Solar could save Kiwis thousands — so what’s stopping us?

معنی واژه با لمس

1. 0:06Speaker 1: Kia ora, I'm Katie Bradford and this is The Front Page, a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. Energy
2. 0:17Speaker 1: is a key election issue and with campaigning officially underway, we've started hearing what the parties have planned to tackle our energy challenges. But is it enough? Today on The
3. 0:28Speaker 1: Front Page, Mike Casey from Rewiring Aotearoa has a challenge of his own for our politicians. Think bigger, be bolder. Because,
4. 0:37Speaker 1: he says, the stakes for our energy future and economy couldn't be higher. Thanks, Mike, for joining me. You took part in the Future of New Zealand debate last night.
5. 0:49Speaker 1: What was important for you to get across? to tell viewers about where you want New Zealand to go?
6. 0:54Speaker 2: Oh, it was a super exciting format. And I actually think the most value I got out of it was listening to all the other leaders and what they're passionate about in New Zealand. I think it gave me huge confidence that there's a lot of people in New Zealand
7. 1:06Speaker 2: trying to make New Zealand better for New Zealanders. And that's really exciting. I got to come on and talk about solar and the electrification, all the things, and joust a little bit with Mike Fuge, who's the CEO of
8. 1:15Speaker 2: one of the gen tailors, but 90% in agreement that we've got to get off foreign energy and onto New Zealand made energy. And I think that's actually a really cool outcome.
9. 1:25Speaker 1: And we're at, I think, 85% electrification now?
10. 1:28Speaker 2: No, no. So we're at 85% renewable electricity. But electricity is only a subset of the energy that we use in New Zealand. And about half the energy that drives
11. 1:38Speaker 2: our economy is imported fuels from the other side of the world. That's really bad for the climate. And we've also learned really recently, very, very volatile and.
12. 1:46Speaker 3: Very, very expensive.
13. 1:47Speaker 1: What's the next step? What do we need to do next, realistically?
14. 1:50Speaker 2: So all I ask New Zealanders to do is to make six good decisions in the next 10 years, which means the next time you buy a machine for your home, whether it's your car or the way that you heat your water or the way that you cook your food
15. 2:01Speaker 2: or putting solar panels on the roof, in the next 10 years, make six good decisions and you'll go a long way to solving New Zealand's climate emissions.
16. 2:10Speaker 3: While at the same time saving a huge amount of money.
17. 2:13Speaker 2: Gross savings for a family that goes through this energy transition fast, it's about $ 7, 000 a year of energy savings.
18. 2:19Speaker 2: I mean, you take out the capital cost and the interest cost if you put it on your mortgage, for example, it's probably about $ 3, 000 worth of savings a year still.
19. 2:26Speaker 2: So it's really significant savings for New Zealanders, and that's about turning climate from looking like a burden on our economy into a massive positive.
20. 2:33Speaker 1: It's kind of a position of privilege, though, in the sense that you have to have the capital cost up front, right? Like, A lot of people aren't in a position right now where they can go buy a new car or, and I'm saying second-hand car, they can't upgrade their car. They
21. 2:44Speaker 1: can't upgrade, they can't put solar panels on their roof.
22. 2:47Speaker 1: They can't actually put that capital out there in the first place to be able to do that. How much of a challenge is that?
23. 2:51Speaker 2: So equity is a massive play that we need to look at. And that's where I spend a lot of my time talking to different politicians about how we achieve these things. The short answer is, though, when you put
24. 3:00Speaker 2: solar panels on your roof, it will cost you $ 20, 000, but it will pay you $ 60, 000 over the lifetime before those solar panels need to be replaced. And so anyone that can afford their power bill can really afford solar.
25. 3:11Speaker 2: The problem is you have to buy 25 years of power up front, and that is a burden that's really hard for New Zealanders to overcome. One of the things I'm really proud of is the work that we've put
26. 3:20Speaker 2: in across the political aisle, really. to support long-term low-interest and flexible finance for New Zealanders. So they can finance
27. 3:29Speaker 2: solar panels over 25 years and they can save $ 1, 000 a year immediately by putting those things on the roof.
28. 3:34Speaker 2: So some of it is accessibility and then some of it is equity. And how do we deal with scenarios like pensioners that will benefit massively from electrification but don't have the cash to be able to upgrade their lives?
29. 3:46Speaker 2: Same thing with renters, people who live in apartment buildings.
30. 3:49Speaker 2: There are a lot of different types of New Zealanders, a lot of different types of lifestyles, and we've got to figure out how to electrify all of them.
31. 3:54Speaker 1: Back on those six things you're asking Kiwis to do, so you want to buy a hybrid or an electric car, get solar panels, what else can you do? What are some cheaper, easier options?
32. 4:03Speaker 2: Yeah, so there's the cooktop, obviously. Getting gas out of the home is great for your health as well as the wallet. Hot water is a really, really big one.
33. 4:11Speaker 2: About a third of your energy use is actually hot water.
34. 4:15Speaker 2: Hot water can be heated during the day off solar panels.
35. 4:17Speaker 2: You can save a phenomenal amount of money. Something like 60% of a home's energy use, though, is actually the car.
36. 4:25Speaker 2: And so electrifying that car where possible is a really significant return on investment. And we've just seen, like, with the price of everything where it is at the moment,
37. 4:34Speaker 2: you know, EVs are still quite unobtainable for everybody, but they've also, in a way, become totally affordable due to the rising costs of fossil fuels. But we just can't afford to keep paying for this overseas energy at the moment.
38. 4:45Speaker 2: And so figuring out ways to electrify the vehicle fleet is high on my agenda as well.
39. 4:50Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned last night in the Future of New Zealand debate, hosted by the About half our power fuel bills, sorry, actually going overseas to billionaires in Saudi Arabia.
40. 5:01Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's sort of really interesting when you sort of like bring it back to an individual car. But when an individual car, a petrol car on the road in New Zealand, $ 2, 000 is roughly leaving our economy every
41. 5:13Speaker 2: year to run that car going back to countries like Saudi Arabia or those that refine the fuels. And when you add that up across 4.3 million cars, that's an awful lot of money that actually evaporates out of New Zealand's economy. And if you look at it at the
42. 5:24Speaker 2: macro level, We spend just as much money on liquid fuels from the other side of the world as we make exporting concentrated milk back overseas. So you can see
43. 5:34Speaker 2: how significant our dairy industry is to our economy, kind of as reflective of how much of a blight or how much of a leech on our economy buying all this foreign energy is. And so the more we can electrify,
44. 5:45Speaker 2: the more we can run on New Zealand-made energy, the better off and more prosperous we're going to be. And we had billionaires in the room last night talking about growing the pizza industry. I think one of the easiest
45. 5:56Speaker 2: and quickest ways to do that is to focus on what New Zealand is really, really good at. And we're really good at making electricity and renewable energy. So let's scale that massively with solar on our rooftops, more power plants,
46. 6:06Speaker 2: that kind of thing, to really drive down the cost for everyday New Zealanders.
47. 6:11Speaker 1: One of the things I've been interested in with solar, and I know you have worked with political parties on their policies, and we've seen every party pretty much talking about, hey,
48. 6:21Speaker 1: we want more solar. Are we going to have the ability, one, the staff, the people who can actually install solar and actually be able to get, if the uptake is what you want it to be, be able to actually get
49. 6:32Speaker 1: enough panels into the country? The demand worldwide, I know China has seen this exponential boom in solar panels basically since the fuel crisis hit. Are we actually going to
50. 6:43Speaker 1: be able to To install and do what we need to do to do it. And do we need to train workers up fast?
51. 6:48Speaker 2: 100%. And to look at this as even further, it's like there's something like 508,000 gas hot water systems in New Zealand that are going to need to be replaced because it's in everyone's financial best interest to replace those
52. 6:58Speaker 2: gas systems with electric versions. So there's also hot water heat pumps and induction cooktops and all of these things.
53. 7:03Speaker 2: The short answer is that New Zealand is a small enough economy that we're never really going to struggle with being able to source the hardware coming into the country. Now, I say that there's always going to be nuance every
54. 7:13Speaker 2: now and then, but we really are around an era on the production scale of these things now. So that's the first and most important thing. The bigger challenge that you identified, though, is how do we actually do this
55. 7:23Speaker 2: efficiently and effectively? Because demand for electrification is now growing at quite a staggering rate. How do we make sure that we have the workforce that can actually do this work?
56. 7:33Speaker 2: And so we've been really trying to work across the house here on this, and it might be surprising to some of the listeners here, but the party that really came to the party on this one was the ACT Party.
57. 7:44Speaker 2: When I had my solar installation installed on my farm, I had to have four different electricians come out from different organizations to make that happen. They're all qualified with the same thing, and it could have honestly been done by one guy, but due to regulations and red tape
58. 7:55Speaker 2: and all these kinds of things. So really trying to make sure that the workforce that we do have is able to earn more money by being as efficient as possible and doing more jobs is super critical and important.
59. 8:06Speaker 2: But the second thing is probably the next thing that I'm going to focus on post-election.
60. 8:10Speaker 3: Is how do we scale our tradies?
61. 8:12Speaker 2: Right now I have mums come up to me at events regularly saying there's no electrical apprenticeships for their children.
62. 8:18Speaker 2: And at the same time you have solar installers saying we can't hire enough qualified staff. There's obviously a big hole and a big inefficiency that needs to be solved.
63. 8:26Speaker 2: And at the same time, we always talk about the brain drain in New Zealand, but there's so many people that would love to move to New Zealand. So how is it that we get more qualified, trained Sparkies into New Zealand is also critical.
64. 8:37Speaker 1: And at a time when we've got a high employment rate of 5.7%, 5.8%, but the NEET rate, those are the young people not in work or training, is double, triple that, right?
65. 8:46Speaker 3: So high.
66. 8:46Speaker 1: There's all these people who desperately want work and who want training. Let's get them installing solar, right? Let's get them trained to do this. And they get to live somewhere like Cromwell, probably, with you.
67. 8:55Speaker 2: The electricians will be the heroes of the hour when it comes to climate. One thing I've often said is, you know, we asked economists and accountants to solve climate, and all that resulted in was really pine trees and
68. 9:05Speaker 2: more fossil fuels being burned. In actual fact, it's the practical work on the ground. It's the practical trade work that is required for our country that can't be replaced with something like AI. AI could help you make things
69. 9:16Speaker 2: more efficient, but ultimately... We need good men and women installing electrical equipment all over the country in order to revolutionize our economy. And I truly think we're at the point where we could be very well leading on this.
70. 9:27Speaker 2: We pay through the nose for foreign energy, more expensive energy than any other country in the OECD. And we are very good at making electricity, which makes us the perfect economic case study on how to do this transition really,
71. 9:38Speaker 2: really quickly. And working across the house... There are ways that we can do this without necessarily doing it with subsidies.
72. 9:45Speaker 2: As long as we can increase the accessibility of finance, that's one of the key ways that we can do that.
73. 9:49Speaker 2: And we've had everyone from Te Pāti Māori, I don't think New Zealand First has announced their policy manifesto yet, but I'm really hoping that they've got this policy in there as well, which means five out of the six
74. 9:59Speaker 2: parties have done it. The ACT Party hasn't supported it yet, but that's okay. If we can get five out of six, it'll probably be New Zealanders going to get access.
75. 10:05Speaker 3: To accessible finance.
76. 10:06Speaker 1: And they have, as you said, they've moved quite quickly alongside Simeon Brown to change those regulations around battery-powered solar, which I was astonished when I discovered. I went out
77. 10:16Speaker 1: to Labour Party announcing their solar policy and they talked about one of these batteries on solar and then said, actually, that's not legal. You can't legally have these portable battery
78. 10:26Speaker 1: solar packs in the country. And I said, it's like, what?
79. 10:28Speaker 1: This is crazy.
80. 10:29Speaker 2: What's going on? We call it plug-in solar. The Germans call it balcony solar. But essentially, you can go down to Bunnings and buy a solar panel for a few hundred bucks and plug it into the wall and start
81. 10:37Speaker 2: generating your own electricity. much, much lower price point than spending $ 20, 000 on the solar system for your home.
82. 10:43Speaker 1: And if you're a renter, you can do it, right?
83. 10:45Speaker 3: If you're a renter.
84. 10:46Speaker 2: But also, I think there's a really strong equity argument.
85. 10:48Speaker 2: We've got a lot of trusts around New Zealand that are working with the most marginalised families. The ability for them to be able to point a solar panel at the sun and start saving money on their power bills
86. 10:56Speaker 2: is a staggeringly awesome opportunity. And that was something that was ultimately championed by the ACT Party, championed by Simeon Brown.
87. 11:05Speaker 3: But also.
88. 11:06Speaker 2: You know, to the credit of the Greens and the Labour Party, we're like, yeah, that just seems really sensible.
89. 11:10Speaker 3: We're going to back this too.
90. 11:11Speaker 2: So we're getting a lot of bipartisan support for a lot of this technology now, which is really, really exciting.
91. 11:17Speaker 2: And generally, the way that it looks at the moment is across the board. I'm at the point of, you know, whatever happens on November 7, I'm really excited about New Zealand's energy future and what that means for our country.
92. 11:26Speaker 2: I just need to be there to help encourage them along.
93. 11:29Speaker 2: There's a lot of talk before the election. I need action after the election.
94. 11:31Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where the rubber really hits the road. And you have talked about the good things you think they're doing.
95. 11:37Speaker 1: There are lots of controversy in this area. One of them, the LNG, proposed LNG terminal, which the coalition government doesn't seem to have been able to sign a contract before
96. 11:47Speaker 1: the election. Labour's made it clear. They're not going to go ahead with it. Do you think it's going to happen?
97. 11:51Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope it doesn't. And I'll explain exactly why.
98. 11:55Speaker 2: We have two problems in New Zealand's energy system or electricity system. One is called a dry year when we run really, really low on our lakes. You can think of our lakes like giant batteries. We've got three major
99. 12:06Speaker 2: storage lakes in New Zealand, which are Tekapo, Pukaki and Taupo.
100. 12:10Speaker 2: And they hold about six to eight weeks worth of water.
101. 12:13Speaker 2: The problem really is that we drain those lakes in the middle of the day to run our economy. It doesn't rain and those lakes get really low. The more solar we roll out, the more we can hold on
102. 12:23Speaker 2: to that water, the less dry year risk there is as a result of that. And I think most energy pundits are now at the point where we're like, wow, the renewables rollout is so extensive now, what's happening, that
103. 12:34Speaker 2: we've kind of eliminated dry year risk quite naturally. And we don't really need to look at importing another insurance policy into the country. That being said, it's very important
104. 12:44Speaker 2: to recognize the most important thing is we keep the lights on. And that's why we've got a giant mountain of coal at Huntly. That's why we have other things like diesel peakers and stuff available. The second issue, though,
105. 12:55Speaker 2: is around what happens when we all want to use power at the same time on a really cold, still night where there's no sun. And that's the peaking capacity.
106. 13:03Speaker 2: And that's where we.
107. 13:04Speaker 1: Really need- And that's where we get those warnings.
108. 13:05Speaker 3: Over winter, right?
109. 13:06Speaker 4: Correct.
110. 13:06Speaker 2: And that's really different from dry air. And that's something where there'll be lots of arguments about, Where exactly we need to go with New Zealand's electricity system, we're 85%
111. 13:16Speaker 2: renewable energy at the moment, largely due to the need to peak occasionally in winter. I think we could probably drive that up to 90, 95% quite comfortably. But we must remember on the other side of this that in
112. 13:27Speaker 2: order to displace all those liquid fuels we've just spoken about, we kind of need twice as much electricity as we've currently got. So we don't need 100% renewable grid. We need a 200% renewable grid. And so I think having
113. 13:38Speaker 2: a little bit of fossil fuels like that giant pile of Indonesian coal and a little bit of diesel on hand to make sure that the lights stay on and we don't have any disasters economically is super important. I
114. 13:48Speaker 2: just don't think LNG adding a third foreign fuel in is the right way to go.
115. 13:51Speaker 1: Shane Jones will be happy with the first two part of that argument that you've said his coal's OK because he's a big fan of making sure we've got that there.
116. 14:04Speaker 4: Well, we're definitely going to need LNG amongst a range of other issues, but we've got a bigger problem. There's the gouging, villainous ways of the Gentailers, which is not
117. 14:12Speaker 4: only beggaring businesses, but it's leading to deindustrialisation. I really respect the CEO from Contact Energy turning up tonight. I hope he still talks to me after we've split his business in half.
118. 14:24Speaker 3: Yeah, but you're not going to do that, are you?
119. 14:26Speaker 3: Because Nicola won't let you.
120. 14:29Speaker 4: Well, that all depends on leverage as a consequence of the election, so watch this space.
121. 14:36Speaker 1: The other issue, of course, is the gen tailors, well, one of the other issues, and obviously New Zealand First have said alongside their plans they are vowing to break
122. 14:46Speaker 1: up the gen tailors. There's certainly an acceptance now that the energy companies were too slow, right, when it came to renewables. We're seeing this huge boom, we're seeing solar farms being built, you know, you drive around, you can see,
123. 14:58Speaker 1: see them around the country, but it's a bit slow, right?
124. 15:00Speaker 1: And getting there. It's breaking up the Gentile is the answer.
125. 15:03Speaker 2: It's a deeply ironic world that we now live in where New Zealand first and the Greens have policy that they really do agree on, which is around breaking up with the Gentiles. And also the ACT party and the Greens,
126. 15:14Speaker 2: I think are the two parties with the best energy policy, well thought through policy on how we actually lower bills for New Zealanders when it comes to energy. Um, The short answer is these guys, and along with the Gentailers,
127. 15:26Speaker 2: there's also all of the utility companies like Vector Up in Auckland or Wellington Electricity or Orion down in Christchurch.
128. 15:32Speaker 2: They also put charges on your power bill to deliver the energy from the power plants to your home. And all of that is really, really expensive too. And all of these players are rational operators in a regulatory environment
129. 15:44Speaker 2: that we've given them. Now, I wouldn't say necessarily blame the rational operators. I would blame the regulatory environment, the regulator in particular. for not keeping up with technology. We are at a point in New Zealand where the only
130. 15:56Speaker 2: way to demonstrably lower power bills is to put solar on your rooftop. The only way to demonstrably lower energy bills is to electrify. So electrify and then putting solar on the roof is actually the path that we need
131. 16:07Speaker 2: all households to go down. My fear around splitting up the gen tailors, and I'm certainly not going to shed a tear if it happens, but my fear is it will give us something to do and talk about, but will be nothing more than a sideways jump for the
132. 16:18Speaker 2: customers and their power bills. The only way to do this is really to put solar on as many rooftops and as farms and as businesses as we possibly can, because you'll be at power coming in, financed it. It'll
133. 16:29Speaker 2: literally be one quarter of the price of grid electricity at the moment. But you must remember grid electricity is still a quarter of the price of diesel and petrol.
134. 16:35Speaker 2: So when you look at it that way, you start to see that it's still economic to.
135. 16:39Speaker 3: Go down this path.
136. 16:40Speaker 1: Do you think the gen tailors and the energy companies, electricity companies, are more worried about you talking about solar than they are about New Zealand First and the Greens' threat.
137. 16:48Speaker 3: Of breaking up?
138. 16:49Speaker 1: Because do you think the breaking up of gen tailors is really ever going to happen?
139. 16:52Speaker 2: I've been really, really happy with Shane Jones and Chloe Swarbrick's advocacy in this space. because I feel like I was a public enemy number one with the gen tailors.
140. 17:05Speaker 2: But now that there is an existential threat on the horizon post-November 7, I feel like all of a sudden they're getting on board with rooftop solar. So all of a sudden they're kind of there on that front.
141. 17:15Speaker 3: And I quite like that.
142. 17:17Speaker 2: I'm definitely more of a free market enthusiast than I think many people in New Zealand are. But the thing about the energy system is it's actually not a free market.
143. 17:26Speaker 2: There's only four big players that can play in the space really effectively, and they drown out innovation, but they also drown out all the other customers of New Zealand.
144. 17:33Speaker 2: And I still go back to thinking that, well, maybe regulatory change to open up the market, something that the Nats promised, which I think is very, very good, but will actually be world-leading, is this idea of peer-to-peer trading,
145. 17:45Speaker 2: where I can sell you my power at whatever price I want and And we can open up a market where regular New Zealanders and businesses and stuff can start trading with each other. Farmers can sell their power to Fonterra.
146. 17:56Speaker 2: A marae or a church could give away power to its people. You could give away your surplus power to your elderly mum down the road. Whatever needs to happen, you could buy power from your neighbour while he's at
147. 18:07Speaker 2: work and not using it. That is a really exciting opportunity that will be truly world-leading. And we've seen all these political parties start to realise just how closed off
148. 18:16Speaker 2: New Zealand's electricity system is We created a free market and then made it not free. So doing a lot of innovation in that space is super critical too.
149. 18:24Speaker 1: Any idea of how many people have moved to solar?
150. 18:27Speaker 1: I'm thinking about how many customers these companies have lost as a result of this push towards solar.
151. 18:31Speaker 2: And they're not losing customers because I think the most important thing to acknowledge is that solar works really well during the daytime when it's sunny. And if you put a battery in, which half of the installations in New
152. 18:42Speaker 2: Zealand now have, you can pretty much cover most of your load. But there's times in winter and really bad weather where you need New Zealand's electricity system. The final 5%
153. 18:51Speaker 2: is really expensive to cover yourself. So the final 5% is the reason that you'd stay connected to the grid.
154. 18:57Speaker 2: And I think that's sort of really important to acknowledge.
155. 18:59Speaker 2: And with the innovation that's coming around peer-to-peer trading... you might want to stay connected to the grid because I think the biggest waste of all is turning off your solar panels when your batteries are full and not being able to sell that power to anyone in the future.
156. 19:11Speaker 2: So I think that's super important. At the residential level, we now have 4% rooftop solar penetration. Down where I am in central Otago, it's over 12%, which is really,
157. 19:20Speaker 2: really exciting. But you look at Australia, 40%. So we've still got a long way to go to catch up, but we are catching up pretty quickly now. I don't
158. 19:30Speaker 2: think there's anyone... in New Zealand that isn't actively talking about solar, and that's a really good outcome. And I also see solar as being the gateway drug to the electrification of all the things, because the moment you put
159. 19:41Speaker 2: solar on your roof, you really start to wonder why you're paying someone else for gas to heat your hot water, or why you're paying some Saudi Arabian sheikh for his oil.
160. 19:49Speaker 2: You're wanting to use as much energy as you can yourself.
161. 19:52Speaker 2: And one of the other big parts of this is 4% rooftop solar penetration at residential level, 5% penetration with farmers.
162. 19:59Speaker 2: Farmers are really taking hold of this now and I think they have a really strong role to play in New Zealand's future energy system. pushing power back in winter when we need it during those dry years because they don't use a lot of energy when they're not milking
163. 20:11Speaker 2: and not irrigating.
164. 20:12Speaker 1: Are they using those Fonterra payouts to pay for solar?
165. 20:14Speaker 2: I said there'd definitely be a bit of that going on.
166. 20:17Speaker 2: I think the other thing about the long-term low-interest finance is we really argued with federated farmers to make sure that that applied to all rateable properties, not just residential properties.
167. 20:26Speaker 2: That's something both the Labour Party and the National Party have confirmed with that as well. So It's making sure all businesses and all rateable properties have access to this low interest finance is super critical. And I'm really proud
168. 20:38Speaker 2: that we've been able to sort of ally with farmers on this front at a time where traditional climate narratives, they're not really seen as the good guys. I actually think they're going to be such a massive role in
169. 20:49Speaker 2: the energy system moving forward because they have the land and the resources to actually generate a huge amount of energy for the rest of us.
170. 20:55Speaker 1: How much of your bill, that's staying connected to the grid.
171. 20:57Speaker 1: So if you have solar on your rooftop, how much?
172. 21:00Speaker 1: do you still have to pay to stay connected to the grid, so to stay a customer?
173. 21:05Speaker 2: So we're seeing homes in New Zealand now that are fully electric with two electric vehicles that literally had a negative power bill on an annual basis. Now, what that
174. 21:15Speaker 2: means is that you'll get credits in summer, you'll have a bill in winter, they cancel each other out. So usually you're still having to pay your line charge to stay connected to the grid. That might cost you a couple of bucks a day or something like that. That's
175. 21:26Speaker 2: kind of what the costs are looking like at the household level. But generally now we're at a point where the value of the power that you can generate is worth so much more than that.
176. 21:34Speaker 3: And that's a really good reason to stay connected.
177. 21:36Speaker 1: And that's probably a good way to end there. Mike Casey on a one-man crusade to try and save everyone's power bills.
178. 21:43Speaker 2: I would like to say one-man crusade. You're giving me far too much credit. I have a really strong team behind me at Rewiring. Lots of philanthropic support now so that we can basically pay a good team to fight
179. 21:53Speaker 2: for the right energy outcomes for New Zealanders.
180. 21:56Speaker 3: I'm just very proud and privileged to lead it.
181. 21:58Speaker 1: And getting politicians to listen to you as well, which is no mean feat.
182. 22:01Speaker 3: It's working really well.
183. 22:02Speaker 2: It took a while for David Seymour maybe to think that I wasn't woke or for Chloe Swarbrick not to think that I'm some sort of free market capitalist, but we have got there on both fronts and that's amazing.
184. 22:10Speaker 1: That is a miracle in itself. Thank you very much, Mike Casey.
185. 22:13Speaker 3: Thank you.
186. 22:16Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage at nzherald.co.nz. This episode of The Front Page was hosted
187. 22:27Speaker 1: and produced by me, Katie Bradford. It was produced and edited by Richard Martin with studio operations from Kane Dickey and executive production by Jane Yee. Subscribe to The Front
188. 22:38Speaker 1: Page in the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts and tune in tomorrow for another look beyond the headlines.