Hobbs Marian: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Hobbs Marian: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:635;Page:6222] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I rise to strongly support this Climate Change Response Amendment Bill. In supporting it I say that I strongly disagree with the National members’ versions of what we have done. Eric Roy said that climate change is an issue that we have no option but to be involved with. What johnny-come-latelys and jill-come-latelys—not in Mr Roy’s individual case but as regards the National Party as a whole. National’s policy is really a climate change makeover. It is consistent with the Bluegreens’ deliberate makeover to attract green votes since green issues have become the fashion. National members are the fair-weather friends of climate change. 
Let me give some examples from the speeches we heard today. Dr Nick Smith attacked Government members for their work to lower New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions. He said: “You’re not doing enough! You should be out there doing this this and this!”. Dr Smith does not recognise that it is a step-by-step process. National belatedly supported the Permanent Forest Sink Initiative which does two things: firstly it makes sure that trees get planted; and secondly it ensures that those trees are planted in areas prone to erosion. That is the thing about environmental politics. One is never curing one thing by itself; one is actually hitting a number of different issues at the same time. 
Then Bill English spoke misquoting and getting the facts wrong—as was ably pointed out by the Minister in the chair David Parker—about our growth in emissions and how it compares with that of other countries. It is very interesting to note that the growth in emissions that is occurring or is about to in middle European States is very much to do with the change in energy production in those States. Emissions went down when those changes occurred but they are now growing again because of those States’ growing economies. 
With that comes the issue of transport. Again here is something interesting. I have been listening to Dr Smith talk about the Bluegreens’ document and he never mentions public transport. He never mentions investment in rail. His Government of course sold New Zealand Rail and took away from us the ability to make sure all our freight did not go by road. National members do not mention that. There they go again saying that we must lower our emissions but they look only at certain parts—the very thing they accuse the Government of. 
The other thing that National members go on about all the time—which really gets my goat—is Project Aqua. What they say about Project Aqua goes against the people in that particular valley. They say to valley residents that they must give up their rights to irrigation for viticulture to the life in the river and to a whole lot of other aspects that that water can be used for because the value of that water is only in providing hydroelectric power. What this Government did—and what I was responsible for—was to make sure there was an interrogative process that valued the conservation of the river the use of irrigation and the lowering of the amount of water that could be taken out in places like the Hakataramea. We actually looked after the river. If we had gone down the line of creating hydroelectric power regardless of anything else then we would have solved one wrong to create another. One does not do that in environmental policy. One actually tries to manage the entire planet not play off one section against another. 
My last point—in terms of National members saying that the Government does not back up its words—is to remind members about Lake Taupo. That lake will be in decline unless we do something about the land use around it. The forestry people who have said that they are not planting and need to plant are the same people who came to me as Minister and asked for so many millions of dollars—it was a high number—to compensate them for not shifting the land use from forests which they wanted to cut down to dairying. Dairying would make them more money they said but the Government did not want dairying around the Lake Taupo catchment. Sometimes I doubt whether the credentials of these people are green or even blue-green. Sometimes their credentials relate not to whether they ought to plant trees but to whether they ought to make money. The people who are complaining now that the economics are not right for them to go into forestry are the same people who asked for money—money that was to be used for other purposes—to turn forestry land in the catchment around Lake Taupo into dairy farms. 
The last comment I make around the issue of what we are doing is that we have been backing up our words. We have invested $81 million in managing the Taupo area in order to make it feasible to plant trees and to make other use of the land. That same walking of the talk which National denies we have done allowed us to encourage wind energy in New Zealand.