Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill

Members, we’ve now come to the interrupted debate on the first reading of the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill. Jonathan Young has the call, and he has eight minutes, 29 seconds remaining if he so wishes.

I so wish, thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, I’m very pleased to stand and speak on this bill, the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill. The purpose of this bill is to amend the framework of the Gas Act in order to do a number of things: to expand the scope of regulation-making powers relating to data and information pertaining to planned or potential outages and other security supply contingencies in any markets for gas, and the bill also increases maximum penalties able to be imposed by the gas rulings panel from $20,000 to $200,000 where consumers can be adversely affected by potential breaches.

I think everybody that I have heard of who has commentated on this bill agrees that increased information would be helpful. But not everyone agrees with what that information should be. Information flows are very helpful for industrial consumers as they can adequately plan if there’s going to be a plant outage or maintenance programme from a gas producer. At the same time, they can do their own maintenance and so therefore not interrupt their production as greatly as might otherwise be.

However, there are still significant issues in the security of supply that the bill cannot address. One producer, OMV, said that they support greater disclosure of outages in the gas sector, but they are concerned that some players may have unrealistic expectations of new rules intended to make that happen. They went on to say that any information disclosure regime will not address the underlying supply position in the market. And I have to say that that comment and comments like that have been repeated from a number of different sources. Because what they are identifying is that you can actually make disclosures about an outage, you can make disclosures about when you are going to do some maintenance or when a piece of equipment has failed, as they did, but the underlying issue is that there’s a shortage of natural gas, and a disclosure regime will not change that.

They went on to say that the major impacts from the Pohokura outage is related to shortage of gas itself rather than any information disparity. So in the departmental disclosure statement by MBIE, the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment—what they did to identify the problem this bill is trying to address is they said this: “Prolonged natural gas supply outages at the Pohokura production station in [September] 2018, combined with planned outages at other production stations and [combined with] dry spring conditions, [that is, low lake levels] led to record gas spot market prices and high electricity wholesale prices.” Indeed, that’s the case, and I have produced a graph that shows that.

In fact, this is not including that period, but after that period, from 1 January 2019 to 23 September; so a kind of nine-month period. What that did to the electricity wholesale market is it increased it by an average 60 percent through that period of time of nine months. That’s quite substantial. So instead of the average of around about $80 a megawatt hour, it went up to, on average, $133 per megawatt hour. And the cost of that was worn by many commercial and industrial users. This is where people started to say, “Look, we just need more information so we can plan and we can do some demand response mechanisms.”

However, what MBIE said in that department disclosure statement was not the full picture. They did express the full picture later on in their regulatory impact statement. They said: “There is an ongoing decline of reserves at New Zealand’s offshore gas production fields.” So it’s talking about Kupe. It’s talking about Māui. It’s talking about Pohokura. “These fields have provided the historical flex in supply capability for the gas market—particularly the Māui field.” I was just a school kid when that was discovered. This will be in the other interesting graph that was presented by Concept Consulting, which shows that flex.

What that means, when it talks about flex, is the ability of a gas field to ramp up their production when other fields have to ramp down because they have an outage or they have a maintenance programme where they cannot produce. And what we see on this graph is the Māui fields, yes, exclude that red printing. But the red is all bad news, because what it’s showing is that over the number of years, the ability of the Māui field to ramp up, to be flexed up, to be able to fill the gap has diminished considerably and significantly. So this is what actually happened back in 2018. Yes, there was some equipment failure, some infrastructure failure. And there were, you know, obviously maintenance issues. They had to ramp down the Pohokura field. And at the same time, there were other fields that needed to be under maintenance, and there were low lake levels, and all of those converged. Ordinarily, in the past, what would happen is the Māui field would come in as back up and supply to the market and everything would be fine. In this case, they couldn’t. And so what happened was that we had a significant security of supply issue in the country.

Now, most consumers, household consumers, wouldn’t know that because they’d already signed two-year agreements with their retailer, but there were some that did: those consumers in New Zealand who were purchasing off the spot market. You know what they did? They exited those companies. And some of those companies, one of them in Dunedin, collapsed—one retailer that was relying on the wholesale market of electricity to sell to their consumers. Ordinarily, you would think that that would be the cheapest way to purchase electricity, until something goes wrong. And something here has gone wrong.

So we’ve got to understand that this bill will only address one aspect of the problem that New Zealand faces, and that is how to respond to low supply of natural gas through demand response mechanisms, through more information, through people dialling down their demand. But it will not address the underlying issue, which is actually lack of gas supply. And in fact, in the midst of all this—and it’s going to be interesting as our committee takes on this bill and we receive submissions in, just to hear from the different elements of the energy sector, electricity generators and retailers and also gas producers. Because I think the smart commentators out there are saying that actually this bill only really addresses part of the problem.

The other part of the problem is exacerbated because we actually have diminishing reserves of gas supply. And of course, we know on 12 April 2018, the Government announced their ban on new exploration. So that exacerbates the issue even more. So we have a situation, where we have a bill here that’s going to address demand response. That’s basically going to mean that people have to dial down their demand. But we don’t have a real issue to effectively shore up security supply issues, and I look forward to the select committee being able to have a look at this issue and hearing from submitters. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for the opportunity to make a very brief contribution to the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill. When the Hon Dr Megan Woods made her contribution on this bill, she pointed to the prolonged outages, as referred to by Jonathan Young, at Pohokura gasfield, plus the added complication of the constrained hydro generation and the impact that that had on the market at the time. Now, this bill proposes to widen the regulation-making powers to enable gas governance arrangements to be made to provide a broad regime for the disclosure of information about matters that may have significant downstream impact or contribute to critical gas shortages. I’m looking forward to the examination of this bill at the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee, of which I am a member. It’s sensible and it allows for certainty and security of supply, and I commend the bill to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. I stand today to speak to the Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill in its first reading. As we heard very articulately from my colleague Jonathan Young, the purpose of this bill is really simply to strengthen the regulation-making powers in the Act and to provide for enhanced disclosure requirements for the gas market. What that aims to do is ensure that the settings around that enforcement are suitably robust.

The bill follows the gas supply disruptions, as has been mentioned by Jonathan Young, most notably in the Pohokura outage, which, when it happened, contributed to a really high electricity spot market prices. As a consequence of that outage, there were complaints made to the Electricity Authority, which amongst other things raised some concerns with the complainant about whether the gas supply outages were being fully disclosed to the market. So, as a consequence, we are here today to address how those disclosures are noted.

But what we’ll find as we work our way through this bill is the process that has been followed and how the market has behaved without the need for this legislation. Currently, there is a difference between the electricity industry, which is subject to mandatory disclosure—and the electricity industry, where the gas industry is not subject to that same disclosure, has current practices where they use a range of reporting mechanisms.

But what is interesting is that the gas industry, even though this bill seeks to make it mandatory, is actually using their own disclosure on their website when they advertise these planned outages. So the industry itself is almost self-regulating and we’ll hear more about that as I work my way through. The electricity users use a range or a suite of reporting mechanisms. I’ll refer to three of them that I’m familiar with, which are SAIDI, SAIFI, and CAIDI. So SAIDI is the System Average Interruption Duration Index, and that’s what the electricity retailers use for power outages. So that’s the right reliability indicator, and that’s usually the reporting for the length of time for an outage, whereas SAIFI, which is the System Average Interruption Frequency Index, is the number of interruptions that the consumer would normally experience. CAIDI, the Customer Average Interruption Duration Index, is the one that is used eventually to measure the average restoration time of any outage.

So what the electricity industry, a retailer, or a lines companies would do would be to anticipate their SAIDIs, SAIFIs, and CAIDIs in their annual plan, and then they would report against those at the end of the year. But I know that for some electricity utility providers, that does become a bit challenging when you have the likes of a Cyclone Ita or weather events that happen that bring about severe interruptions to the electricity supply. But it actually does provide a platform where there is reporting against the interruption and the frequency of those power supplies.

So following the Pohokura outage, the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) actually went out to investigate and consult on some of the options that could be made available for the disclosure by the participants in the gas industry, and also looked at maybe some penalty regime around that as well. But according to MBIE, the regulatory framework that exists now actually works really well. So they determined that there were no major gaps or overlaps between the regulators to justify any significant change to their roles. MBIE’s own discussion paper even mentioned that the Government did not need to amend the law to strengthen the powers of the regulatory bodies. The regulatory bodies seem to have manoeuvred and adjusted as required, and they’re the ones that regulate the information disclosures.

So the fact that the electricity price review has already suggested that those regulatory bodies are needed to create stronger disclosures—there was no opposition from the gas suppliers to that because they were already moving in that direction. They are self-regulating anyway. So there was no issue. There was no need for legislation to force them to do that. They were going to do it voluntarily anyway.

The Gas Industry Co. Limited had already initiated its own stream of work to look at whether the current arrangements were sufficient or whether other arrangements were required, but they hadn’t actually finished that stream of work, so they haven’t had input into this bill. You would think it would be appropriate before this paper and this bill came to this House that that work would have been considered from the Gas Industry Co. So without that industry—the one that this bill actually applies to—having had any input into this bill or even the requirement or need for this bill, it seems to me to have put the cart before the horse.

What the gas industry does have concern with is the kinds of disclosures that are being prescribed in this bill, and the main one they do have concern about is the pricing. Some of the forward-looking reporting that this bill may anticipate would have other market information, their forecasts, their information about potential or actual planned outages, and information about risks to security of supply, etc., but they do not want to have their private business made available to the general public where that individual company could be identifiable and in which case makes them very vulnerable in the marketplace.

The Pohokura outage did highlight other issues in the gas market, but, as we’ve heard from my colleague Jonathan Young, the Government has not turned its mind to those. The main one, of course, is that it doesn’t matter how much information is gathered or how many disclosures are made about the information or the forward planning, it still does not address the basic core problem of supply. The critical issue that this country faces is that we have not, in this bill, any security of the supply for the gas or the energy sector in this country.

It is very sad that with only a little over 10 years’ worth of natural gas reserve left, the market is likely to tighten even further, and the irony about that is what’s going to happen is that the market will tighten, which will force the prices up, and it’s then becoming counterintuitive. But the great thing for the West Coast about that is that as the prices for gas go up, the value of coal comes into its own. And I tell you, there is nothing more efficient and British thermal unit - rich than a tonne of coal. It will be great to see that coal burning in Huntly more than it ever has, because this country’s energy resources are now so at risk that we are importing coal from Indonesia to keep Huntly burning. Unfortunately, the West Coast coal is so valuable and so carbon-rich that it’s not burned in this country; it’s sent away for more valuable products, and they’ll return to us.

But we do need to address the demand and we are seeing even more risk introduced as we watch Auckland now with its severe water shortages. If we do not address the water storage issue in this country, not just for electricity but for a whole lot of other things like drinking water and like farm irrigation and stock water, we are still going to be victims of a shortage of energy. I’d like to make a note of one of the small power schemes on the West Coast, which is typical of what this Government’s philosophy is all about. We want to make sure we’ve got plenty of people using plenty of energy, we want them all to stay warm and dry, we want them all to drive EVs, but by the way, we’re not going to guarantee you that we’re going to have the energy for you to use, to fire those things up. And so when we put a 20-megawatt power scheme up to the Government for approval, a run-of-river scheme, what did they say? “No.” I’m aghast. Thank you.

I rise to support this Gas (Information Disclosure and Penalties) Amendment Bill and note its intent to strengthen the regulatory powers available within the Gas Act and encourage greater disclosure and transparency. One of the things that the Opposition, of course, have been trying to perpetuate is that this Government is not interested in the issues around small business, and I would have thought that one of the greater parts of this bill and the disclosure is the lead time that it will give businesses downstream from the gas suppliers—much more time to plan ahead to those adjustments to their enterprises.

So this is a very good step. It’s certainly something that’s come out of a real life experience with the Pohokura outage and the subsequent circumstances that were around that. And I note that the Opposition are already trying to conflate this bill with some wider issues around oil and gas exploration, and somehow the myth that it is banned; it is not banned at all. There is no increase to the block offers or the areas that are being put up for tender. But there’s still 100,000 square kilometres out there that is able to be explored. And I know, as Mr Woodhouse would know—he’d probably be able to see it from his living-room—the recent OMV out in the Great South Basin exploring for gas. There is absolutely nothing stopping those companies, as they are, and there is an exploratory programme under way from many of our main exploration companies. So that is a myth that is not, of course, playing out in real life.

💬 Jonathan Young: They went out and found nothing. You should know that.

They didn’t find anything, but they were out there exploring. There was absolutely nothing to stop them exploring, and they will continue on. And I think, actually, it’s the market at the moment—the supply and demand situation, where the gas prices are low—that is the only thing that will be driving the minds of those exploratory companies as they assess the return on investment and the risk and reward.

The other thing that I think is notable within this is the penalties up from $20,000 to $200,000 at a maximum. I think, for those big companies, $20,000 would not be a material sum. So I think that’s a sensible measure that’s been proposed. So New Zealand First will support this through to the select committee. It seems a sensible bill, and we’ll look forward to the select committee doing its work. Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Well, it appears I’ve come up slightly sooner than I expected. But I do rise with my colleagues to—despite the reservations we will express and have expressed—support this bill through to select committee.

It’s an interesting perspective though to ultimately think one can address the needs of end consumers—whether they are domestic consumers or businesses, hospitals, and what have you—by simply trying to factor in demand-side actions or information disclosure when, at the heart of the challenges that face us in the future of gas provision and certainty of supply is, in fact, the problem that we are constraining the exploration for new sources of natural gas. We would do far better—far better—if we had a genuine concern for whether they are large-scale demand-side users, or, in fact, right at the very end, because, ultimately, all costs and all impacts flow through to those end users. Whether they are themselves commercial users or domestic users, we would serve them all much better if we were to take actions to address certainty of supply by ensuring that we could find all the supply that we can, so that there’s always an opportunity to be able to meet the market.

Instead, we’re deciding that we can somehow square the circle by just demanding a bit more information disclosure. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it certainly isn’t a thing that is going to address the heart of the problem, or, indeed, likely to make that much difference in any sort of short or medium term. The only thing that’s going to make a difference is ensuring that there are sufficient reserves, new finds, so that there is availability of gas now and into the future. Indeed, that also is another means to be able to adjust and react to when there are unplanned outages. If we look at 2018, not only were there planned and unplanned outages in the gas supply, but also a problem in availability or certainty of hydro-generated electricity as well.

So in terms of a solution—no matter how well the bill is drafted, no matter how noble its intent—to a real-world problem, the only way to describe this measure is underwhelming. There’s always hope that the Government can see light and revise the position it took without consultation with officials, let alone even industry participants, a couple of years ago by, basically, halting new exploration. There’s always a chance—we’re not at the election yet—they could reverse their position. Of course, if we are given the privilege of returning to the Government benches by the people of New Zealand on 19 September, we are very clear that we will do that, because we are focused on solutions that can actually work and drive the outcomes that New Zealanders need.

This bill does something. In fact, if I reflect back on 2½ years of this Government, that in itself is a near unique thing, but it does something at least. But what it does is not something that will actually address and fix a problem or provide a solution to what is the heart of the problem; it will move a short way along that spectrum. More information for more market participants, particularly those that to date have this view that they are either cut out of that information or at least not guaranteed it—so informing the market more is not a bad thing. In fact, generally in markets it’s a very good thing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the act of doing that represents a solution, in this case, to the heart of the problem. The only thing that the Government could be doing, that we could be doing as a Parliament, were we truly concerned—and I actually believe we are—about the extent of this problem and both the likelihood and impact of future occurrences, would be to address the supply side of the issue, and not simply looking at some information sharing on the demand side.

It is in that respect another example where the Government, in being so desperate to be seen to be doing something, and not wanting, obviously, to reverse an earlier policy on the hoof sort of action they’d taken, but wanting to be seen to do something, finds the nearest available something, and says, “Well, in that case, I’ll do that.” But it flies in the face of what market participants—particularly on the supply side—are saying is needed. In that, I would categorise it as, quite frankly, a let-down. Shortly, we’ll all be telling the people of New Zealand that that’s not at all uncommon from this Government and what they could expect from them into the future as well. In fact, you’ll reflect on 2½ years, it’s pretty obvious that that is the case. But they’ve at least offered up something. The something isn’t enough, and that generally sums their Government up for the last 2½ years—the something is not enough. It’s not well-targeted, it doesn’t actually address the true problem, and it certainly doesn’t provide a genuine solution. But it is something, and it is something that was at least a little bit better than what was there yesterday. So for that reason, we will support this bill to select committee.

Kia ora, Madam Speaker. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support this legislation. We support greater disclosure in the gas regime. Obviously, there’s a contradiction, because the Electricity Industry Participation Code requires electricity providers to have a disclosure regime, but not for gas, despite the fact, as we’ve heard from many National members, that we currently are quite dependent on gas for our electricity system. When it falls over, it can skyrocket prices for consumers.

So while the Green Party supports greater disclosure requirements to make sure we’re having a fair go and greater transparency in the interim, we don’t see it playing a major role into our future. In fact, we’re incredibly proud that the Green Party helped achieve the end of offshore oil and gas exploration. We’re investing in clean energy with the Green Investment Fund. We’re actually removing the fossil fuel subsidies, the tens of millions of dollars the previous Government was quite happy to give some of the wealthiest companies in the world, and we’ve set a goal of 100 percent renewable electricity by 2035. This is our future. It’s cheaper. It’s where international capital investment is going. It’s where international trends are.

But my final point, and the most important point, is it is consistent with the brutal physics of climate change. We have to keep fossil fuels like gas in the ground if we want to give our kids and our grandchildren a safe and stable climate, and that’s why this Government is acting with a just transition but, in the interim, making sure it’s a fair, transparent regime.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. It won’t be a full 10-minute call, but I’d like to stand in support of my colleagues on this side and talk about some of the issues that we have. I guess the background to this bill is in relation to the gas supply disruption, most notably the Pohokura outage, which contributed to the high electricity spot market prices. I haven’t actually been part of the debate right from the beginning, but, you know, I’ve just heard some of the comments that were actually made. I reflect on, I guess, the everyday New Zealanders who actually rely on Governments to make sure that their power—whether it is actually gas or whether it’s actually electricity—is actually offered at a fair price. When you have a shortage, the prices go up. When gas exploration is stopped, of course the prices are going to go up, because there is going to be a shortage. The alternative energy source that is required to generate power often may not be the kind that we want—for example, when we have had outages, the use of coal increased tremendously. We talk about, in this House, wanting to be more environmentally friendly and have more green energy, and, when we’re increasing the use of coal, that is not necessarily the path that we want to walk in.

I guess it seems really odd to me that the Gas Industry Company Ltd has not actually finalised its findings or recommendations. Instead, this Government has implemented policy without the industry putting in its proposal. I would have thought, when one is actually making policy and decisions and legislation in this House, that they would actually consult widely with the industries and actually get to an outcome that they want to have before they put a legislative process in.

Just looking at the bill, the bill creates a broad new empowering provision that allows gas governance regulation to require data and information to be provided and disclosed by any industry participants or consumers other than domestic consumers. The information may include volume, price, and other market information forecasts; information about actual and potential outages; information about risk to security of supply; and information to help other industry participants or consumers to make informed decisions.

I think most of us support the idea of disclosure—disclosure of information about actual, planned, or potential outages. But the thing is that when the powers actually require price and other market information, I’m not so sure if that’s as far as we actually want to go. We want to place in the bill a statutory requirement for consultation with the stakeholders in the gas market before regulations requiring such information can be made.

I love gas. I love cooking with gas. I have gas in my house. I have gas supply in my house. During the COVID-19 lockdown, I have actually cooked quite a bit. Being an oriental person and requiring a certain kind of flame that is actually required for the ethnic foods, I have to say gas works so much better than electricity, especially when you’re doing wok cooking, stir-fries, and fried rice and whatever. I have to say I actually support gas. As far as I’m concerned, when New Zealanders are offered cheaper gas, it is a good thing, and when New Zealanders are offered fair electricity, it’s a good thing. For me, any piece of legislation that provides that has to be a good thing. I support this to select committee.

So this is a split call. I call Michael Wood.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Like the previous member, I like cheap things as well—it doesn’t go to the bill so much. But I am pleased to see that there does seem to be pretty broad support across the House for this piece of legislation. We’ve heard a bit of noise from the Opposition, which is to be expected, but they’ve confirmed a reasonably sensible position in favour of this bill.

I thought Mr Hudson made the point well when he said that in general terms, in a market, it’s good for information to be made available to the players in that market. It improves people’s ability to make decisions. It reduces the opportunity for people to take advantage of having information that others don’t have in a market place, and that is fundamentally what this piece of legislation does, and it’s why parties, certainly on this side of the House, support the bill.

As members on the other side say, this isn’t the only issue in the gas sector, but if and when the House—in about 20 minutes or so—does agree to pass this piece of legislation, it will be a useful addition to the regulatory landscape in the gas sector. For that reason, I commend it to the House.

Thank you very much, Madam Speaker. It’s a pleasure to rise and take a call following some of the wonderful discussions we’ve had on gas and who has more or who has less. But, at this point of the evening, just prior to the dinner break, it was great to hear from Melissa Lee around her suggestions on wok cooking and the flames etc. So I certainly know where I’m heading at the dinner break for my evening meal!

💬 Simeon Brown: Burger King.

Now, in terms of this particular bill, we support more transparency—and maybe that’s not for Mr Brown, but we’ll see. I think the fundamental issue here, and Jonathan Young touched on it as well, is that whilst we support some of these aspects—and the bill has some good components to it that will improve clarity or that ability to understand what’s going on a little better—actually, the fundamental issue here is about supply. If we really want to be impacting on price and ensuring that our end consumers have the best price option available to them, well, that requires more supply. Supply and demand—it’s a pretty simple concept. I think most members can grasp it, and it was interesting, though, actually, to hear Mr Patterson from New Zealand First pointing out earlier that the exploration by OMV, I think it was, in the Southern Basin was a clear example of the success and how well things are going, and that they’re doing great stuff as a business, but, actually, they found nothing there. Well, I think that’s not a particularly sustainable model. If they keep finding nothing, they don’t have anything to sell. That becomes a slight problem for Mr Patterson. So he might want to reconsider that position in time.

But, where we get to with this, is that it’s really interesting as well because the concept of decarbonising and reducing our impact—great; I can understand that concept, and the Greens are very vigorous in that space—but, actually, it’s about looking at that transition. And, if we are able to provide a product to the market that has a lower impact than somewhere else, then why would we not utilise that advantage to help them, to help our economy, and, actually, to reduce overall emissions? So natural gas can potentially play a role for us in that space, which this Government refuses to accept; hence their imposition they placed on the industry through the ban on future explorations.

And, actually, it’s exactly the same thing as what they’re proposing in the agricultural sector as well, and Mr Bennett, as a spokesperson, has strongly spoken in this vein as well, where we are the lowest emissions producer of food. So, if we’re looking at a global context about reducing emissions, whether it be gas, in the case of this bill, or agricultural emissions, why would we not maximise our ability to produce with a lower emissions profile to offset those emissions in other international jurisdictions? Surely, if the global solution is what we’re focused on, that is a key part of it. And this industry is exactly the same scenario, where the Government comes in with an ideological approach and refuses to accept that, actually, there is another way to do it.

So, look, the disclosure components within this particular bill are useful and will add some clarity but are certainly not going to be a significant contributor to a change in price point for the end consumer, which is fundamentally where there is concern and what is, I believe, the issue that they’re looking for. On this side of the House, we certainly don’t oppose trying to reduce emissions; in fact, many of us are very enthusiastic about that. If I tried to count the number of electric cars held by our caucus members, it would be quite high. Even in the Waikato, I drive a hybrid car. So we’re all very passionate about this. There are a number of things we can do. This bill helps in some small part and so, on that basis, we are prepared to support it through to select committee. We do have a few reservations about that and look forward to thrashing it out a bit more. I know Jonathan Young will advocate strongly on our behalf in that space, but I encourage submitters to get involved and share their views too so we can try and get this to the most appropriate position possible.

So, on that basis, we are supporting it to first reading, and I commend it to the House.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. Look, it’s a pleasure to speak on this bill, partly because I come from Taranaki and I know that the last couple of years have been very difficult for the gas industry. Now, despite what our previous speaker, Melissa Lee, says, I don’t cook much with gas, simply because I don’t cook much at all, but I do realise the value that the energy sector has added to Taranaki.

I can remember when the Maui pipeline was actually brought onshore in 1976—so, those of you who might want to start making some calculation, that was quite some time ago—but what I often say to people, because I find that the gas industry falls into a similar category, often, to the agricultural category—and my colleague Tim van de Molen has mentioned that—is that, actually, I’ve grown up in a province where we’ve had the bulk of dairy farming, we’ve had the energy industry, and we’ve had a range of things going on. People can judge me for what they like as to whether any of that has affected me. You can judge as to whether I’m a normal person or not, but my children and my grandchildren certainly are. So it’s been part of using the resources of our nation. At this point that we find ourselves in right now with COVID-19, one of the things that our nation has is that we are rich in resources. We are going to need those resources like no time in history before.

So this bill: yes, it supports transparent disclosure, and I don’t have any problem with transparent disclosure; in fact, on this side of the House, the National caucus is always asking the Government for more transparent disclosure—it’s really interesting that it’s expected of the energy industry but we don’t always get it out of the Government; so maybe we could get some alignment here. So the problem that I have is not with transparency, but that the level of information that’s often asked for is on the level of sensitive information. There are some commercial realities around many of these things, and we hear it all in the House all time—“This has been redacted because it’s commercially sensitive.” These businesses have no different requirements than a Government to protect commercially sensitive information. So we’ve got to be a little careful what we’re asking for here.

The thing that really concerns me the most, and others have mentioned it, is the supply and demand. I’ve been to Pohokura, and, you know, for some people it’s a word on a piece of paper, but to Jonathan Young and myself it’s very much part of our life in Taranaki and what we do. We all know what happened when the problems happened at Pohokura. We burnt more coal—I was at the port of Auckland at the time, and the coal that was coming into the country was much more than it had been before. So supply and demand is a big issue.

We can go through all of these processes to try and get the industry to be more transparent and disclose, but, look, every piece of disclosure is not going to replace any molecules of gas. So my plea to the Government—and the reason we’re supporting this is that we want to take it to select committee, we want to have a good discussion about it. We didn’t really have the opportunity to have a big discussion when the Government, in a four-week process, virtually shut down any future gas explorations. There are only 10.4 years of natural gas reserves, and we’ve got to be careful what we wish for, because these organisations—our energy companies—are the people that are going to find our new technologies, they’re the people that are going to find our pathway to cleaner energy, and they’re the people that are going to fund the research because they’re not going to want to do themselves out of business.

With all due respect to all of us that sit here in Wellington and make decisions, we are not the energy experts. No Government of either side of the House will ever find the answers to this new energy; it is these energy companies themselves. So we shouldn’t be actually constraining them and stopping them from finding the new solutions that Gareth Hughes mentioned before, because, otherwise, it just turns into intentions. It’s all very well to have intentions and we all have intentions. If you asked any politician in this House what they wanted the world to look to in 30 years’ time, we’d probably all tell you the same story, but most of the arguments and the disagreements that we have in this House are actually about the path and the way to get there. So we need to make sure that we protect these organisations, because they are our path to the future. Politicians are not the path to the future; it’s the people in these energy organisations—exactly the same as agriculture. It’s the people that are actually in the industries, who know them, they understand what goes on, and they will find our path to the future. So we have to work with them. We don’t have to do the whole “Government knows best” and “let’s control you” and “let’s restrict you”.

So I’m probably going to leave it there, saying that, you know, National is supporting this bill to select committee. I hope that when we get to that point it gives us a really good chance to have a discussion, because we need to protect our resources in New Zealand like never before, because the amount of things that are going to get dumped into our country, at a cheaper price—and it could be oil and gas, we’re hearing about potatoes at the moment, there’s a whole lot of global dynamics that are just going to completely come and swipe our economy if we’re not careful. Thank you, Madam Speaker.

Thank you, Madam Speaker. I did chuckle to myself when I heard the Opposition members talking about their cooking, because they’ve been pretty busy cooking up all sorts of things in the past week or two. But I do look forward to the select committee process, and I’m sure there will be some good improvements to this bill, but the fact of the matter is that, as Mr Young will know from his Victoria University course, information is the first step towards good economic transactions. Lowering the costs of people getting that information means that better decisions would be made both in the immediate term and in the long term. So it’s good to see the House coming together to put this to select committee to make it a workable, excellent piece of legislation to contribute to the gas industry. I commend this bill to the House.

Bill read a first time.

Bill referred to the Economic Development, Science and Innovation Committee.