Two minutes later, National’s Energy Minister Simeon Brown confirmed it.
Speaking during a leaders’ debate at Electrify Queenstown yesterday, MC Paddy Gower asked how the politicians proposed to support apprenticeships and business funding to encourage more electricians, in part, to ensure solar installation could keep pace with demand.
Mr Jones conferred with Act New Zealand leader David Seymour: "Dear leader did talk about it on ZB, didn’t he?"
Mr Seymour: "I think discretion is the better part of valour, Shane".
Mr Seymour, when pressed by Mr Gower, said if there was a plan "it would probably be announced in the Budget in 10 days’ time".
Mr Brown: "Something’s coming in the Budget".
Mr Seymour told the sold-out crowd of 400 while the workforce needed to be expanded, red tape related to solar also needed to be cut.
"The Ministry for Regulation is going through every solar installation rule with a fine-tooth comb ... our goal is to be as simple as South Australia, where they do it in 24 hours."
Opportunity Party leader Quilae Wong asked where all the electricians had gone, then noted "they’re in Australia, because they’re moving ahead on electrification, and we’re dilly-dallying around, flip-flopping on policy".
Mr Brown, when asked if liquefied natural gas was "definitely going to happen" in New Zealand, said the government was going through a procurement process at present relating to an LNG importation facility.
New Zealand had to solve the "dry-year problem", during which an extra 3 terawatt hours of generation was required, while the Huntly Firming Options provided about half that.
LNG appeared the only solution which could deliver the balance at pace, he said.
Act and New Zealand First were both supportive of LNG — Mr Jones said while it might not be the most popular option, "it’s absolutely necessary" to provide three months’ back-up energy.
Labour MP Dr Megan Woods said that nobody disagreed with the "problem definition sitting beneath LNG".
"What are we going to do for those dry years where the sun doesn’t shine, rain doesn’t fall and the wind doesn’t blow?"
However, she took aim at the government’s cancellation of the New Zealand Battery Project, which included the proposed Lake Onslow "water battery", and said while LNG was one solution, others had not been fully explored.
"[Mr Brown] literally threw the baby out with the bathwater when he cancelled [that] project.
"The portfolio approach of various options was pulling ahead of Lake Onslow, but this government, for two years, cancelled all work at looking at what we were going to do around storing for those dry years.
"It was a dereliction of duty on the part of this government."
Green Party co-leader Chloe Swarbrick said a national energy strategy was a no-brainer, in part to respond to the "call for certainty" from New Zealanders.
"It’s simple, it’s straightforward, it’s going to require a lot of work and, ideally, it should be cross-partisan.
"But an energy strategy is just basic, plain common sense."
