Brownlee snubs costly conference

Energy Minister Gerry Brownlee has balked at being part of a $1300-a-day annual electricity conference, saying he does not want to be used to promote it.

Brownlee was pencilled in as keynote speaker at the Power & Electricity World summit, the country's biggest gathering of electricity industry leaders, in Auckland this month.

His decision not to appear breaks a tradition of energy ministers opening the conference. Labour energy spokesman Charles Chauvel will address the conference instead.

Brownlee said the February 15-18 conference, run by international conference organiser Terrapinn, was "very, very expensive" and "in recent years there has been a dwindling attendance of the major players".

The conference website quotes a basic price of $4395 to attend three days plus the workshop, $3955 for three days and no workshop and $2855 for two days of conference only.

Brownlee said that as his Electricity Reform Bill would be going through the parliamentary select committee process, he wanted that to be a robust process and did not want to be "taking all sorts of positions prior to that".

"This is a private company - their business is creating conferences. There's no set-in-stone obligation for a minister to turn up," he said.

"It is somewhat irritating that they are running a commercial business and I have become part of their product, then they get brassed off when I'm not there."

The Terrapinn website said: "As organisers of Power & Electricity World New Zealand 2010, we were disappointed last week with the late withdrawal of keynote speaker Gerry Brownlee, New Zealand Energy Minister. We are please[d] to announce in his place and in very short notice, opposition spokesperson Charles Chauvel has seized the important opportunity to address New Zealand's energy leadership."

Chauvel said the event was commercial, but it had always been an opportunity for energy ministers to make announcements early in the year. "What we were told was that Gerry Brownlee said he didn't have anything to say," he said. "It's shame that two years in, ministers have got to the point where they are ignoring these things."

- © Fairfax NZ News