Urgent Debates — Electricity Supply—Power Outages

Members, yesterday, I indicated that I had received letters from Simon Court and Barbara Kuriger seeking a debate under Standing Order 399 on the widespread power outages on the evening of 9 August. This is a particular case of recent occurrence for which there is ministerial responsibility. Confidence in the electricity supply is a very significant matter. There is no other reasonably foreseeable opportunity to debate it, and there appears to me to be matters further to consider beyond the scope of the ministerial statement. Parliament is the place—while not all are matters to do with the electricity sector, some of which are private responsibilities—where it can be debated. It is the place where Ministers are held responsible for the overall system and the particular parts of the system which report to it. So I am going to grant the debate.

When I receive two applications for urgent debates on the same matter, preference is given to the application received first. Barbara Kuriger’s application was the first received, so I call on her to move that the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

I move, That the House take note of a matter of urgent public importance.

So Monday was a day in New Zealand where—we have been hoping for quite some time around the policies of this Government that the lights would not go out. Unfortunately, on Monday, sadly, our prediction came true for New Zealanders across a large part of the North Island. Now, in the ministerial statement, the Minister of Energy and Resources said New Zealanders “expect the lights to be on”—[Interruption]

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! The Minister of Finance.

—“and the heaters to be running on a cold winter’s night.” So the first question around this is was this—so that’s why the situation unfolded, and my question around this was: was it avoidable? The Minister said it was unacceptable, but I ask, was it avoidable? Because it just seems that there are so many things that went on on Monday that seem to be unnoticed by this Government.

In the ministerial statement, “at 6.43 a.m. Transpower issued a low residual notice to participants following their forecast showing a deficit in generation during the forecast evening peak. Transpower requested more generation or less load.” And remember, it actually was an extremely cold weather forecast. There was a lot of snow blasting across the South Island and the peak of demand was always going to go up on that evening. Now, “At 1.02 p.m. … Transpower issued a warning” that there were insufficient generation offers for the evening peak, “and another warning was issued at 5.07 p.m. At 6.40 p.m., Transpower issued a request for network companies [and] direct grid connection[s] to shed load by 1 percent.” And then, “At 7.10 p.m., Transpower issued a grid emergency notice.”—a grid emergency notice that is required by law to go to the Minister for State Owned Enterprises with a dotted line across to the Minister. Now, we still haven’t had an answer from this Government as to what the Minister for State Owned Enterprises did with this grid emergency notice and whether anyone from his office notified the Minister.

Now, the disappointing thing about this was that the Minister said that she found out around about 8.30 on Monday night, and it has been reported that it was found out by the media. We’ve just heard from Minister Parker that it was a text that she received. Now, at 1.22 on Monday afternoon I received the Energy News via email, and it was already starting to talk about what had been happening earlier in the day. I’ve actually got that with me. And I would have thought that any Minister’s office or any Minister worth their salt would have actually picked up on what went on in the Energy News. Basically, it said, “Polar winds drive up load forecast: strong winds from the Antarctic are driving up electricity load forecasts around the country and the North Island in particular, where Transpower says residual generation will be below 200 megawatts for this evening’s peak. The system operator expects demand to peak this evening at 4800 MW in the North Island and 2200 MW in the South Island.” So I would have thought that if the Minister had been on her game, someone in her office may have informed her at that particular point in time, and so I have a question around why that did not happen.

I’m noticing also from the Minister’s statement—it said, in her ministerial statement the other day, “I will add that this Government has taken numerous steps towards ensuring the electricity market is working as it should”. Now, there seems to be a lot of finger-pointing towards the electricity market, but I’m wondering when the Government itself is actually going to look in the mirror and take some responsibility for some of what went on here. We look at the premature decision around the gas permit ban. Despite what we’ve been told, there have been some gas finds since the year 2000. It just so happened that the rig was sent away because it wasn’t considered an essential service at the time that COVID hit. So I’m really getting quite concerned that this Government is making some really, really poor decisions around how we actually make the system work, because it takes six to 10 hours to get a Rankine fired up at Huntly, but gas can be turned on very quickly. So some forethought into all of this—really concerned in the long term. I’m worried about the next eight to 10 years, and I worry how many more winters we’re going to have where we’re going to have a repeat of Monday night. So it’s a Government that’s sending us into an energy security issue.

Surprisingly enough, the Climate Change Commission said that New Zealand needs an energy strategy, and that seemed to take the Minister by surprise. The Minister thought that was quite a good idea, that we should have an energy strategy, and I was just a little bit surprised that it took till May 2021, after being in Government for 3½ years, to decide what the climate commissioner said was quite a good idea. I think in the rush to get to 100 percent renewable electricity with no plan, this Government has done us a huge disservice. Demand is going up. We hear every day from the Minister of Transport around electric cars. We have all of these virtue-signalling things going on around how we’re going to get to the 100 percent renewable electricity, and we get one cold winter’s night, and what happens? The lights go off. So let’s wake up, people, and realise that the demand is going up and the demand will continue to go up over time as people start to get into more of this renewable energy.

The Government wants everyone to use 100 percent—and we can debate that number, because 100 percent is a very expensive target to get to. We know that 95 to 98 percent is much more achievable and much more cost-effective. We need to look at what we can do in energy, per se. So the Government wants everyone to use 100 percent electricity in transport. The Government wants everyone to use 100 percent renewable electricity in heat processing, 100 percent renewable electricity in our homes. The question is: how are we going to stop this repeat performance from happening again? Part of the problem is the cut-off of the investment in the gas, which was premature. Gas is instant; coal Rankines are not.

Now, the Minister said yesterday that she was going to have an inquiry and she was going to try and find out and get to the bottom of what happened here. So I want to offer some questions for the Minister that I think that she should be throwing into the inquiry. The first one is: why did the Minister not know until 8.30 p.m., when the knowledge was becoming widely available, and it was actually on social media before the Minister was told? That’s the first question that should be asked: what failed in the Minister’s office?

The second one is: why were the Minister and her office not part of a comms plan? Because, actually, surely that’s the Government’s responsibility when there’s an event or a disaster going out there in the public arena. Why was the Minister’s office not part of a comms plan that helped people to understand what was going on? Waikato Police had to put a post on Facebook to explain to people not to call 111, because it was, in fact, a power outage—it wasn’t some other sort of emergency. People were ringing the police station, clogging up the 111 system. Imagine if there had been other sorts of emergencies, the phone lines would have been blocked and other people would not have been able to get through.

So, in a time and an age where this Government is spending more and more and more money on comms people, we don’t even have enough comms to get out the information that we’re having a power blackout. It was really concerning to see a mother on TV last night who said that the lights went out, she was trying to find her toddler in the dark, she was trying to feed her toddler, she was trying to keep her toddler warm—imagine how scary that is for some of our people out there.

It also must have been a heck of an event when those people who rely on electricity for lifesaving medical devices were alerted on social media that they should make their way to the hospital due to a power outage. That is just not good enough from the Government. That is something that I think the Government should really hang their heads in shame on, that one. The way they frightened people with life-threatening illnesses by not coming out and communicating this issue faster. Could the civil defence or other mechanisms been used? Could there have been a way that we could have front-footed this if the Government had not been asleep at the wheel? If someone in the Minister’s office had managed to pick up the Energy News at 1.22 p.m., even if they weren’t looking at their emails and watching other systems—I mean that’s their job: to make sure the lights stay on. If someone had just been awake, maybe the Government might have been on to this.

I also want to know, and it’s not been defined yet, but I think it’s something that the Minister should really put in to her inquiry, if she didn’t, is: why did the Minister not hear from the State-owned enterprises Minister’s office? There was a 7.10 p.m. grid emergency notice that went out and that is required by law to go to the office of the State-owned enterprises Minister. So when that notice went out, I cannot understand for the life of me why the Minister for State Owned Enterprises or someone in his office didn’t go about advising the Minister of Energy and Resources, because it was something like an hour and 20 minutes later that the Minister of Energy and Resources was alerted to the fact that there was a grid emergency notice issued. Was the Minister for State Owned Enterprises asleep, or perhaps was he out riding his bike?

So, you know, New Zealanders, as the Minister said, we can expect better. But I think the Minister needs to stop pointing the finger at every other possible option, and, when she does this inquiry, or when the people do this inquiry on her behalf, to look at all of the things that her and her office and the Minister for State Owned Enterprises and his office could have done around this issue, because it’s all very well to point the finger forward, but when you point the finger forward, there are three fingers pointing backwards at the person who is doing the pointing. And so I want the Minister to put all of these questions into the inquiry. There must have been somebody within her office, within the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, within somewhere that could have actually notified the Minister. I’m just standing here, gobsmacked, to think that this could have actually happened, and, you know, it’s just not good enough.

The Government is totally asleep at the wheel. So I want, also, when the Minister does her inquiry into how this happened, I want the Minister to also think about how this is not going to happen again. I want the Minister to know how she is going to keep us safe from power outages for the next 10 winters, because we know that the Government thinks that everything they’ve got in the virtue-signalling realm, around 100 percent renewable electricity, is actually at least 10 years out into the future. Minister Wood wants people to start driving their electric cars everywhere. That’s only going to exacerbate the problem. Next time we get snow, the time after that, we are going to have a repeat. Get your act together—it is not good enough for New Zealand.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! The member’s time has expired.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I know I’m not allowed to mention the presence or otherwise of a Minister, but I am giving this speech today because the Minister is unavailable to give it. Could I begin by saying that regardless of the mechanisms and the rules of the electricity market in New Zealand, which are complex, it is absolutely the right of New Zealanders to expect that on a cold winter’s night—indeed, at any time of the day and night, on any part of the annual cycle of demand—the lights will stay on and the heaters will stay on and the system will stand up to the demands of a cold winter’s night. The situation that unfolded on Monday of course was unacceptable, and I want to go a little into what happened—and the member Barbara Kuriger, who has just taken her seat, has summarised that, but I’ll restate that—and then I’m going to make some comments as to how it is that we’re going to try to get to the bottom of what’s gone wrong here.

The system in New Zealand—you can’t store electrons in the electricity system. You can store fuel in the form of hydro or in the form of coal, and there is a complex system of rules that require every part of the system to be playing its part, from the people who generate the electricity to the Transpower grid that transports large quantities of electricity through to the local distribution lines. All of that is controlled by the system operator, which is Transpower, and Transpower has the job of forecasting future power needs and matching the demand for power with the generators who provide the power that’s transmitted to consumers. Now, they look out a few days. About 72 hours ahead of demand, they get serious about starting to try and predict future demand, and then, as they get closer and closer, they get more confident in their projections of future demand. They have got rules that they operate in as to whether they think that the prospective bids that they have from generators who say they’re willing to sell electricity into the system will match up with the anticipated demand.

On Monday, early in the morning, they put out a notice, which wasn’t a great alarm; it was just “Be aware that we think that we need some more generation bids.” Then, by lunchtime, by around 1 o’clock, they put out a more serious notice and said, “Look, we really could need some more juice here.” Then, in the absence of getting that required balance between generation and demand, they had to take emergency measures later that evening, telling the distributors of electricity to shed load in order to protect the system overall from collapsing. Some of the questions that need to be answered, as Barbara Kuriger rightly asked, is: was there proper communication with Ministers’ offices? And those are proper questions to ask. I would make the point that irrespective of what the communication with offices should have been, it wouldn’t have changed the practical outcomes on the evening.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Oh, come on.

Gerry Brownlee says “Oh, come on.” Well, actually, the switches and the bidding system and the requests for further electricity generation do not come from Ministers’ offices and never will, never should, and never did when he was Minister of Energy and Resources.

In respect of the questions that now have to be inquired into, I can inform the House that there are two inquiries. One actually arises from a contractual duty that Transpower have under their contract with the Electricity Authority that says, when there is an event that shows up as a threat to security of supply, they have to give an initial report to the Electricity Authority within 48 hours of the event. So that’s under way, and there will be some information provided to the Electricity Authority by Transpower in that regard. The Minister has instructed the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment to commission a review, and that will include a consideration of all of the relevant considerations.

Was the peak demand estimate right? It was there or thereabouts, but it’s a proper question to ask whether they got that demand estimate right. The demand on the night was the highest ever, but should that have been estimated? They got pretty close to the actual demand figure, so it wasn’t that far out, but I’m sure that should be looked at. Was the communication to generators clear enough? Was the communication to local distribution companies clear enough and early enough?

I’m aware of one particular issue there that wasn’t quite right from Transpower. Transpower advised the distribution companies, who are, effectively, the people that hold the switches locally, that they were going to have to, for reasons of protecting the network and to balance demand, reduce demand by 1 percent. They then, in a short period thereafter, sent notices to the individual distribution companies that converted that 1 percent into a megawatt figure, and the translation of that looks like that it wasn’t correct. At least in some instances, some of the lines companies—including the largest lines company in the country, Vector—picked that up, and they verified the correct number and, therefore, didn’t use the other number, which was higher than the 1 percent figure that Transpower wanted. They didn’t use the higher figure; they used the verified number. Some other lines companies used the number that had been sent to them rather than the 1 percent, and that resulted in some people, and additional people, being, effectively, cut off the network. Therefore, the outage was, in those areas, probably larger than it would otherwise have been.

We need to look at whether there were appropriate attempts made at appropriate times to reduce some of the demand that could perhaps have been moved by some of the large energy users. Was the communication with them by market participants as it ought to have been? We don’t know the answer to that. Then, of course, we need to look at the question of what generators did—whether they brought on all of the available demand. Now, the Minister, in the House yesterday, said that Genesis Energy made a commercial decision not to bring on the number three Rankine unit at Huntly. She didn’t mean to imply by saying it was a commercial decision that there was some improper motive, trying to manipulate the market; she was just making the point that they made a decision. They prefer to call it an operational decision rather than a commercial decision, but the Minister’s office asked me, on behalf of the Minister, to confirm she wasn’t trying to imply some improper motive to Genesis, as she was just trying to describe what, in fact, happened.

Can I raise a couple of other shibboleths. This problem has not been caused by New Zealand’s reliance on renewable energy. That’s just factually incorrect—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: It will grow. It will grow because of it.

—and I think the inquiries will bear that out. Beg your pardon?

💬 Barbara Kuriger: It will grow because—

It will grow. The member Barbara Kuriger said it will grow as we push towards 100 percent renewables. Yes, the system will become more reliant on renewables, but, properly designed, the system can cope with that, as it used to in yesteryear. Actually, if you go way back, we had far higher percentage of renewables than we had following the discovery of the big Maui gas finds in the Taranaki region in the 1970s and 1980s. We can have ever-higher percentages of renewables and have security of supply. That same argument used to be run at me when I was Minister of Energy in the 2005 to 2008 period by the Hon Gerry Brownlee, who said we shouldn’t have had a target of 90 percent renewables, because that would put at risk security of supply. That wasn’t correct, and we’re actually up to about 85 percent renewables and doing very well. It was actually good of the prior National Government to continue with that ambition.

In respect of the issue as to gas versus coal at Huntly, you know, there’s something in that. You know, gas can be brought on more quickly than coal, and I’m sure that’s an issue that should be looked at by the planners of the system. That doesn’t mean to say that we shouldn’t be pushing towards higher levels of renewable, but there are proper questions to be asked as to whether the system, if it does need Huntly for the next few years to sit there as a dry-year reserve—as to whether we should have a pool of gas reserved for that purpose as opposed to a reliance on coal, which might, according to the member, take longer to kick into action.

A final point: some of the retailers have already said that they’re going to pay some compensation to people who were disconnected for a period. I’m not sure whether others will follow, but that’s a matter for them. But I absolutely agree that this issue ought to be inquired into properly and that it ought not to have occurred.

Tēnā koe, Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. The Green Party absolutely supports an inquiry into what happened on Monday night. It’s very important that New Zealanders, and particularly vulnerable New Zealanders, are able to rely on our electricity system. I will speak about this specific issue, but I also will need to speak about the larger issue that needs to be considered when we think about how we are going to respond to what happened on Monday night.

On Monday night, there was incredibly high demand, higher than usual. Transpower almost got it right in their forecast: 7,100 megawatts. I just want to make the point that it’s not just about generation; it’s also about the things we can do to influence demand and to reduce the need to rely so heavily on electricity in times like this. So, for example, there are 31 million inefficient lightbulbs currently in New Zealand homes. If all of those had been replaced with appropriate LED lightbulbs, it would have reduced the peak load demand by 781 megawatts, bringing it down to 6,300 megawatts, which the system would have easily coped with, and it’s really interesting to hear members from the National Party acting like this is some sort of outrageous thing to say—like, wouldn’t it be better for New Zealanders if they had access to these appropriate efficient LED lightbulbs, which would have significantly reduced the amount of peak load, but it also reduces their own energy bills?

So, I mean, clearly there is a bit of a barrier to people switching from inefficient lightbulbs to efficient ones. They cost more initially, but—[Interruption] Sorry, Mr Speaker, I just—[Interruption] So I have an astounding number of idiotic comments being made at me—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order!

—and it’s infuriating.

💬 SPEAKER: The member will resume her seat. Interjections, Mr Brown, should be rare, reasonable, and preferably funny, and you’ve scored none out of three.

So, just to be clear, the Green Party’s position is that the Government could be out there buying people these efficient LED lightbulbs in order to not only reduce peak demand but to benefit those New Zealand households, because then they would have the light they need and they’d be spending less on electricity bills. It’s just the kind of simple solution that, apparently, right-wingers find impossible to get their heads around, and that’s why we haven’t had intelligent investment in efficiency over the years that we had a ridiculous National Party Government between 2008 and 2017, who did less than nothing and actually made our situation worse when it comes to actually preparing for the big issues that are facing us.

The other issue—[Interruption] It’s just very trying to have to deal with such ignorant comments constantly in the House. So my comments will stand: 31 million inefficient lightbulbs. If they had been replaced with appropriate LEDs, the peak load demand would have been 781 megawatts less. That’s 6,300 megawatts—it’s pretty substantial. I think most New Zealanders would think that is an intelligent investment for us as a country to make that doesn’t require generating more electricity, but it delivers benefits to New Zealanders in their houses and also benefits to the system as a whole, and that’s something we could easily be looking at. I will continue to suggest to the Minister that we find a way to promote these efficient LED lightbulbs in the short term, because, obviously, people across the House are very concerned about how we’re going to deal with electricity demand in the short term while we build up our long-term capacity of renewable and our ability to store renewable generation.

Basically, the other big event that happened on Monday night was, of course, the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, which was unequivocal on the need to transition as rapidly as possible to zero-emission electricity generation. That does mean more efficient energy use and it means, as both the head of the International Energy Agency and, now, the Secretary-General of the United Nations have said, that for countries who are serious about contributing and pulling their weight in the fight against climate change, which is now an existential threat to people who are already alive today—it is an existential threat to our children—we cannot be looking for new fossil fuels. So the idea that the problem that we had on Monday night is going to be solved by increasing the supply of fossil fuels in the market, whether that’s gas or coal, is simply not possible. That is not consistent with a habitable climate.

So the people who are calling for that solution are in deep denial about what the scientists are telling us and about the alarm bells that they are ringing. It is literally impossible for us to find more fossil fuels and use that to generate electricity in the future and have a habitable climate, or be pulling our weight and having a habitable climate—those two things are not possible. What is possible—

💬 SPEAKER: Order! Order! I’m just going to ask the member: this is not a debate about climate change, and I’d like the member to come back to Monday night and the events. Thank you.

I’m very happy to do that, but it was Monday night that the IPCC report was released. It was Monday night that we had the—

💬 SPEAKER: Sorry, I didn’t make myself clear. I wasn’t referring to the events of Monday night with the IPCC report. I was referring to the blackouts that occurred, and that’s what this debate is about.

Yes, and how we solve the blackout is not by finding more fossil fuels and using more gas. That is simply not possible, if one accepts the science.

One thing that I found really interesting in this debate is Barbara Kuriger’s continued insistence that it’s the Minister that needs to be held ultimately accountable for operational decisions made by a range of players, including partially privatised energy companies and State-owned enterprise lines companies, when clearly the moves made under the last National Government were to make energy less and less something that would be influenced by the Government of the day, and yet, when something goes wrong, they immediately say, “Oh, well, it’s the Minister’s fault.” Now, I am absolutely in favour of greater Government direction when it comes to our electricity and energy systems, because we have a collective problem here that we need to solve, and it actually is quite difficult for the Government to have an energy strategy when we have partially privatised “gen-tailers” who are now more focused on chasing profits for private shareholders than anything else. It’s very difficult to see when there is that level of market concentration in the generation space—it’s very, very difficult to see how the profit motive for private shareholders is going to lead to the “gen-tailers” providing more affordable, more renewable, and more secure electricity generation.

So, clearly, the mixed-ownership model is not something that has helped New Zealand avoid this situation. It’s something that makes it harder for the Government to respond and set a direction of public good, and, ultimately, that is what this debate is about. It’s about the impacts on the public when there are difficulties in forecasting demand and bringing enough generation on board, and if making private profit is the focus of the “gen-tailers”—thanks to the National Party, and I’m sure the ACT Party would have liked to go further when it comes to the privatisation of our electricity system—then it is simply not possible that we’re going to get the outcomes we want as a country if the “gen-tailers” can make more money from not bringing on new supply and ensuring that there’s sustained high wholesale prices over a long period of time. Certainly, a lot of small retailers are making that case.

We would like to see the Electricity Authority with more of a mandate to investigate and to ensure that there is structural separation between the retail and the generation parts of these businesses—if nothing else, separate reporting of both retail and generation—and that we can see transparency on price of transfers.

💬 Hon Grant Robertson: Mr Speaker? I think it’s me.

Oh—the Hon Grant Robertson

Yes, I think it is. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker, for that. The facts of what occurred on Monday have largely been laid by out by Barbara Kuriger in her opening speech and also by the Hon David Parker as well, so I’m not going to dwell at any great length on those.

I would note, picking up a point that the Hon Julie Anne Genter was making just before she sat down, that if the Government was involved at the level that National Party members seem to think we would be, we would be getting the opposite criticism from them, that Ministers are far too involved in what’s going on here and that they actually shouldn’t be dealing at this very, very operational level. So the National Party can’t have this both ways. This is the system that their party created that is now what is in place in terms of the way in which our electricity market works.

Ministers are not happy with the lack of communication that came from Transpower in the first instance. We have made that very clear. Transpower have come into the Minister of Energy and Resources’ office and apologised for that, as the Minister said in his answers to the House today. They accept that communication was not good enough, and new protocols are being put in place to deal with it. But the suggestion that, somehow or other, this level of operational involvement by Ministers is what the National Party wants is somewhat ironic and odd, I think.

What I do think is raised by what occurred on Monday night is the question of what one does in the face of market failure, because it is quite clear that the electricity market—the system that has been designed—failed on Monday night. It failed to make sure that every New Zealander could be confident, on one of the coldest nights of the year, that there would be power available to them. In the end, approximately 28,000 households were without power at some point during that period on Monday evening. That is unacceptable—that is completely unacceptable. Even though the vast majority of New Zealanders went on unaware that this was taking place, for those people it had very serious consequences, and we do not regard it as acceptable.

So then the question has to be asked: well, what does one do in the face of that? That is why we have the inquiries that are under way. The first of those does have to go in the direction of Transpower. It is their job to do what they did on Monday, which is to issue the series of notices that they did, beginning at 6.43 a.m. and following that through until, finally, at 7.10 p.m., a grid emergency notice was issued. Through the process that Transpower has, we want the questions answered of what escalation processes occur during that time and what they do to make sure that there is a response from power operators to their requests. The failure for that to occur is substantial, in this case, and the reasons for it is part of the inquiries that are now taking place.

The role of the Electricity Authority is also a legitimate part of the question here. They are the regulator in this system, and I agree with Julie Anne Genter that questions are raised about whether or not, as the regulator, they have sufficient powers to be able to perform the role that it is quite clear that all members of this House are now saying. But let’s be clear about what that means: that means that the market-based system—the self-regulation system that was put in place by the National Party—is the thing that didn’t work on Monday night. So the National Party and the ACT Party, who will no doubt get up shortly, need to be able to answer the questions themselves about what they think the answer is here, because the answer isn’t letting the market run rampant, because that didn’t work on Monday night.

Then there is the question of what it is that the generators then did in response to this, and, obviously, that is the focus now for another part of the inquiry that takes place. Why was, from 6.43 a.m., followed by Transpower’s further warning at 1.02 p.m., and then its request at 6.40 p.m. for the load shedding to take place—why, through the course of that day, was there not the response that we might expect from some of the generators, in terms of what they would do in response?

As has been clearly indicated both yesterday in the House and today in the House, this was not a problem of whether or not there was capacity in the system in terms of generation, it’s just that that capacity was not unleashed. That is both the case in terms of the third Rankine at Huntly. It is also the case in terms of the fact that there was sufficient power being generated via the South Island hydro lakes, but that was not finding its way to where it was needed in the North Island. So this is not a matter of whether or not the physical capacity was there; it was not utilised, and that is a further breakdown and failure in the system and model that we have that is now being investigated.

A third point that I don’t think has been covered is actually the response that then comes from the lines companies and from those who distribute power directly to consumers. The amount of communication—and I take the point that Barbara Kuriger makes there about the communication to consumers—was, at best, haphazard and, at worst, did not give information to people in terms of what was about to happen to them. There is also a range of different responses, what are called ripple responses, which actually allow for some things like hot water to be switched off, rather than the lights to go out, per se. As I best understand it, most providers of powers did use a ripple response, but WEL Networks didn’t, and so that has to now be part of our discussion as to what technology was available to them, and why they did not do that as others did and have done in the past as well when situations like this have occurred.

So all three parts of that system do need to be well and truly analysed and thoroughly investigated. That is exactly what the Government—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: And the communication to the Minister’s office.

—has now put in place. I do agree—and I’ve already said, for the member’s benefit—that the communication was not satisfactory. It was not satisfactory from Transpower, and I don’t believe, as I’ve just said, that it was satisfactory through the system at all. But that is the system that we currently have in place with us now.

We’ve also heard in the debate various concerns raised about whether or not, somehow or other, a move towards renewable energy is likely to make this problem worse. As Minister Parker has argued, that is not the case; that does not need to be the case. But if members opposite are concerned about the amount of generation capacity available right now today, well, if we wind the clock back to when you need to start a project in order for that project to be supplying power to New Zealanders today, that would take us right back into the term of the last National Government. So it isn’t actually how the system works to say that we can click our fingers and today that generation will be there. Seven years, on average, is the amount of time it takes. So Gerry Brownlee and Steven Joyce and the other Ministers of energy who were responsible for this during the last term of that Government might like to answer that question, as to whether or not there should have been—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: I will.

—further generation capacity available.

In the end, though, Mr Brownlee, that wasn’t the issue. That’s the point. It’s a complete red herring that the National Party have been raising. That wasn’t the issue—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Try listening!

Ha, ha! Oh, I have been Mr Brownlee, and I have heard, from members opposite, their criticism of where we’re at in terms of electricity generation, raising completely irrelevant points about the offshore oil and gas ban, the investment that is taking place now in renewable energy—and the Prime Minister outlined some of that in the House yesterday. But if members opposite are trying to claim that this was about a lack of physical generation capacity, that is not true. The capacity was there, it simply was not used on Monday night, and that will now be subject of the investigations that take place.

It’s now two days after an avoidable and costly failure of our critical power infrastructure that caused blackouts across the North Island. We’ve heard from the Government, we’ve heard from generators, the grid operator, and experts—what they think caused the blackouts. We’ve heard about a series of contributing factors, which is what you always hear after an airplane crash or some terrible industrial disaster, and that’s very nearly what this was. Contributing factors: planned maintenance on a big hydro dam in the South Island took one of their units out of production, a 400 megawatt gas-fired combined cycle power station in Stratford takes three days to fire up—that’s because it’s old, it’s ageing infrastructure—the Huntly generator taking 10 to 12 hours to fire up. That’s not a text message away, not like the McKee peaking plant, those two 50 megawatt jet engines in Taranaki, which are literally a text message and 20 minutes away from being fired up in an emergency. But they were already running at full noise, as was the diesel oil generator in Whirinaki—that diesel oil generator that’s a relic of a past Government intervention to provide additional peaking capacity that turned out to be so expensive and inefficient to operate that they sold it to the private sector, because they knew that it was better the private sector take the risk on peaking and managing this dry-year supply.

We’ve also heard about generators making profits, from the Green member. Well, it turns out—

💬 Barbara Kuriger: Ooh, profit—that’s a bad word!

—that’s right—that making profits is the reward for taking risk with shareholder capital, and if you make sufficient profits, you can reinvest that into your assets to give better service to your customers.

💬 David Seymour: Just blew Deborah Russell’s mind.

He, he! Now, we’ve also heard there’s a lack of direct Government control over markets and that there’s been a market failure. Well, I’ve done some research into the Electricity Authority, because imagine the Electricity Authority reporting to the Minister of energy. Imagine that their strategic ambitions include a low - carbon emissions distribution and supply system, a consumer-centricity to guide regulation and decision making. Competition must be thriving, yet there is no mention of security of supply or affordable electricity in this Electricity Authority’s strategic ambitions. And we wonder why the Government is thrashing around looking for someone or something to blame, because they haven’t given the mandate to their own regulator—what should the priorities be?

That’s why ACT is seeking answers to some very basic questions. When will the Government and the Minister of energy, Woods, admit their part in this energy crisis that ACT forecast months ago? Will they change anything about their flawed energy policy, which puts carbon emissions ahead of affordable and secure electricity, like the ban on natural gas exploration, when, as recently as April 2020, an international exploration rig found a commercial gasfield that rivals our largest gas discoveries. It’s right there off the coast of Taranaki, but they had to abandon their programme because the Government wouldn’t give them permits to stay here under COVID-19; they weren’t regarded as essential. Well, I tell you, that energy is essential, and we saw how essential it is on Monday night.

We’ve heard about the Government’s other crazy energy schemes, like the threat to build an enormous hydro dam at Onslow, drowning a UNESCO-level wetland and, potentially, with the Government’s intervention, stranding others’ electricity investments, stranding energy assets. Yet it’s a lack of affordable energy that’s damaging communities and making it harder for the Kiwi battlers who actually make things here in New Zealand to get on with their daily lives. The Government’s energy policies have led to cuts or complete shutdown in production at mills in the Bay of Plenty. The Glenbrook steel mill is running in low gear, and Methanex in Taranaki has shut off part of their production and 75 workers have lost their jobs permanently because that business, making some of the greenest methanol in the world that goes into all of our household products, has decided, actually, there is no long-term future.

💬 SPEAKER: Order! I’m going to do what I did with the previous member and ask him to come back to the debate in hand.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. Now, this lack of gas, not just for Methanex but to supply electricity producers like the Taranaki Combined Cycle unit at Stratford, has led to shortages. Those shortages have led to increased energy costs and job losses. It has also left families who depend on those high-paid jobs, those mums and dads, now in distress and having to think about their futures. Yet despite all these other energy policy failings, the Minister for energy is still blaming everyone else for this Government’s failure to ensure that New Zealand has secure and affordable energy and that we do not have more blackouts, because despite denials today, the inference made in the House yesterday by the Minister of energy was that generators had, for commercial gain, taken a decision to limit the supply of electricity. That appeared to be, on the face of it, a deeply cynical excuse and suggests that power companies are OK with mums and dads and small children and elderly people left in the dark on one of the coldest nights of the year, in pursuit of profit. What an appalling inference. I’m very, very pleased that the Minister’s representative has come to the House today and denied that, as far as is practical.

Then, the Minister’s claimed that the generators should have known to bring more energy on stream. Yet the Minister must be aware that generators will only respond to an actual declaration of an emergency and a direct request to fire up generation. They do not burn coal and burn gas and run power stations for free. The Minister has claimed that the market has failed, yet we know the market price for electricity peaked at $250,000 a megawatt hour. That sounds like the right signal to turn all the generators on.

The Minister believes that the goal of 100 percent renewable electricity, a goal which many have pointed out is impractical, is actually the way to ensure secure and affordable electricity. Yet the Electricity Authority has stated and continues to state that that will require careful consideration, which I understand is bureaucratic speak for “very difficult, if not impossible”. We know that every time more renewable energy is introduced into a supply network, that actually makes it more unstable because that energy is intermittent and cannot always be relied on. On Monday, despite all the other contributing factors that led to the train wreck or the plane crash of blackouts across the central North Island, the straw that broke the camel’s back was actually when the wind stopped and the wind turbines stopped turning. That’s when Transpower sent out the emergency alert: “We have run out of power.”

That is why ACT is demanding that the Government drop their ban on oil and gas exploration and let New Zealanders have a truly just pathway to a low-carbon future that preserves affordability and security of supply. We all know that natural gas has half the carbon emissions of coal. It is a truly just, affordable, and secure pathway to a low-carbon future. Let our businesses and our communities have affordable and secure electricity. Let’s keep New Zealand jobs here. Let’s manage our carbon emissions over the long term to meet our obligations, because the alternative hardly bears thinking about: more blackouts, more job losses, and a poorer future. Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I do want to start by acknowledging and congratulating the previous speaker, Simon Court, on his dexterity. I mean, it is one of the most challenging things to do, I suspect, for an ACT member to explain away a market failure, when it is so apparent and so obvious and so right there in your face—if you’re a believer in markets, to then have to kind of awkwardly try to work out how the system should work better and then to come up with a solution which involves intervening, effectively, in the market to promote coal and gas as the way forward! You can see the dexterity in his argument, and I do want to acknowledge that at the outset.

What we have here, and it couldn’t be clearer, is a market failure. If we’re going to have a market-oriented system providing security of supply, then the market must deliver—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Explain that.

The market did not deliver, Mr Brownlee. We have a market—we have a market—the market did not deliver; the lights went out.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: How did the market fail?

That is a market failure in my book. How that is not a failure in Mr Brownlee’s book, I think he’ll explain in his contribution, I’m quite sure.

There are quite a few “blue herrings” being introduced into this debate, through the debate, and we’ve heard some yellow ones as well. One of them is that there wasn’t sufficient capacity in the system. We know for a fact there is sufficient capacity in the system. What didn’t happen was operationally the available capacity was not brought to bear in the market by the market participants. So we have a market. The market participants did not deliver what the market is supposed to deliver, which is keeping the lights on and the heaters on for New Zealanders.

So regardless of the machinations of the electricity market, though, I think New Zealanders should have a reasonable expectation that the heaters are running on a cold winter’s night, that the lights are on, and that is why the situation that unfolded on Monday night is unacceptable. The assurance, though, that we can give to New Zealanders is that we did have the physical capacity to generate; that is not in question tonight. And so these blue and yellow herrings about the journey we’re on to be carbon neutral and how this is the creator of the whole problem—people at home should not believe that.

In terms of the question that the members have asked previously around when I, as the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, was alerted to this, it was not before the Minister of Energy and Resources, so there was a failure of the no-surprises approach, in my view. The Minister of energy has met with Transpower immediately to address this issue and to seek to ensure it’s not repeated, and they are putting new protocols in place to ensure that that no-surprises policy does not fail in future. But, of course, that is kind of irrelevant, as the Minister of Finance—

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: No, it’s not. It’s totally relevant.

—has pointed out, to what happened on the evening, because it is not the place of Ministers to make the decisions about when the power is switched on and off. And if Mr Brownlee wants to argue that it is, I will be most interested in his contribution, because on the one hand, we have those in the National Party who favour the market solutions. I’ve heard Simon Bridges stand up in this House when he was over on this side in a difficult past time, as opposed to the current difficult time for the National Party, when he argued that 15 years on from—the market just needed a bit more time to bed in. That was the reason that they were having problems with the power prices in the market when National were in Government.

Now, Mr Brownlee, who has been responsible as energy Minister for the market supplying power, for the way that it’s set up currently, seems to be arguing for a more interventionist approach. And it would be very interesting to see if he’s changed his mind and now thinks that Ministers should be controlling and making these decisions about when power is put into the market.

💬 Hon Gerry Brownlee: Don’t speak for me—

We’ll hear his contribution—we’ll hear. But right now, the Government is focused on ensuring that the right mechanisms are in place early enough to secure supply. Those questions are being asked. We don’t want to see this situation repeat. The market failed on this occasion, and if we want to have a market-oriented system supplying our power, we need security of supply and we need the market to deliver. It failed on this occasion.

I do want to say a couple more things—mindful of time—that kind of fall within my broader ambit. I’ve had reports from the Telecommunications Forum following Monday night’s power outages that they’re not aware of any significant impacts on telecommunications as a result of the outages, because, of course, their networks are built with a degree of redundancy, especially for short-term power outages. They have battery backups and generators. They were not actually required on this occasion. So I just want to put that on the record for the House, because questions have been raised about that. There were no disruptions.

Consumer New Zealand has also raised an issue around the right to compensation for consumers, from their electricity suppliers. And I do want to note, and electricity consumers do have a right to appropriate compensation, that some of the suppliers have already taken proactive steps and are supplying credits to people they supply electricity to. So I note that and find that encouraging.

So to round out my contribution, I do want to assure New Zealanders that we do have the physical capacity to generate the power that we need in our system. Commercial decisions, operational decisions, have been made not to put the generation into the market on this occasion, and the appropriate inquiries are in place because we believe New Zealanders need to have the assurance that security of supply is ensured.

Mr Speaker, the speech just delivered by the Minister for State Owned Enterprises, Hon Dr David Clark, I think very clearly demonstrates the problem that this country faces. A pair of Ministers, in this case, who appear to have very little understanding of how the system works, but worse than that, no understanding of what their own responsibilities are.

Now, Grant Robertson wanted to make the case, and I notice that the Minister who sat down now has just also tried to make the case that the National Party was saying that the Minister of Energy and Resources should have the big switch that gets flicked on and off at any particular time. We are not making that case. But what is clear is that under the current arrangements, the Minister has responsibility for security of supply, the Minister has responsibility for the direction of investment that occurs in the electricity sector, and the Minister, of course, overall, has a responsibility for the consumers who expect the system to always keep them supplied with electricity.

Now, there are protocols in place for how things should work. What is extraordinary is that there can be an alert put out at 6.40-odd in the morning and then repeated throughout the day up to midday, and still, apparently, no one from any ministerial office saw it. Now, it’s all right to swing round and swing back on Transpower or the systems operator, effectively, or the Electricity Authority and say, “They failed. They didn’t communicate.” That’s not reasonable, in my opinion, just to take the blame from one place to the other. They’re culpable, no question, and they need to have their feet held to the fire. But the idea of a Minister’s office stocked full of advisers on this particular issue, this particular portfolio, did not see an alert on the system early in the day. And what would the response be? They should’ve gone to the Minister and said, “Look, there’s an alert out there, do you want us to find out a little bit more about what that means?” There would have been a communication that started that that Minister over there knows would have amped up the circumstance and the concern to a much higher level than it appeared to be.

To find out that we go right through the day, and get to 5 o’clock in the evening, before there is an emergency declared, knowing at that point that there were constraints on solar, obviously; constraints on the wind turbines; and that it does take a long time—anybody would have known, anywhere, the 10-hour time to get the coal-fired plant going, the slightly less time to get a gas plant going. Also, at that point they knew the assessments were wrong. Well, why did it take until 5 o’clock to work that out? What was magical about 5 o’clock? Why didn’t they know at 1 o’clock in the afternoon—when they should have been able to see from some of the very good weather forecasting we get at the moment—what the temperatures were likely to be and anticipate what the demand could be?

So, then to say, “Well, the system completely failed.” is not a reasonable thing, and to say, “Oh, it’s all the market. The market failed.” That’s where Labour goes and hides on all these things. Blame someone else. Blame a system that is non - State-controlled and say that it’s nothing to do with them. It’s everything to do with the Government because, for a start, the generators are half owned by the Government, in the main. But let’s get back to the point. What they could have done at that point is start talking directly to the generators. The State-owned enterprise Minister can do it and say, “Is everything OK here? What’s the deal?”, not telling them what to do, but perhaps finding out why only half of the capacity of the Cook Strait cable was being fed. What’s so hard about asking that question? And why do we sort of say, “Oh, well, you know, that was one of those things.”? I think it was Minister Parker and Minister Robertson who talked about how you bid in for expected demand and everything else and put prices on; well, that simply indicates that the Government knew that there was a degree of gaming going on by the generators.

As far back as March this year, the Major Electricity Users’ Group were saying that the generators were keeping the supply right on the precipice of shortage. Well, why are they doing that? They’re doing that because that effects price, obviously. So if the Government was so concerned about this, why weren’t questions asked of the authority about whether or not that was actually happening? Why wasn’t that simply asked? Other commentators in the field have also been making those sort of predictions—notably John Kidd, one of the foremost commentators on the electricity industry in New Zealand—since early parts of this year. So it shouldn’t come as a total surprise that we got to this position.

Then, for the Government to walk in here today and for the Minister, yesterday in the House, to answer the questions and say, “Well, actually, there was plenty of capacity. Plenty of capacity, no problem at all.” Well, capacity is a faceplate measure. It’s like saying my car is a 341 cubic inch V8. It’s just a measure of potential capacity. Until the switch is turned on, the tap is turned on, or the gas is lit, nothing happens. So that’s not an answer. The answer part, though, is that the capacity wasn’t turned on. And it goes right back to that eye off the ball—14 hours with no Minister, apparently, knowing what was going on. I tell you what, that beggars belief. We accept them, because they’ve come in the House and said it. But it is very hard to understand how a Minister’s office can be so far off the ball.

The last time that we had this sort of problem in New Zealand, the last time we had a snap debate on energy in New Zealand was in the latter stages of the Helen Clark Labour-led Government. That was at the end of three years out of eight where we’d had massive electricity shortages. Well, Mr Robertson might want to criticise the arrangements that are in place at the moment—I don’t think they’ll be changed. I don’t think they’ll be changed. Now, we’ve had 14 years of not having to put up with this sort of stuff, and I don’t think we needed to put up with it this time, had there been a Minister with their eye on the ball. I think—well, the Minister over there sort of mumbles under his breath and said, “No, that’s not true, Gerry.” The fact is, the Minister did not know for 14 hours that the country was facing major shortages. How does that happen? That is a totally MIA thing. Then, of course, there’s the argument run, “Oh well, you guys didn’t pay attention to the renewable system.” Let’s be clear. Stats New Zealand have figures out today that tell a really interesting picture. New Zealand has fallen in just four short years from a renewable capacity over 80 percent to down around 70 percent of generated electricity. That’s just ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous.

Others, of course, have raised the issue of climate change and everything else. I won’t do that, Mr Speaker, because you’d want to contain me. But it is ironic, isn’t it, that on the day that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change comes out with the new predictions about global temperature increase due to carbon emissions, this Government has an electricity shortage entirely due to the fact that we are now so dependent on fossil fuels to keep the system alive. I don’t know why that hasn’t been reported. I don’t know why some people who are absolute zealots for everything this Government does can’t see what a massive failing that is. And the other thing is, of course, this comes on top of months and months and months of industrial shutdowns, industrial slowdowns, and the commercial sector of New Zealand having to really, really turn the tap off because of that massively increasing price over time.

All of that, all of that is scarcity. Scarcity in a system that, as the Ministers have said today, does have the capacity to deliver the electricity that we need. So the question that has to be answered by the Minister is: first, what happened in the system of communication inside the Minister for State Owned Enterprises’ office, inside the Ministry of Energy and Resources’ office, inside Transpower, inside the Electricity Authority, and the communication from the generators to the systems operator as well, and from the systems operator themselves, given that they are a separate office from Transpower.

So we look forward to the terms of reference for this inquiry. We hope that they are comprehensive and we hope that the right people are put in place to inquire. Those right people are not the current Electricity Authority.

The Hon Dr—sorry, Dr Deborah Russell.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for the promotion. Let me be absolutely clear about the time line of what happened on Monday. At 6.43 a.m. in the morning, Transpower issued a low residual notice to participants in the electricity market. This is an absolutely routine notice—absolutely routine notice to generators—and is part of their daily forecasting as to what is going on. No one would ever pick up a phone to a Minister at that stage. Later on in the day at 1:02 p.m., Transpower issued another warning that there was insufficient generation coming in for the evening peak. Again, interesting. Nothing that anyone would pick up a phone for the Minister to—why? Because the market ought to have solved this problem.

By the evening, another warning was issued at 5.07 p.m., and it was time to get more serious at that stage. Perhaps someone should have picked up the phone at that stage. At 6.40 p.m., Transpower issued a request for network companies with a direct grid connection to shed load by 1 percent. Finally, at 7.10 p.m., there was a grid emergency notice issued. If ever there was a point to pick up the phone to the Minister, that is when it should have happened. It did not—it did not. In fact, at 7.54 p.m., Transpower sent an email to the Minister—an email.

So, whatever happened, there was a failure of communication, which Transpower has already apologised for—has already apologised for. People are putting into place systems to make sure it does not happen again. But let me go back to a critical point about what happened on Monday night. On Monday night, there was enough capacity in the system to generate the power that was needed. This was not a failure of the entire system to be able to generate enough power. The capacity was there. The problem was that it was not used, and 28,000 households ended up without power, and without power in the central North Island, which at this time of year is one of the colder places in the country. I’ve been in Taumarunui on a winter night and it is not a warm place to be.

So let me run through some of the known problems that caused the fact that we had an outage. Here are the known problems: the third Rankine turbine at Huntly was not fired up. If it had been fired up when that first notice came through, there would have been enough power generation in the evening. Even when the second warning came through at 1:02 p.m., if it had been fired up when the second warning came through—now, that turbine takes between six to 10 hours to fire up. Perhaps it might not have been online on time, but perhaps it might have. So the situation could have been saved at that stage.

So we need to have a think about why that decision was made not to fire the turbine up. Now, it turns out that Genesis made a commercial decision in that regard. That is because of the way—or an operational decision—the market rules are set. Perhaps we need to have a look at those. The fact is there was a problem of that turbine not being fired up, and we need to know why it happened and fix that problem.

The second problem: there was weed in Lake Rotoaira in the Tongariro scheme. Now, ordinarily, it’s kept clear of the intake in that scheme, but, as it happened, there was a south-east gale all that day, which pushed the weed into the intake. As it even turned out, the workers in that scheme actually had it under control until about, alas, just before the evening peak, just exactly when we needed it to be clear. So something went wrong with the way that the weeds are controlled—normally it’s OK, but it couldn’t cope that particular day.

There was a third problem. We know that Transpower actually got some of the calculations wrong. So some of the information that was sent through to some of the retailers in terms of how much power they needed to shed was actually incorrect. Now, stuff happens—stuff happens. This was a mistake and it wasn’t picked up and it resulted in those 28,000 households being without power. Again, something needs to be taken into account there and investigated.

So, in terms of those things, those problems, those are all problems, but where were the actual failures—the failures? Was it in the electricity market? Well, the market delivered a market solution. The trouble is, it was not the supply solution we needed. It was not the social solution we needed, which was for all our households to be warm and to have the electricity on one of the coldest nights of the year. So the set-up in the electricity system does not deliver the solutions we need. This is why Governments need to intervene.

There was a communications failure—there was a communications failure. Transpower did not alert the Minister in time, and there were further communications failures. We know that many of those people, those 28,000 households, were saying that if they had just had a few minutes warning, they could have prepared a bit better. That’s a very good point. So there was a failure there. But above all, I think the failure that the Opposition have tried to sheet home is they have tried to say it is a Government failure. That is false. “It is a failure on the part of the Minister.”, they said.

You know, we had some absurdities from the Opposition. Barbara Kuriger suggested that she had known about it from social media, so why was the Minister not on social media in the evening? What a ridiculous thing to say. For goodness’ sakes! Social media. Then she said, “Well, why wasn’t the Minister talking to the State-owned enterprises Minister in the evening?” Well, actually, the State-owned enterprises Minister didn’t know either, because Transpower had not picked up the phone, so there was an impossibility there. Then the next one was why wasn’t the Minister reading her email at 7.54 p.m. at night? We know the volume of email that comes into our inboxes and we know that a Minister’s email is monitored by staff. Staff go home in the evenings; it’s an entirely reasonable thing to do. So the Minister’s email would not have been monitored at 7.54 in the evening, and I suggest that, again, this goes back to the appropriateness of using email for an emergency situation. For goodness’ sakes! I’m surprised the Opposition wasn’t asking why the Minister wasn’t recalculating Transpower’s load calculations and sending out warnings there. I’m surprised they didn’t ask why she wasn’t cleaning out the weed in Lake Rotoaira.

The point is defined here where action needs to be taken, and simply bellowing that it must be the Minister’s fault ignores the realities of our system—the realities out of our system—that meant that we had a power outage, that we had households suffering through that evening. We do need to locate those failures in the system that night, and we’ve got two inquiries under way. One is the routine regular statutory inquiry that Transpower will run. One is the one which has been commissioned from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment finding out what went wrong, what can be done better, and putting better systems in place. The Ministers are doing exactly what they should be doing, taking responsibility for what they can fix, and getting it under way.

The debate having concluded, the motion lapsed.