Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / David Seymour: Regulation Minister on red tape impacting fuel resilience, rumours LNG Terminal will be put on ice

Transcript

David Seymour: Regulation Minister on red tape impacting fuel resilience, rumours LNG Terminal will be put on ice · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: David Seymour back home looking for red tape to cut
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: to get more mileage out of our fuel stocks. His
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: regulation ministry wants businesses and the public to dobb in
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: any regulations that might get in the way of our
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: fuel response. He's with me this morning. Good morning, minister,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Good morning. Good to have you on the show. It
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: sounds like we've been primed. Just reading the papers this
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: morning and listening to sounds like we've been primed for
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: a bit of a U turn on the LNG situation.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: What do you reckon.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: That I'm aware of. It's a policy that was designed
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: to address a very simple problem that is that we
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: always hear the electricity companies make massive profits but don't
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: invest in enough generation options. This policy effectively forces them
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: to invest in one. And given the price we pay
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: as always the lowest available source of energy at any
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: given time, having an additional option in the form of
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: LNG actually means that when it's dry and the dams
• 1:05
  Speaker 2: aren't full, and it's nighttime and the soul is not shining,
• 1:08
  Speaker 2: and maybe the wind's not blowing the turbines, we have
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: another option to keep the price down. So I would
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: have thought, if you can get the energy companies forced
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: into investing. If you can get prices down, that's got
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: to be a win win, because if the current circumstance
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: tells us anything, we need optionality, as many options as possible.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: I would have preferred we didn't ban oil and gas exploration,
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: but unfortunately that was labor and first green government, but deliver.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but if the price of LNG is going to
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: be high for longer, then does building a terminal make
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: sense right now?
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: You know? Well, if if you look at the price
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: over the long term, there are times when housing LNG
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: will be better. If it's those dry winters and cold
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: still nights where it makes difference. Now, it would be
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: easy to take the lesson that because energy prices are
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: high right now, we should make all our decisions around that.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: I think the lesson that it's better to take is
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: that the world is uncertain and the more options you have,
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: the lower your prices likely to be.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: All right, what are you asking people to provide you with?
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: This is the red tape regulation for fuel in New Zealand.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: What exactly are you asking people for here?
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so the red tape tipline s been running for
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: about a year. It's had a couple of thousand people
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: come in with really specific ideas. It's led to making
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: it easier to get probate out of a will, making
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: it easier to build a garden shed or bake cakes
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: to sell in your home. There's lots of things that
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: have come through the red tape tip line that we've
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: actually changed, and now we're just making the point there
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: may be examples of red tape and stupid rules that
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: stop you from being able to be energy efficient. So someone,
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: for example, we've already had a few dozen in the
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: first few hours, but when we launched for yesterday, but
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: someone just said, look in New Zealand, you're allowed up
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: to ten percent ethanol in petrol. In the US it's
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: fifteen percent. Maybe if we relaxed our restriction on ethanol content,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: we could get a bit more value out of our petrol. Now,
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: you know, I'm not saying we should shouldn't do that.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: You're looking over thing that they'll look into.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Yep, well, brilliant. You know we didn't think of it,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: but we can now do something about it. Brilliant.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: David, appreciate your time. David Seymore, Minister for Regulation for.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: More from early edition with Ryan Bridge. Listen live to
• 3:39
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• 3:42
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