I would like to begin by congratulating David Clendon on bringing the Smart Meters (Consumer Choice) Bill successfully to the House. It must be a record in the annals of the proceedings of the House for a new member to have a bill drawn from the ballot as quickly as he has managed to do.

Labour will support this bill because we believe that New Zealanders ought to have more control at home over their power bills. Householders should have the opportunity to get a little more control over the cost of their electricity. Smart meters provide electricity users with the ability to monitor their power usage, and therefore to begin to exercise that greater control that we think they should have. The previous speaker is quite right. There are issues that need to be resolved. But the question is one of the chicken and the egg. Does the country wait until the technology is perfect, or do we give the technology a bit of a boost by specifying a standard now and helping the appliance manufacturers to know what they should be doing, as the Victorian Government has done, and roll out a proper series of appliances in the home that can connect to smart meters and start to give consumers the power we think they should have?

There is a real problem at the moment, as the previous speaker observed. There is no requirement at the moment for the smart meters that Meridian Energy and others are installing to have any home area network functionality. There is an excellent report on this issue from the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment, the servant of the House in this area, who has done meticulous research on the requirements that would be needed to make sure we could roll out smart meters in a way that provides choice to consumers. That is something we should take seriously. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment has estimated that by 2012 retailers will have installed a total of 800,000 meters in this country without home area network capability—the feature that makes them smart. Without having installed a home area network chip, so that smart meters can communicate with other in-home appliances, consumers simply will not be able to take advantage of using power when electricity is cheaper.

The bill sets minimum standards for smart meters, to ensure that the meters being installed are actually smart. They should live up to their name. They should have home area network functionality, not just the capability to have them put in later on. As I said, this will encourage appliance makers to move quickly to put chips in fridges, washing machines, dryers, heat pumps, and dishwashers so that householders can programme them to use power most efficiently and to lower their power bills. The corollary of this development would be that power retailers would offer differential tariffs. When they were not able to sell a whole lot of power into the market, they could make that power available to householders, say at night, for cheaper rates.

This is the future of electricity usage. It is an important step towards smart grids. Smart grids use digital technology to upgrade the current system, and this will allow for much closer control of our electricity supply.

The Government has shown a consistent lack of interest in providing consumers with greater control over their power usage and encouraging greater energy efficiency. Last year the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment recommended that the Minister should specify a standard, as has now taken place in a number of overseas jurisdictions. I mentioned Victoria, and that is probably the closest relevant development. But Gerry Brownlee has just ignored those recommendations. He defends his decision because he says that the ripple control system on home water heating, to manage peak load, is an adequate substitute. In technology terms, Mr Brownlee’s decision is a bit like people saying they do not want an iPod because they still have a perfectly good collection of 78s.

In March 2010 Gerry Brownlee again rejected calls to establish a standard for domestic smart metering of electricity, in favour of allowing the industry to decide what is best. This refusal is a major missed opportunity to empower consumers. It is a representation of the energy Minister just sticking his head in the sand. We can trot out all the excuses as to why we should not do this, but we are missing opportunities. I congratulate David Clendon on bringing this bill to the House. I hope we take the opportunity he has offered, to give consumers a bit of choice in the way they use electricity and to start making our electricity grid a lot smarter.