Kiwiblog

The Infrastructure Forum has just started. I’m only half taking it in, as was a pretty late night out with the Young Nationals celebrating the All Blacks massive victory.

Got absolutely soaked to the bone getting home – it was thundering down, and taxis were scarce with a 30 minute delay if you phoned for one.

Anyway back to infrastructure. First up was Maurice Williamson on transport and he summed it up himself with a one liner – National will build more roads – lots of them! He gave some staggering figures on the massive increase in costs that some roading projects have incurred due to consent delays. He stressed this wasn’t about even getiing enough roads for future volume, but just getting us enough for our current needs.

Then Gerry Brownlee on energy. Gerry said that if we found Maui field today, it would be worth around $50 billion. Said that concern over carbon emissions doesn’t change the fact that replacements for current fuel sources are not extensively available, so demand will stay high. NZ second only to Canada in our mineral endowment.

Third up was Nick Smith on RMA reform.  Round up of how multiple business organisations, government advisory groups and surveys all rate this as the highest priority. Will be enacted within months not years of the election.

Questions were fairly as expected. A patsy on why broadband is a better infrastructure investment than trains. Some discussion on coal and carbon emissions and whether one can sequester the co2 from coal. Also focus on consenting for roads – the desirability of having one consent application for an entire motorway, rather than breaking it down into lots of small packages – each of which has its own process.

NBR have an NZPA story on National’s policy programme. Details are:

• Tax policy to be released in first week of the campaign – is locked in and takes account of worsening economy
• KiwiSaver policy and Working for Families policies to be released
• These would be minor changes to current settings only
• Planning for a 8 November election
• Would introduce an RMA Amendment Bill within 100 days of office
• Aims to make the Emissions Trading Scheme a priority and pass legislation within nine months of office
• Stressed no change to the $1.5 billion fibre to the home broadband infrastructure proposal

All sounds good.

First of all, here is Colin Espiner on David Parker’s handing of the issue:

Okay then, so the Government says there’s nothing to worry about and the head of the company that transports electricity around the country says that there is. Hmmmmm. Who to believe? Hang on, isn’t there an election at the end of the year?

The best part was near the end of the press conference when Parker rounded on the media for supposedly beating up the story of a crisis, adding that no one could really expect to have a hydro-based power system AND keep the lights burning and industry making things.

Hmmn, this has some implications, such as:

The thing that disturbs me about this comment is that we’re less reliant on hydro power than we used to be. Fast forward ten years. I can almost hear whoever is Energy Minister saying: “You can’t have a wind-based electricity system and still have enough electricity to run everything flat tack in a really calm year.”

Yup. That’s why the rest of the developed world still burns coal and oil, or has nuclear power. You can’t rely on a network dependent on rain and wind – even in Wellington. Was it really only a few months ago that the Government was promising to make New Zealand 95 per cent dependent on renewable energy? Now Huntly’s running full tilt and we’re cheering on Mighty River Power to get its new gas-fired plant up and running as soon as possible.

But why don’t we have enough power? Usage patterns are well known and for years people have been saying we need more. Well Not PC looks at the problem – the RMA. Go read his whole post because it has a huge amount of data, but here’s just one aspect:

Projects Abandoned/Delayed/Restricted due to Resource Management Act :

· Project Aqua, hydro (520 MW) – abandoned 2000-2004
· Marsden B, coal (320 MW) – abandoned 2007
· Wairau Valley, Marlborough, hydro (75 MW) – abandoned 2007
· Whanganui/Tongariro, hydro – Environment Court effectively reduced the Tongariro capacity by one-third due to the “mauri” of the Whanganui river …
· North Bank Tunnel, hydro (260MW) – delayed until at least 2016
· Makara, wind – reduced from 210 to 140MW in 2007
· Project Hayes, wind (150MW) – still in delay
· Te Uku Wind (72MW) – awaiting consents
· Te Waka Wind (111MW) – consent overturned by Environment Court in April, 2007

There isn’t a market failure with energy generation. There is a regulatory failure.

The Environment Court has turned down the proposal for a 5 star Hilton to be built on the Wellington Waterfront.

I was generally supportive because the current location is occupied by an ugly warehouse used for indoor sports which just doesn’t make any use of the stunning views of its location.  There may have been features of the actual proposal which made it undesirable -but  I haven’t studied it in detail.

Wellington has no top class hotels at all. The Intercontinental (which fought the proposal as they don’t want competition) is closest, but we will struggle to attract certain conventions and conferences without a five star hotel.