker was right: Toyota, Hyundai, and Honda are on board now with hydrogen technology. They’re speaking about 30 years, but, actually, I’ve just been having a conversation with New Zealand businesses who are talking about retrofitting technology for large trucks for hydrogen, and the payback period on it is five years, from the savings on the fuel alone. Now that is, according to them, less than a year away in terms of physical implementation and viability into the market—less than a year away, hydrogen—and New Zealand is in an amazing position to offer the world this green hydrogen alternative. We can export that to the world, and this Government and I, personally, are incredibly excited to be part of that journey and to help accelerate that.

In the meantime, we are making sure that there is a transition phase for gas and the transition technologies that are available. More permits and more drilling is happening right now, and I truly wish them the best because it is a hard business to be in and very difficult to make money. So good luck to them, and yeah, let’s get on with this and transition to an economy and a country where energy is something that we can be incredibly proud of. Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to rise to speak on this bill, and I must signal that I am standing to oppose this bill, together with my National Party colleagues, who spoke so passionately before me. I have to say that I may not have the technical expertise that the two speakers who spoke before me have, because they have been involved in this particular area for quite some time.

But I would like to start off with a response to Mr Fletcher Tabuteau, who actually used some words that I found quite interesting. He talked about hysteria on the side, he talked about how infuriated he was at listening to us, and he was talking about how frightening things were for him. I guess I want to start with how infuriated he should be at his colleagues. This particular legislation comes about because—actually, it was about the timing of the Prime Minister’s first trip overseas. It was policy on the hoof, like the one that she actually made about the regional fuel tax. She said that as long as she is the Prime Minister, there won’t be another one, and when we asked Minister Shane Jones about when he’d first heard about it, he said, “When the Prime Minister stood up.”

This particular policy, about the decimation of Taranaki and the industry, was one of those. It was one of those policies that the Prime Minister, together with two other leaders of the party that she is in coalition with, made without the consultation of the Cabinet or the advice of the officials, who should be the experts that the Prime Minister and the Ministers and the Cabinet should turn to.

I am totally, totally floored by the decision that this Government has actually made. This is going to cost—as my learned colleague to the left of me, Todd Muller, said—4,000 real jobs, and 11,000 jobs that are affected as a result of those jobs being impacted in a region that is going to be decimated. Taranaki as a whole industry is going to be decimated—the townspeople, the city is impacted by this terrible decision that this Government has made. I am actually quite disgusted by the process—actually, the lack of process—that this Government has carried on, on this particular bill. What was the urgency that the select committee only had four weeks to manage this bill, to return it to this Chamber, and that the industries that have invested millions of dollars only had two weeks to respond, to make submissions to this particular bill? And then, when they did in fact turn up to the select committee, they only had 15 minutes to submit to it and some of them didn’t even get that time, either.

I was very interested to think about how much this $7.9 billion—the loss in revenue that this particular bill is costing. That is actually in the regulatory impact statement: $7.9 billion in lost revenue, and potentially up to $23.5 billion—not million; billion. And $7.9 billion will actually pay for quite a lot of things, as you could imagine: the Auckland light rail that, you know, cost $1.8 billion; the Waterview tunnel that the National Government delivered only cost $1.4 billion; Transmission Gully is only going cost $850 million; the brand new Dunedin Hospital only costs $1.2 billion; KiwiBuild is only $2 billion; Christchurch Stadium is only half a billion dollars.

I sort of thought, what else could $7.9 billion deliver for New Zealanders? I mean, up and down the country, this Government has seen unprecedented strikes from industries and teachers, and Government officials are even striking. I mean, this $7.9 billion in lost revenue could potentially deliver 316,000 hip replacement surgeries—316,000 hip replacement surgeries. It could actually deliver two more Auckland harbour bridges. That would be fantastic, I’m sure, for connecting the north and south. The average salary of 130,000 police officers—it could actually deliver 130,000 extra police officers with $7.9 billion. That would be 37,000 extra neurosurgeons that we could actually afford, and it could also mean a home for every homeless person in Auckland—$7.9 billion can actually deliver that. Yet this Government makes a policy, a unilateral decision without consultation, and they say—and I’d like to quote the Minister, actually. The Minister said this was actually about long-term management. I am baffled. I am actually unsure what she means—long-term management by this Government. Do they actually think that the long-term management that this Government is delivering for the people of Taranaki and the industry is loss of jobs, loss of revenue, and loss of opportunities for New Zealanders who actually rely on this?

One of the most interesting facts I found—and many members have talked about renewable energy. I don’t think there is anyone in this Chamber who will disagree that we need to move there, but it needs to have a clear plan, it needs to have clear signals, and it needs to have clear consultation before a policy is designed, discussed, debated, and implemented—not to unilaterally decide that it’s going to look good for the Prime Minister when she goes to the UN to say “Hey, New Zealand’s actually going down this way.” so that it’s great for the media press conferences and what have you. There is a lack of process, and I am appalled by that.

One of the things that the Minister Megan Woods actually said in her speech was that the future will look different than today. I am in agreement with that on one point: it certainly will look different. There’ll be 4,000 less people with a job and perhaps up to 11,000 people who will suffer as a result of this decision. Talking about renewable energy, I would like to share with the members in the House that it actually takes 270 tonnes of steel to make a wind turbine—270 tonnes of steel to make a wind turbine. Do members know how much coal it actually takes to create that tonnage of steel? It actually takes 300 tonnes of coal to make the steel that is required for a single turbine. It is not as green as some members have actually quoted.

Another thing that the Minister has actually said is—and I quote—“We are a Government that listens, then acts. That consults widely, thinks through issues deeply and seeks to forge consensus in how we can take New Zealand forward together.” I say to the Minister: bah humbug! That is utter rubbish, and they have shown by their lack of action that they are not true to their words. It is only words. You can see it in their actions: no consultations; they haven’t listened. There are industries that are actually really, really concerned. There are constituents who are really, really concerned. All of Taranaki and all of New Zealand is really concerned, and this Government is interested in rushing this through.

I am appalled by their action. They claim to be the most open and most transparent Government that this country has ever seen. I say that’s utter rubbish.

Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. This bill draws a line in the sand and starts the transition away from polluting fossil fuels towards clean energy. The Green Party is incredibly proud to see this legislation. After years of campaigning against that side’s “drill it, frack it, mine it” agenda for New Zealand, we’re finally starting to see the end of offshore oil and gas exploration. This bill shines like a beacon of hope in a world darkened by the threat of climate change.

This Government’s finally listening to people who want action on climate change, who want us to begin the transition now. This is urgent—the time is already running out. If we want to move to a gradual, sustainable system of energy production, we should have started decades ago, so we absolutely need to start now. The planet depends upon it, and those workers in the industries deserve the certainty of a transition.

We saw a huge number of submissions. An overwhelming majority of them support this legislation—in fact, they want it to go further—and then there were the oil and gas companies. At a time when islands are literally being washed away by rising seas, when super-storms are smashing into countries and killing thousands, and when vast swaths of the Earth are literally burning, big oil and gas came and talked to us about revenue, royalties, and attractiveness to foreign investors. They focused on their balance sheet risk when the rest of the country was talking about planetary risk. Economics is a question about resource allocation and negotiating how you do it, but you can’t negotiate with physics.

Over the course of the submissions, we heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their wake-up call report which said that we have to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030 if we want to avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius and the tipping point of catastrophic climate change. We’ve got to be clear and honest, and I wish National members were honest—there’s no sustainable way to burn fossil fuels. The science says we can’t afford to burn more than two-thirds to 75 percent of all the fossil fuels we’ve already found, let alone spending the next decades out exploring for more that we can’t afford to burn.

The oil and gas companies came and said, “We need to burn the gas because it’s slightly less polluting than the coal.”

💬 Hon Member: Half.

That’s like a tobacco company coming and saying “You should switch to mild cigarettes.”—and you very well know that the science isn’t clear, and it’s not as low as that. I don’t know why on earth we would trust the oil and gas companies when it comes to the science of climate change. This is the industry that has known about the science of climate change for decades and has actively worked and funded to stop action on climate change for their own profit. Their arguments are hollow and absolutely self-interested.

We’ve got a wealth of better options in New Zealand than fossil fuels and more gas. We’ve got a wealth of clean renewable energy. Over the course of the submissions, we heard that a new 100 megawatt wind farm is being built in Taranaki because it’s cheaper than fossil fuels. Across my lifetime, the price of solar has dropped by 99 percent, and it keeps getting cheaper every year.

Ever since 2011, there has been a global tipping point, and there’s more net international capital invested in renewables than fossil fuels. In the last year, we had figures that twice as much was invested in clean energy than fossil fuels. I mean, look at New Zealand. We’re already 84 percent renewable. We’ve got more than 3,000 megawatts of already consented renewables, ready to be built.

The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority says we have a $2 billion opportunity to use energy more efficiently, and we’ve got more ready and waiting. The gas industry says we need it for storage, but Transpower’s report Te Mauri Hiko shows we can use battery storage in the renewables scenario. When you look across the Ditch, they’ve got giant, 129-megawatt lithium-ion batteries. When you look at the price of batteries, they’re actually following what Moore’s law did for computing, which is a halving in price every 18 months. We’re seeing record sales of electric vehicles, and other countries are actually banning the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles—such as Norway, by 2025. It seems that the only people who are pessimistic about renewables are the National Party and the oil companies.

The fact is that oil and gas is a sunset industry. The truth is we need it to be a sunset industry. This sunset industry came to the select committee and portrayed renewable energy as some sort of unaffordable pipedream, but the only fantasy is the belief that we can have fossil fuels and a safe climate. Burning fossil fuels is what got us into the mess. It’s the reason why our consumers are paying such high prices. It’s the problem; it’s not the solution.

Then the lobbyists came and complained about the process. The very same industry that supported and the very same party that passed the egregious Anadarko amendment, a bill passed under urgency on Easter Sunday with absolutely zero select committee process to criminalise protest activity at sea; the very same industry that used the navy as private security when Te Whānau-a-Apanui got in the oil industry’s way; the very same industry that lobbied the previous Government and former Governments to get the fourth-lowest tax plus royalty rate in the world and $88 million a year in estimated fossil fuel subsidies; the very industry that’s left a trail of oil spills, broken promises, and divided communities—they came and complained about the process.

Lobbyists from the oil and gas industry are trying to paint this as some sort of sudden change, which is completely false. For years, I have challenged this industry to nominate a date when the transition should start—a transition that they said was inevitable but that they never showed leadership on, and the previous Government didn’t, either. This Government has decided to start the transition, but under this bill, oil and gas permits will continue for decades following. All existing rights are protected under this bill—that’s existing permits for prospecting, exploration, and mining—as well as the right to upgrade an exploration permit to become a mining permit if oil and gas is found. This bill is extremely generous to the oil and gas industry, yet they’re trying to mischaracterise it as a sudden change. I mean, look, there’s 100,000 square kilometres of existing permits. That’s the size of Iceland. All this bill does is stop future permits from being granted for offshore oil and gas exploration.

Current exploration permits have a wide variety of end dates, with some going even into the 2040s, and they can still be upgraded to mining permits, which means we could see mining for decades post that. The country is moving to net zero emissions by 2050 because the science demands it, but under this bill we could still be drilling past 2050, and then, the National Party and the oil and gas industry still want even more time to drill for fossil fuels we can’t afford to drill. And then, existing permits can still be extended on a case by case basis.

Now, we did see the OMV permit get an extension, which I strongly disagree with. I believe having permits being extended at the Minister’s discretion risks undermining the policy intention of this bill and it promotes uncertainty for the industry. It promotes bad behaviour by permit holders, who can take their time, and then spend their efforts lobbying for extensions.

From the over 6,500 people who submitted on this bill, an overwhelming 72 percent wanted it strengthened, with many wanting this extension to end and this loophole to be closed, and that’s exactly what I intend to do. I’m going to be putting forward an amendment at the next stage of this bill to strengthen it by removing this loophole that allows existing permits to be extended. This would be a new clause 6A to insert that an exploration permit for petroleum or any other mining permit may not be extended.

So, in summary, this bill is already a compromise between the environmental imperative of planetary survival and the interests of a fair, clear, and predictable transition for those workers that protects existing jobs and permits and provides certainty. In my opinion, deep-sea oil drilling and fracking should already be a prohibited activity and these exploration permits should have stopped being offered decades ago, because that’s what the science was urging. But still this bill is a strong step forward and a necessary one so that we can look our grandkids in the eye and say, “When we knew about the threat of climate change, we did something about it.” This bill isn’t rushed; it’s overdue.

My message to those who have submitted and to all those hundreds of thousands of Kiwis who have taken action for climate change is: thank you, we are winning, and we have more to do. We still need to encourage more clean energy in Aotearoa. We still need to pass the zero carbon Act. We still need to implement the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment’s recommendations. We still need to get rid of the egregious Anadarko amendment. We still need to change the Crown Minerals Act’s purpose. We still need to end National’s $88 million in fossil fuel subsidies. We need to stop more fracking and coalmining.

I’m proud to support this legislation and to start the transition to a clean-energy future. I’m proud of our Prime Minister, who’s leading on the world stage and who’s said that this is our nuclear-free moment. I want to thank the parties supporting it—the parties who are prepared to show leadership, who are prepared to show vision, and who are prepared to back a clean-energy future, not a polluting past.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. It’s with a real sense of sadness that I rise to speak this afternoon on the Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill. The reason for that is although I haven’t been a member of Parliament for all that long—about 13 months only—in that time I have never seen a Government so shamelessly wreck the economy in pursuit of an international deadline.

I, unfortunately, didn’t sit on the select committee that considered this bill. It went to the Environment Committee, which I think surprised most of us on this side of the House. Historically, Crown minerals legislation always goes to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, so I, unfortunately, didn’t sit on the committee that considered this bill. But I have read through the submissions, which I think is a lot more, probably, than what some members opposite on the committee did. I want to turn to a couple of those submissions, and the first one is an excellent submission by the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand, which is the industry group for the oil and gas industry. They posed quite an interesting question, which I think members opposite need to listen to, and that is: what do we do with oil and gas now?

Members opposite might be interested to know that only 50 percent—50 percent—of oil and gas that’s extracted or used in New Zealand is used in motor vehicles. The member prior to me, Gareth Hughes, made a lot of statements about the environmental impact of oil and gas on our environment, and I think members opposite would accept a lot of what he said. However, 16 percent of the produced oil and gas is used in everyday, non-combustible products. So it’s a whole range of things. It’s medical and cosmetic products. It’s all sorts of things that have zero impact on the environment. So to have members opposite talking about this vast environmental impact that oil and gas has, they forget, I think, that there is a vast range of other uses for the oil and gas that we extract in New Zealand.

Their submission goes on to say that New Zealand produces all of its natural gas domestically, which provides just over 20 percent of our electricity supply. So I ask members opposite: where is that going to come from? If we cut off gas supply and the use of gas for electricity, where is the shortfall going to come from? I have to tell members opposite, because it’s in the Government’s own advice, that the shortfall in the short term is going to come from coal—from coal. Gareth Hughes mentioned earlier that “Oh, well, of course, gas only has a marginally better impact on the environment than coal does.” Well, that’s wrong—it’s half. It’s half. Natural gas is half as polluting as coal is, and so to suggest that cutting oil and gas exploration is going to somehow have this dramatic effect on the international climate change situation is an absolute farce, given that we’re going to have to burn more coal.

The other natural gas that we use in New Zealand is not just used for electricity supply; it’s also used for making petrochemicals like methanol—and I’ll touch on Methanex later on in my contribution—but it’s also used by 400,000 households, small businesses, schools, and hospitals. So I, again, ask members opposite: where’s that going to come from? Where’s that shortfall going to come from if we don’t use gas? Later on in their submission, they say—and I’ll quote them briefly—“If our gas supplies run out then New Zealand will need to import gas from overseas and/or develop renewable energy at an unfeasible rate.” That, I think, underlines the point that I’m making, which is that if we do cut off oil and gas exploration in New Zealand, we’re going to need to import it. If we don’t import it, then we’re going to need to move to other sources of electricity and, in their words, at an unfeasible rate. It’s not something that’s possible—that’s why we’re going to have to rely more on coal.

I want to touch on, also, the submission from Methanex, because they’re a very large employer in the Taranaki region. In fact, they are the only methanol producer in New Zealand. They say that methanol is a vital chemical ingredient in a range of things from furniture, building materials, biodiesel, solar panels, wind turbines, to pharmaceuticals. So I ask the members opposite, again: where is the polluting impact of those things that that methanol produces? There isn’t one.

I then want to point to the contribution that they have on the Taranaki economy. They employ 270 people, and 3,000 people indirectly. They add an estimated $640 million to the Taranaki economy and $834 million to the New Zealand economy. It’s nearly a billion dollars—nearly a billion dollars. So I ask the members opposite: where is that contribution going to come from? They’re shutting down an $800 million industry. One company alone—one company—produces more than $800 million of revenue for New Zealand, and it’s something that’s, unfortunately, going to go. These, of course, are all the jobs and the economic impact that exist right now, but I do want to touch on my own local patch of Rangitata, and specifically South Canterbury, where there are going to be dramatic impacts in Timaru because of this bill that’s being progressed.

New Zealand Oil and Gas have the licence to explore for oil and gas in the Barque development. They say that this bill makes development of the prospect materially less likely. Members opposite have talked at length this afternoon about how this bill isn’t going to impact on current operations or on licences where they already exist, but this is a company that does have that licence, and even they are saying that it’s going to have a dramatic impact. I want to quote their submission, because I guess members opposite probably don’t understand why it’s going to have that impact, and the reason is that they need to go off and find international investors to support the development.

In their submission, they say “Since the 12 April announcement, some of those companies have declined to progress further. We present a sample of their comments”—number one—“Looks interesting but given state of play in NZ at the moment I don’t think we will get much airplay internally. So will pass on this one”—number two—“I’m sorry to inform you but we excluded New Zealand from our area of interest for new ventures after series of opportunities review and recent political issues”—number three, the final one—“It’s been an education for me seeing the reaction by even discussing NZ here! … the NZ government has thrown a spanner in the works stopping future exploration licences.”

So I recommend that reading to members opposite, because there is a material impact on regions like South Canterbury which all the provincial growth funds in the world will never account for. This is a company that wants to develop this prospect, they have the licence to do so, and yet they’re saying that it’s unlikely to happen because of the legislation that’s being progressed through Parliament.

I do want to also just return to Taranaki for a moment because, again, members opposite have said that there’s no impact on current operations by this bill. Well, I think what they need to do is actually go to Taranaki, because they haven’t done that yet. They need to go to Taranaki and talk to Fitzroy Engineering Group. Fitzroy Engineering employ 400 people—400 people. They are a large company based in New Plymouth who service the oil and gas industry. On the day that the Government made its announcement, they instituted a hiring freeze. They haven’t employed any new people since the announcement, and it’s completely down to this bill.

I want to talk about process. I know some people probably feel that process isn’t important, but when you’re in Parliament, process is sometimes all you have. Members of the public might be a bit confused as to why we’re debating this legislation, because we only debated the first reading of it four weeks ago—just four weeks ago. This bill has been off at select committee for just one month. Submitters had two weeks to provide their contributions, and in the last two weeks, the Environment Committee has been hearing those submissions. It’s incredibly, incredibly disappointing and alarming that at not one point did that select committee travel to New Plymouth.

Jonathan Young, our senior MP who is responsible for oil and gas issues, moved a motion for the select committee to travel to New Plymouth, to go to Taranaki, and to hear from the companies and the people that are affected. There are 11,000 people directly or indirectly employed by the oil and gas industry. The vast majority of those people are in Taranaki. To have submissions heard only in Wellington has disenfranchised those people. I would have even suggested to them to not bother, frankly, coming to Wellington and having submissions here, but just go to Taranaki and hear directly from the people there, the people that will be affected—not the people in Wellington, not the lobby groups, and not the media in Wellington, but the people who will be affected in Taranaki. At not one point did members opposite bother to travel to Taranaki and talk to people up there, talk to the businesses that are affected, talk to the employees that are affected, and talk to the families that will be impacted by this disgraceful piece of legislation.

This is a split call—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise today with immense pride in my Government. I rise today absolutely delighted with this courageous decision that we have made across our three parties in Government to make an end. I think it’s important to say this and to say this up front: when we considered this—and it was not a policy made just on the spur of the moment; this is part of the Labour Party’s and, of course, the Green Party’s manifestos, long, long made—

💬 Andrew Falloon: Where is it? Table it.

Have a look at the—

💬 Andrew Falloon: Table it.

It’s a public document.

💬 Dr Duncan Webb: Google it.

Google it. It’s a public document. Anyway, it is a longstanding decision that we have wanted to make, and what I wanted to say about it is, actually, it’s about a just transition but it is also about—absolutely—the environment. If we cannot get to grips that this is not an economic argument—this is an argument about a country and a world in crisis and about global warming—then, actually, cross-party discussions will never happen. Cross-party discussions will never happen.

We had over 7,000 submissions on this bill, and I’d like to address very quickly—because I will be taking a short call—the process discussion last raised. Now, we had over 7,000 submissions, chaired very, very ably by the good member Dr Deborah Russell, who gave each individual the opportunity to speak for five minutes and each group the opportunity to speak for 15 minutes. We used the technology of Skype and phones in order to hear from those members of the public who were based in other parts of the community. The entire country took the opportunity to ring in and make presentations.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Order! Sorry to interrupt the member, but could the two hui taking place over there go out in the lobbies. I want to hear Ms Angie Warren-Clark and her contribution.

Thank you, sir. So there was an opportunity. Of course it was a truncated process. We were ensuring that there would be a just transition for the short-term onshore permits on Taranaki.

I’d also like to make a very quick point: of the 75 percent of people who were in absolute favour, closest to my heart were those who were concerned about conservation land and about the mining on conservation land and schedule 1 land. I would like to, in conclusion, advise that this has clearly been covered in the legislation that we’ve proposed. With that, I commend this bill.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. There are so many issues with this bill: the massive decrease in investment in the Taranaki region, which has started already; the loss of skilled people and the loss, potentially, of thousands of jobs; the cost of billions of dollars of revenue—$9 billion at a mid-point; evidence from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—the fact that this bill does nothing to deal with the issues of demand and an inevitable switch to the importing of more oil and gas and an uptick of oil tankers coming into Marsden Point; and the major issue of carbon leakage, which means that global emissions will likely rise, rather than decline. But in the short time that I’ve got available, I would like to focus on process, and I do so because it was a theme that ran very strongly through the submissions that we heard and that we read.

This is a bill that has been dogged by a poor process right from the beginning. We know that this decision was made on the fly in front of an audience of university students in Wellington. We know there was no prior consultation with affected parties such as the oil and gas industry or the communities of Taranaki. We know there was no Cabinet decision prior to that decision. We know there was no advice or any attempt to analyse whether the policy would actually achieve the intended outcomes, or any cost-benefit analysis. We know that the regulatory impact statement and the Cabinet paper were prepared after the announcement was made. We know the Government used urgency to table the bill.

The feelings of betrayal from the submitters came through very strongly. The Taranaki Chamber of Commerce stated “In March, at the petroleum conference, Megan Woods said that this was something that they were only considering.”, and, furthermore, “She categorically stated that the Government would follow a robust consultation process. In fact, she used the word ‘extensive’ when it came to consultation before a decision was made.” The Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand felt that they were misled by the Minister around consultation. They said in their submission, “At the Petroleum Conference on 27 March … the Minister of Energy and Resources [said] ‘We are a Government that listens, then acts. That consults widely, thinks through issues deeply and seeks to forge consensus on how we can take New Zealand forward together.’ ” Powerco stated in their submission, “The Government did not consult with stakeholders prior to making its announcement on 12 April … Nor has it consulted on the development of the Bill. The Bill [was] placed into urgency, which means this Select Committee [process] has also not allowed for meaningful consultation [which] affected [the] industry [and] the public.”

The extremely truncated and rushed nature of the select committee process was a continuation of this poor process. For such a massive decision that has huge ramifications for the region of Taranaki, our economy, and, in fact, global emissions, with no consultation taking place prior to the select committee process, this was our chance to have consultation—good consultation—and what did we get? A refusal of the Government members of the committee to allow us to travel to Taranaki to hear submissions.

Submitters were given just two weeks to digest the bill and then submit to the committee: four days of submissions and 10 days for us to deliberate and report back. Just compare this to our indigenous freshwater fish bill that we’ve also got before our committee: six months we’ve got for that bill, and fewer submissions, and I anticipate that the Environment Committee will likely be far more generous to those submitters in terms of travelling to Taranaki and the West Coast to hear from them in person. Great if you’re a freshwater fish; not so great if you live in Taranaki or rely on our economy for a good health system, or a good education system, or drugs, or all the other things that we get from the benefits of oil and gas.

We know that there were a number of substantial submitters who felt there wasn’t enough time for people to take into consideration what the bill was proposing. We know that submitters felt that they weren’t given enough time to have their say in their five minutes, or 15 minutes if they were an organisation, and they were cut off to the second—embarrassingly so, I felt—by our chair. We know that there were many potential submitters who didn’t get to have their say because of this truncated process. And why the rush? Why is it that we had to do this? Jacinda Ardern’s reasoning was so that the 2018 block offer could go ahead and this was something that she wanted to happen in this calendar year to give certainty to the industry. Firstly, the block offer isn’t happening in 2018—it’s not happening until 2019—and even if it was happening this year, the petroleum production industry of New Zealand said that the industry was happy to forgo this year’s block offer to allow them more time for a better consultation process.

Let’s face it, this was a political decision. It was made without proper advice or proper consultation, and when the Government did get advice, it actually undermined the justification for imposing the ban. Ministers, predictably, attacked the credibility of the advice in very dismissive terms. Then it rushed public consultation, and refused to go to Taranaki—a shameful and undemocratic process from whoa to go, and we oppose this bill.

This is a split call—five minutes.

Thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. If not now, when? If not us, who? Those are the two key concepts that lie behind this bill. I’m really proud to stand here today in support of it, because it shows leadership. I’m also proud of the leadership shown in the Environment Committee led by Dr Russell. This is a careful, it’s a managed, and it’s a planned transition over 30 years.

Listening to that side of the House today, you would think it was all happening tomorrow. Everyone—and, in fact, everyone who submitted, pretty much, except for the few extremists on the bill—accepted that the world was changing and that we’ve got to change with it. We say that if we don’t act, communities will be left stranded and exposed to economic shocks. They say, “Oh yes, we have to change but not our industry, not now, not ever, and could we wait and let some other country do it?”

I refer back to what David Parker said earlier on. He said, “If not New Zealand, then who?”, and I also reflect back to 2008, when John Key told the world and told New Zealand that we should be fast followers on climate change. How ashamed I felt as a New Zealander—and those words will haunt him and haunt that party because that is basically the rhetoric that they’re using now. They’re still using it. They’re not using the phrase “fast followers”, but that’s essentially what they’re saying—“Don’t let it be us.” Well, why can’t it be us? That’s why I’m standing in support of this bill today.

I call David Seymour—five minutes.

Well, thank you, Mr Assistant Speaker. I rise on behalf of the ACT Party in opposition to this bill. One of the things that’s interesting about the three governing parties in this Parliament, including the member who just resumed her seat, Clare Curran, is the profound lack of scientific training amongst the 63 members of those governing parties. I think there’s one medical doctor and one guy who used to teach biology at high school. Other than that, not one of them has studied science past high school, and you see the product of that in legislation that is entirely political and will have no practical effects on reducing emissions or achieving environmental goals but might actually be a little bit negative.

So let me talk to the governing parties in some language they understand, because if they don’t get science and they don’t get cause and effect, and if they don’t get practical solutions to real problems, then maybe they’ll get the politics of it. Maybe they should be asking themselves: “How will we explain to those kids that were at Victoria University that day? How will we explain to the likes of the people who work at Fitzroy Engineering Group, or any of the other businesses in Taranaki? How will we explain that when we banned oil and gas exploration back in 2017, we set ourselves on a path to having fewer sources of energy that required us to use more coal or to import more oil and gas overseas because we banned people from looking for it?”

Here’s is one of these conundra that the Government is facing: either it’s true, as David Parker constantly gets up in the House and tells us, that the cheapest form of energy is now renewables, or it’s not, because if the cheapest form of energy is renewables, there’s no need to ban people from looking for oil and gas. On the other hand, if they are wrong and we don’t have cheap renewables in the future, and we ban people looking for gas, we’re going to burn coal and increase New Zealand’s emissions. The people in the Government, if they don’t get science and they get politics, maybe they should ask themselves how they are going to explain that to those kids that were at Victoria University that day. You know, Clare Curran said that the National Party’s got some stains on it for their climate policy. I predict Labour will have the same problem in time because they have ignored the science.

Then, what about the economy? They might ask themselves how they going to explain to people that they have taken away billions of dollars of investment and of highly skilled labour, people who have been involved in industries that are vastly more technically sophisticated than most of the New Zealand economy—all discouraged, all kaput, because of the way that this Government has behaved. How are they going to explain to other people in business in New Zealand that it is possible for this Government, with no Cabinet papers and with no due process, to expropriate your property rights and to take away your plans and make it more expensive to borrow because people see New Zealand as risky? How are they going to explain to our friends around the world, including those who want to invest in New Zealand, that this is no longer a place where, actually, your property rights are safe and due process is adhered to by the Government of the day, but that, actually, this is a place where, with no warning, with no principle, with no due process or procedure, and with no scientifically demonstrable positive outcome—in fact, the opposite, from the Government’s own advisers—those property rights can be taken away?

I can see the guy from the Deep South there, thinking, “Jeez, how am I going to explain it? It’s going to be rather difficult.” He doesn’t agree with this. New Zealand First doesn’t agree with this bill; it’s just part of the horse trading of being in Government, I guess. I can understand that. But he knows that New Zealand First is going to have a hard time explaining this, and I wonder how this whole Parliament is going to explain to future generations that with such poor form, with such poor process, we put in place legislation that made us worse environmental custodians, that made us economically poorer, and that tarnished New Zealand’s reputation in the international community for being a place that upholds high standards. How are we ever going to explain that? I’m glad I’m voting against this bill, so I won’t have to. Those guys will.

Thank you very much, Mr Assistant Speaker. I congratulate my colleague David Seymour for his insightful contribution. One of the attributes that you failed to mention, sir, of the qualifications along the Government benches is business experience, and that’s woefully lacking on the other side of this House. If there was any—if there was even an iota of business acumen—on the other side of this House, we wouldn’t even be having this debate.

I got a late call to speak to this bill, and I sat down to prepare and I was absolutely lost. I was lost because I just didn’t know where to start. The ammunition for arguing against this bill is rife. This is the most despicable piece of legislation that we have ever had to debate in this House, and the theme that has been coming across from this side of the House is about process. This bill has been devoid of process, and if it had followed due process, we would have heard from the people in the sectors, we would have heard from the people in the communities, and we would have a much better-informed debate. But no, we did not, and it’s an absolute disgrace that we are at this point.

Now, we should have known we were going to be in for this when this Government chose to make this announcement to a roomful of university students here in Wellington, and how is it that this Government has never had the gumption to turn up into Taranaki and talk to the people whose lives are going to be impacted? This morning, I was subbed on to the Environment Committee, and here they were this morning agreeing to travel to the West Coast to talk about whitebait when they couldn’t travel to Taranaki to talk about the most important industry in their region. Whitebait is bigger than the whole of the Taranaki region’s community! Well, that is another disgraceful—oh!

So when did this Government decide that they were going to refuse to hold their select committee in Taranaki? Nobody knows the process that has been followed here. This was never signalled to the communities prior to the election. This was never mandated through the election. This here is an ideological idea that got a great headline in Paris.

I have to say, how do we look these people in the eye? They can’t look me in the eye. Look at them. They can’t look me in the eye. They have no answers for the people of New Plymouth. They’ve got no answers for the people of Waitara or Inglewood or Hāwera or Pātea. And do you know the difference between those communities and the likes of Westport, Greymouth, or Hokitika? The difference is you haven’t got to us yet, but I know that you’re coming, and we’re going to be ready for you.

How many cycles of economic devastation do you need to see? How many of these devastating economic cycles? I sat in the select committee at the beginning of this debate, and they were absolutely resolute in their resolve to run roughshod over democracy. Now, democracy needs informed citizens if it’s going to survive, but it is not a democracy when you truncate the submission process to the point that it was. You had absolutely no consultation with the sector prior to even writing the bill. You have eliminated the expertise. There were countless calls from submitters. They were asking, “Please, consult more broadly. Give us more time. At the very least, give us the statutory time, not this truncated process.”

We’ve heard about the submission from the Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand. They are a membership organisation that represents businesses producing 95 percent of New Zealand’s petroleum. They have valuable expertise in this field, and it’s a highly specialised field. They could have contributed in a valuable way to the writing of this bill. They could have contributed and helped inform the consideration of this bill, but instead they had to limit their submission. But they did note in their submission that had they had more time, they would have included a lot more information—and I quote from their submission. They would have talked to the unintended flow-on effects to the onshore sector and the broader economic effects of the decision that the regulatory impact statement covered. They would have talked to the consequence to the downstream energy sector, and they would have talked to the implications for shipping emissions from increased reliance on imports.

This is a sad day for this House, and I can tell you that the fears up in Taranaki are exactly the same fears that my own community on the West Coast have at the moment. We have seven working coalmines down on the coast, with two producing coal for export for steel-making. They employ 843 people, including the sub-trades. They produced 1.2 million tonnes of coal last year, and the estimated value of that was $334.5 million. There are five domestic coalmines employing 147 people, producing 285,000 tonnes, with an estimated value of $42 million, and another mine yet to be started has $72 million worth of value.

Now, with the power that is available to this Government, private individuals and organisations are being forced into accepting the imposition of powers that were never granted to them. There was no mandate for that Government to take this course of action. This Crown Minerals (Petroleum) Amendment Bill was decided on on the back of an envelope by three leaders, and then, I suspect, they told the rest of their caucuses.

I heard on the select committee the testimony or the submissions from people like Bill Simpson. Now, he’s a man, I understand, who is very well-connected in his community of Waitara. He drove for four hours to make his submission, but what he didn’t realise, when he got there, was that the select committee resolved at the beginning of the meeting to reduce the speaking time for all the submitters that were waiting in the waiting room to make their submissions that they had prepared. So they reduced the organisations down from 15 minutes to 10 minutes, and they had cut in half the submission time for individuals. They were prepared for their 10-minute submission, and they got five minutes. This Government was begged at the time by Bill Simpson, and he asked them what they are going to do for his town of 7,500 people with unemployment already at 58 percent. He was rudely cut off after five minutes, and then the committee spent two minutes arguing about whether he could finish his last sentence. One more sentence to go, and he was cut off.

I have two more issues that I’d like to bring up. One is what happens when you truncate a process and you do not allow time. Even in the departmental report, at the final draft, there were still mistakes being realised that were being amended. What other mistakes have been made that we don’t know about or haven’t had the time to have a look at?

I have one last visual: this photo here. This is what that Government lot over there hang their hat on, and it’s a source of pride to them. But when I look at this photo, what do I see? I see “Stopping this”, “Stopping that”, “Stopping that”, and “Stopping that”. This Government is all about stopping stuff, but what it’s done is stop the development of communities. It has stopped the economic viability of some communities, and they do not survive. They do not thrive. You are spelling the death knell of the Taranaki. You are damaging New Zealand’s reputation internationally—

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Adrian Rurawhe): Please don’t bring me into the debate. Don’t use “you”.

Sorry, Mr Assistant Speaker. That lot over there are damaging New Zealand’s reputation. They’re damaging our economic viability going forward. I say shame on them, not only for the decision but for the way the decision has been made. This is a very sad time for this country. We cannot reverse some of the damage that is being done, but we live in hope that the term of this coalition Government is limited.

I am the chair of the Environment Committee that heard all the submissions on this bill. We spent about 21 hours listening to submissions and working through the bill. Other committee members came and went, as happens on select committees. Some were there for some of the time, then replaced by other people. That’s the way it goes. I was there for virtually all of it. I spent five minutes out of the room at one stage, and that was it. So there was one presenter I didn’t hear from. Joshua O’Rourke, I did miss your presentation, I’m sorry. Absolutely, I read your submission, Mr O’Rourke.

Some of the presentations we heard are very much in my mind. They became very present to me. Some of the Opposition members today have referred to Mr Bill Simpson from Waitara, and that is a submission that has stuck in my mind. Mr Simpson spoke to us of the neglect in Waitara, of the lack of jobs, of the closure of the freezing works some decades ago—the freezing works that my grandad worked at, actually—of businesses that have closed down, of despair, and of the gangs in the town. May I suggest that that wasn’t caused simply by this particular bill but that that neglect in Waitara has been there for a very long time. Mr Simpson spoke quite clearly about the need for jobs. Mr Simpson, I say to you: I have heard that, I have conveyed that to members of my Government, and we are serious about doing our best for Taranaki. So you have been heard, Mr Simpson.

We also heard from students from Victoria University of Wellington a compelling presentation from two young women there—young women who spoke of the despair that young people feel, that they feel as though their future is being taken away from them, and they pleaded with us to act. I say to those two young women from Victoria University of Wellington that we do intend to act with respect to climate change. Mr Simpson and the students from Victoria University of Wellington represent the two sides of this debate: those who opposed this bill and those who supported it. There was no middle ground. There was very clear support for the bill or a very clear rejection of the bill. There was nothing in between. I’ll come on to that in just a moment.

I do want to speak of just one very memorable moment in the submissions when one gentleman came and gave us a short presentation, and then he spent the remaining two minutes praying for us. Thank you—that was very kind of you.

We heard many, many submissions by video link. We did our best to make sure that people from throughout the country could connect with us and talk with us. Indeed, I would like to pass on my thanks to our clerks, the staff of the committee, who made a big effort to ensure that everyone who wanted to speak to us could do so, and many, many people from Taranaki took up that opportunity.

We have an analysis of the submissions. I read them all and analysed them all and tried to understand what was actually in those submissions. We have an analysis from our officials as to the support for and against the bill. My numbers are slightly different, but they are in about the right order. So, coming from our officials, they say that about 735 submissions were not supportive of the bill. I got to about 720—a faintly different number. They had about 1,300 submissions that were supportive of the bill. I had about the same number. What becomes very clear—and these are just the individual submissions—is that there was two to one support in favour of this bill. That’s before we add in the submissions that were facilitated by Greenpeace and by Forest & Bird. When we add in those submissions, around about 85 percent of the people who made submissions on this bill support the bill. Only about 10 percent opposed it. So there is clearly overwhelming support for this bill.

We did get some interesting submissions and I do want to take us through some of them so that you understand what people have said. Now, against the bill, we had one from the boys in the Totara Street flat, and one of them said that he just doesn’t like Jacinda Ardern in general. That was his reason for opposing this bill. To be fair, many more submissions that were opposing the bill did have, I guess, more substantial reasons. Jeff Lingrell was concerned about jobs. He said, “I am the father and financial support for a family of 6, this bill greatly places my livelihood in direct jeopardy.” We know this will have an effect on Taranaki. There’s no doubt about that, but that is exactly why the Provincial Growth Fund is being used to support employment in Taranaki.

The Major Gas Users Group were concerned about the energy supply. It was an interesting one. They said “It is important to recognise … that for [the major gas users] significant capital investment is … based on 20-30 year asset lives. Any uncertainty over security of energy supply raises the risk that … investment will not be fully recovered.” We know that this will reduce the energy supply from fossil fuels, but that is exactly why we are actively working on alternative energy sources—on wind, on hydrogen—and on new investment.

The Employers and Manufacturers Association was concerned about future investment in New Zealand, saying that the rapid change to policy would send a negative signal that will chill intent from overseas investors because they’re worried about what might happen in New Zealand. I suppose the evidence to that is directly to the contrary. We have a queue of people who are lining up to invest in the infrastructure development opportunities here.

The Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand (PEPANZ), of course, wanted us to carry on with fossil fuels, and they had all sorts of reasons in favour of that. But in response to PEPANZ, I offer the submission from Richard Middleton. Mr Middleton quotes from Adam Smith: “Any proposal from business ought always to be listened to with great precaution and ought never to be adopted until after having been long and carefully examined not only with the most scrupulous but with the most suspicious attention.” I suggest that we need to apply that test to what those who profit from fossil fuels would say about it.

And on it goes through all the submissions. I just want to echo something that my colleague Clare Curran said earlier. When I look at what Business New Zealand said about the bill, they said “Business New Zealand agrees with the underlying policy objective sought by the 12 April decision, but strongly considers that banning new oil and gas exploration is an unnecessary way to achieve emissions reduction goals.” But if we aren’t going to do something, how can they show they really do support the idea of taking action to mitigate climate change? If not, how and when? These were just a few of the submissions against the bill.

Chris Norton, however, said, “I acknowledge some people and interested parties will feel like they’ve been short-changed. However, this financial loss to a few is nothing compared to the catastrophe that continuing with the exploration and exploitation of our fossil resources would contribute to for everyone.”

Abbie Jury from Tikorangi in Taranaki said she urged members of Parliament “to understand that while gas may burn more cleanly than some other fuels at the point of end-use, there is nothing at all clean or sustainable in the process of getting that gas out of the ground and keeping the gas flowing.” She went on to say, “If we do not change our energy sources now, that change will be forced upon us by the probability of catastrophic climate change.”

We examined these submissions initiated of the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Dinah Hawkins says that the latest IPCC report makes it absolutely clear that we—all of us—must work now to keep fossil fuels in the ground.

Last of all, giving everyone a flavour of all the submissions that were totally in support of the bill—the 85 percent of submissions that were in support of the bill—is this from Sam Netherclift: “I am 18 and I think it is very unfair that my generation is inheriting a world affected by climate change because of older generations, so making exploration for oil illegal is one step forward in the right direction.”

There is overwhelming support for this bill, and, in conclusion, I give you the simplest submission of all—of all the many I read—“I support this bill because climate change.” I support this bill.

The question was put that the amendments recommended by the Environment Committee by majority be agreed to.