Sitting date: 22 Oct 2025

OFFSHORE RENEWABLE ENERGY BILL

Second Reading

Debate resumed.

Rt Hon ADRIAN RURAWHE (Labour): Tēnā koe e te Māngai o te Whare. On a day that Tāwhirimātea's reminding us of his strength and power, I find myself speaking to the Offshore Renewable Energy Bill. I had the privilege of attending a hui in Taranaki about three or four years ago, along with the then Minister the Hon Megan Woods, who met with iwi about this very issue.

I wanted to let some of the members opposite, whose characterisation of our position on this side of the House is not entirely accurate, know that we were early starters on this issue and it's taken a long while for this current Government to get to this date. It was already in train when we were in Government. I can tell the member Mr Court, perhaps as he casts his eyes towards Australia, he can wave the Taranaki workforce goodbye, because, in that time, that's what's happened. So we definitely need to do this.

Taranaki iwi want to be active participants in this issue. My advice to any overseas investor that wants to come here is that you beat a path to all stakeholders in Taranaki and make sure that those relationships are strong and that they are active in allowing that investment to move forward; failure to do so would be a mistake, and, actually, it should not be a tick-box exercise through this legislation. So we will be looking closely at it at the committee of the whole House stage to make sure that we have the best piece of legislation that we can have. There are many communities who will be relying on us getting this right. So that's my brief contribution to this bill.

CAMERON BREWER (National—Upper Harbour): Mr Speaker, thank you very much. It's great to rise in support of the Offshore Renewable Energy Bill. It's certainly good news for my home province of Taranaki—South Taranaki, to be more specific. It's also good news for the guardians of the New Zealand Super Fund, which, of course, have in their guardianship over $85 billion. Of course, the Super Fund is looking at an investment in offshore wind farms, which is well exercised and well under way, as the previous speaker said, with the Copenhagen infrastructure partners. That will pursue the development of significant large-scale offshore wind farms in the South Taranaki Bight.

The guardians of the New Zealand Super Fund are very excited about this, and they will be pleased that this is progressing through select committee. Incidentally, the guardians of the Super Fund have also announced that they are looking at other investment opportunities of course, particularly in infrastructure and particularly pertaining to roads. But I digress. As others have said, this gives greater certainty for developers to invest in offshore renewable energy developments. It's unlocking that offshore investment, which is fantastic. It also manages the risks to the Crown and the public from offshore renewable energy developments.

So, look, the National Party are committed to this as part of our Electrify New Zealand, which of course is all about the goal of doubling renewable energy generation by 2050—we are now delivering. New Zealand has not currently got a regulatory regime for offshore renewable energy, and so we are progressing this legislation to fix that and to enable this new form of energy generation. Again, establishing this regime is an important step to giving those investors the confidence—the huge billions of dollars' worth of confidence—needed to construct such assets to help New Zealand's increasingly electrified economy.

Of course, despite what the Opposition may tell you on the black and white tiles, we are committed—National's committed, this Government is committed—to meeting New Zealand's long-term energy needs, hence why you're hearing a lot about the energy sector coming from this Government. That includes transitioning to net zero carbon emissions by 2050. I commend the bill.

INGRID LEARY (Labour—Taieri): I'm really pleased that the House had the opportunity to hear from my colleague the Rt Hon Adrian Rurawhe to correct the record, really, that this is a piece of work that Labour started because of our commitment to unlocking the potential for renewables, and it has been picked up by this Government, which we are really happy about.

I won't repeat all the comments made by previous members—I think we've got the message loud and clear that this is a pretty good bill—apart from to put into context the importance of the Taranaki wind farm developments, because what it will do with that offshore wind project is generate up to 1 gigawatt of electricity, and that's equal to 1 billion watts. So what that means is that it's equal to some of our largest hydro stations and more than eight Harapaki Wind Farms combined. The developers have said that it is really good in terms of bringing confidence back into the sector. So what matters for Taranaki matters for the rest of the country. It means keeping the lights on in Auckland. It will be jobs and growth in regional New Zealand. As has been said, it will help meet our net zero climate goals—although we do have some cynicism about that, given everything else that's going on.

I think it is important to note, also, the parts of the legislation, and the regime in particular, that Labour will be watching really closely to ensure that this can do what it says on the tin. That is around clarifying how maritime space conflicts will be managed in terms of mining and aquaculture; it's about strengthening environmental compliance obligations under exclusive economic zone and Resource Management Act frameworks; and as my colleague the Rt Hon Adrian has said, enhancing Treaty of Waitangi recognition and Māori engagement. That is going to be critical. We will be keeping a close eye on that, given that sometimes we see one side of the ledger enhanced and enabled under Christopher Luxon's Government without the surrounding protections and safeguards to ensure that the transitions can happen.

We're also going to ensure that there should be ministerial oversight or guidance for setting decommissioning and financial security requirements, and we want to see improved information requirements and transparency for permit applications and ownership changes. So a lot of that stuff is the devil in the detail of the regime. They are caveats.

However, as we have heard today in the House, it's a good piece of work, started by Labour, picked up by this Government, and we do support what is happening in the House today. I commend the bill.

DAVID MacLEOD (National—New Plymouth): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I'm very pleased to stand in support of this bill, as everybody else around the House has, as well. I just thought I'd mention it's rather ironic, with all the wind we have outside at the moment, that a lot of the turbines would not actually be able to operate because they turn off at 90 kilometres an hour or thereabouts, and I think there's been some wind speeds in excess of 200 kilometres now in the South Island today. So it shows you how excessive the wind actually is.

This, as has already been spoken to, is very important for Taranaki, and I've got to support what Adrian Rurawhe has actually said over the engagement with Māori. It's critically important that, at the earliest possible moment, proposals such as these start with conversations with iwi. It's a strong start and it's one that I strongly encourage, as well.

The actual size of this, as the member has just spoken—it's talked up to maybe even up to two gigawatts of generation capability here. Now, if we think about the current stored generating capacity of all the wind turbines in New Zealand at the moment just being north of one gigawatt, this one farm can be actually immense—huge, in fact. One of the challenges of it is, actually, when you bring that amount of electricity into the supply stream, what effect that actually has. We spoke about the fact that Lake Onslow, one of the potential perverse outcomes of that was actually nullifying the potential interests of having other electricity generation occur. Well, this wind farm opportunity potentially has an effect similar to that, in some ways, in itself.

The size of these farms is immense. We spoke about the fact that one of these generators—I think it was Jamie Arbuckle who mentioned that he viewed it overseas in Taiwan. Well, some of the proposals that have been put forward, one generator, the size of the tower is similar to the size of the Sky Tower. They are immense structures. One of these wind turbine generators is potentially up to three times bigger than the land wind generators. That's how big these structures are. The distance between these wind generators can be up to 2 kilometres apart. That's how big the actual span of each of the blade's diameters are, and for them not to be disturbing each other with the wind flow, etc.

The South Taranaki Bight is a very attractive area, not just because of the world-class wind that they have there but also the immense amount of area with low draft or low depth of water. They need to install the pile-driven turbines in drafts less than 60 metres deep, and the South Taranaki Bight happens to have an immense amount of area. It's recently been established that you can easily have gigawatts of wind generation and the potential of the Trans-Tasman Resources proposal existing together. They can't exist on top of each other, no, but there's so much area out there that you can actually coexist with it, as well, and that is actually being looked at as we speak.

So with that—I know that I'm standing between everybody's lunch in this session here—I'm very pleased with the work that's been done in this year. It has been a long time coming; we've mentioned when this work began, and all of the entities that are looking at these wind offshore wind proposals have been waiting this for some time. We've got a number of parts still to go within the House here with the committee of the whole House and the third reading, and I commend the bill to the House. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): Dr Lawrence Xu-Nan. This is a five-minute Te Pāti Māori call.

Dr LAWRENCE XU-NAN (Green): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I rise on behalf of the Green Party to support the Offshore Renewable Energy Bill. My colleagues Scott Willis and Francisco Hernandez have spoken on why the Greens are supporting this bill. I also want to bring additional perspectives to this as well, which is why I sought this particular call. The Greens understand the importance of offshore renewable energy, and I think, as our energy spokesperson, Scott Willis, has said, that when we're looking at the future of energy generation, this is something that is also in line with our obligations under the Paris Agreement and what is supposed to be our emissions reduction plan.

In terms of offshore renewable energy, I want to mention two additional aspects of that. While, again, in the bill, there are lots of really good operational aspects, particularly around specific requirements for consultation with Māori groups, there are additional things I want to mention in the broader context of offshore renewable energy. One of them is around the way that offshore renewable energy in Aotearoa is being investigated and also invested in. If you're looking at South Taranaki in terms of the offshore renewable energy and, particularly, if you're looking at wind energy, one of the biggest supporters and backers of that is actually the New Zealand Superannuation Fund. When we are looking at the potential, not simply in terms of energy generation but also in terms of our ability to use our own sovereign funds, to support domestic entrepreneurship and production of renewable energy, we will be able to see compounding effects that benefit Aotearoa on the whole. I think that is something that really deserves mentioning when we're looking at the opportunities when it comes to offshore renewable energy.

Again, while this bill in isolation is something that is good and is moving towards a direction of renewable energy, it cannot go without saying that the combined effect of what the Government is doing regarding other bills, including the repeal of the oil and gas ban and also the additional subsidisation of offshore oil and gas, is preventing or affecting our overall effort of having a renewable and sustainable energy source here in Aotearoa. I think that needs to be said as well because when we are looking at—to give an analogy—making a muffin, even when most of the ingredients are fine but even if it's just one component in there that is potentially poisonous, it means that the whole muffin is inedible. That, in some ways, also speaks to the fact that while there are good initiatives that we're seeing being put through in offshore renewable energy in terms of some of the projects around wind energy by the fast-track legislation, the overall intent of things like fast track and the overall intent of the Government to repeal oil and gas ban are not moving us in the direction that fulfils our obligations under the Paris Agreement. Again, when we are looking at something like this, we cannot simply look at something in isolation. We also need to look at the broader Government agenda when it comes to energy.

The last thing that I want to touch on more broadly—again, all of the things I'm saying would be things that we are really interested to tease out with the Minister during the committee of the whole House stage coming up—is that energy production and renewable energy is a really important aspect. This has been well articulated by a number of people in the House around this bill. One of the things, about this particular bill, that should be part of a bigger patch that is also being looked at is the need for us, under the recommendation of the OECD, to start breaking up some of the gentailers and see how we can actually make the energy that we're producing affordable for the overall population of Aotearoa. At the same time, what initiatives are we also using, on one hand, to produce renewable energy sources but, on the other hand, also to support people to make the right decision to make energy consumption more efficient. The Greens do support this bill, and we have a number of questions that we would like to discuss in the committee stage.

Motion agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Greg O'Connor): The House stands adjourned until 3 p.m. today.

The House adjourned at 12:34 p.m.

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