Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well thank you Madam Speaker. The member that has just resumed his seat Dan Rosewarne has fallen into the trap that all Labour and Green MPs have fallen into and that is believing that this piece of legislation is actually going to assist our climate change objectives and goals. It's going to do the reverse—it's going to do the reverse. If there was ever a piece of legislation to come before this House that is based on ideological claptrap it's this—absolute ideological claptrap. Every aspect of our lives that we live in a modern thriving economy—well I wish that the economy was thriving; an economy that should be thriving—is based actually at its essence on an extractive mineral resource that gives us the opportunity to live the lives that we do.If we are to achieve—as we on this side of the House absolutely believe we will and are committed to—our Paris Agreement commitments our international commitments and our domestic legislative commitments in terms of climate change then we are going to need a mineral-extractive sector within our economy. To think otherwise is to just deny the absolute truth of what it is that makes a modern economy work and what gives us the opportunity to live the lives that we want to live and aspire to have for our children and our grandchildren.Now I did not sit on the Economic Development Science and Innovation Committee that heard submissions on this legislation but I've had an opportunity to listen to speeches today and also to do some reading about some of the submissions that were received and some of the arguments both for and against. I want to pick up on a comment or two that my colleague Todd Muller made because I thought his was a very very good contribution to this broader debate and this speech. If we look at economies around the world that are in many ways leading their climate objectives we find that some of those economies—in fact most of those economies—are using their own mineral-extractive sectors to help achieve the goals that they have set for themselves and for the planet. For us to say Well we're not going to participate in that. We're going to just manage rather than promote an intelligent useful and smart environmental approach to mineral extraction" is just to deny the obvious.Look for a moment at Norway. Norway is a world leader in terms of their climate ambitions and in terms of the way that they have been able to for instance change the way that their transport sector is funded. They are electrifying their transport fleet at rates that make us look like rank amateurs but their economy is based on a mineral-extractive economy. How they've funded that growth has been through support for their own extractive economy. They've used that to provide their citizens and their nation with the goals that they want to achieve and the tools that they want to use to get to the climate objectives they need. This legislation would be an anchor in terms of helping New Zealand and New Zealanders achieve those goals that I think collectively around this Parliament we do want to achieve.So this comes down to in many respects an ideological debate. It's an ideological debate. It's about whether we have the smart clever thinking that is going to effectively and environmentally consciously and environmentally responsibly use the minerals that we have available to us in New Zealand to achieve goals that we want to for our citizens or are we just going to take an ideological approach such as that that the Hon Julie Anne Genter was talking about in her speech which is basically to crawl back into a cave and do nothing? That was essentially I think the essence of her speech. I thought it was Catherine Delahunty a former member of this House—I thought that was her view. It seems that that is still commonly held within the Green Party. Actually we need to be smarter than that. We need to be more nimble we need more finesse and we need to be able to realise that it's not a binary option for New Zealand and New Zealanders to simply say "Well we want to achieve our climate objectives but we don't want to use any extractive mineral resources at all to do that." That is simply not an opportunity that we have. We are a small nation at the bottom of the South Pacific blessed might I say with a lot of mineral resources that we should be using and should be maximising to achieve our goals.So in this legislation the primary function of it seems to be simply to remove terminology from the existing principal statute that says "promote" all types of mining and instead replace it with the words "manage mining". Well I just think that sends very poor signals to those businesses those stakeholders shareholders and entrepreneurs who want to invest cleverly and imaginatively in extractive mineral opportunities that will help us achieve our goals. I can't see why the current Government wants to be so closed in their thinking as to that because this change actually sends a chilling message to those investors that actually in New Zealand mining and mineral extraction is not something that is welcomed by our Government and it doesn't in their view form an important part of our economy.By crikey given the opportunity later this year in October if my colleagues and I in the National Party and the ACT Party have an opportunity to lead a new Government we are going to have to focus far more carefully on growing our economy because it's a growing economy that gives us the income and the wealth and the opportunity to invest in the roads and the schools and the health systems and all the things that we want for our society. To simply close off opportunity in the way that this current Government wants to is to deny the logic of basic economics but it's also to deny opportunities for New Zealand citizens.I want to just comment for instance in relation to my own electorate in the beautiful Coromandel. Waihī is a town that for more than a hundred years has been literally and figuratively built on mining. Waihī didn't exist before gold mining. Waihī is a town that like so many other small towns around our country exists entirely because of its mining heritage. Now I know there are some who say "Well we shouldn't be doing any mining at Waihī." Well I don't take that view at all. I think that Waihī provides a great example of how it can be a business that provides for community for jobs and for the local district and local people. Just to give you an idea something like 22.7 percent of the Hauraki District Council's total gross domestic product comes from mining. That's important to a small district council like Hauraki. To deny that I think is to deny the facts and the logic and the rationale of economic reality.So on this side of the House we take a far more pragmatic and sensible approach. We apply our blue-green environmental principles to these matters and we say we take a practical approach to environmentalism—a practical approach that says we can have a degree of nimbleness and smartness that allows us to extract minerals wisely sensibly and for the economic benefit of the nation that helps us achieve our combined climate objectives while at the same time ensuring that our environment is protected and that we are not stupid enough to degrade and do long-term harm. I know that my South Island colleagues will point to examples where mineral extraction has actually enhanced at the end of the mineral extraction process the local environment.So look with that I'm happy to conclude my remarks in this second reading. We oppose this legislation we oppose the ideological claptrap and nonsense that it represents and we will apply given the opportunity in October to lead a new Government a far more practical blue-green environmental approach to these matters."