Foss Craig: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Foss Craig: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — In Committee Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:8067. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 First of all I congratulate Minister Smith on getting the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill to its third reading and on all the work that has been done both in the previous review committee and in the Finance and Expenditure Committee when the previous work came through from I think 2007. We all learnt a lot and there has been a lot of good information for members to rest on. 
I need to pick up a couple of points that the previous speaker John Boscawen made. He missed a key point when he talked about submissions. I tell that member that the only instruction I took about the number of submissions to be heard was an instruction from the committee. Actually the member is right: there was a vote. The member said “substantive submissions” but he is wrong. I tried to get the word “substantive” and the word “material” in there; that was missed by certain members. Thus all those submitters who wanted to be heard were heard. That is absolutely fine but speakers should not try to put heat on me because I could produce lists of submissions that various members wanted to hear and some of the stuff that is coming back is very cute. 
Anyway let us put that aside. The Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill is a very very good response. It is a response to the will of the electorate because the National Party put this issue before the electorate before the 2008 election. We laid out our principles: having intensity without a cap aligning with our partners keeping an eye on our competition balancing a scheme with our economy—you name it. I think most members acknowledge that we cannot look after our environment if we are not looking after our economy. Some parties I think would like to address only one side of that equation but their members get on jet aircraft use the Internet and globalise all sorts of things which seems to be contrary to every other speech they make. But I digress a bit. 
This bill is a response to climate change. It is a balanced response and it is a good legislative response. What seems to be missed is that on probably 80 to 85 percent of the points we and the other major party in this House are in general agreement. Some details about 5 or 7 years out are actually the key points. Some members are making more politics of this than others; I do not know what they will talk about once this bill is passed. This bill is also a good response to the recession that New Zealand finds itself in—not only the economic conditions this new Government inherited but also the recession that the whole globe is in at the moment. It looks as if we are possibly coming out of it so what Government would do anything to put New Zealand back into recession? What Government would do anything to impose higher input costs and a burden on households in a recession when it looks as if we just might be coming out of that recession? But with the fiscal record of the previous administration I am not surprised that they seem to be taking off down that track. 
This bill is a very good response to the New Zealand economy—to our profile and to our trade-exposed economy. We are an exporting economy so we want to be exporting goods and services and getting funds back into the country. We do not want to be exporting jobs factories and our kids’ futures to the rest of the world to pollute somewhere else in the world to the detriment of the future of this country. It is interesting that not one member on the other side when they got up and talked about children etc. raised that point. 
There are a couple of things I cannot let go. I fiscally embarrassed the members on the other side. I ask them just to be consistent. The $110 billion figure keeps coming up. As Minister Smith said earlier we will now apply the logic that seems to have been adopted by members on the other side including their leader. If he wants to earn his stripes he should not go down this path because on every single spending announcement made by Opposition speakers from now until the next election we will price the figure up and compound it at whatever the cost of capital is at the time. Members should just watch the figures blow out—the decade of deficits we inherited is about to blow. 
I will wrap up with one particular point that I found very offensive today. I am so surprised about what some members have said. I am really offended; they could have said much of what they were trying to say in different language. Quite frankly I am disgusted by the term “brownwash” which the Green Party has been using. I am disgusted by the term and by its implications and insinuations of trinkets beads and blankets in exchange for an arrangement National has with one of its coalition partners. Sure members can make their political points but they should not go down that line. If anyone ever said that of them they would be the first to go off to the Race Relations Commissioner so members should not go down that line. That phrase says so much more about their true selves and where they really stand. Now members seem to be backing away from the term but it is on the record. Its use was absolutely disgraceful—absolutely disgraceful. [ 
Interruption 
] This member did not use the terms that those members used during the debate or the term that that member over there used during question time. I think members should just taihoa look in the mirror and look at the rest of their caucus and they may see that many of them are very very offended by some of that language. I respect members’ points of view; I do not respect—and I am totally offended by—some of the language that was used by some members in this House today in and around this bill. I think I have made my point. 
I thank the Minister for Climate Change Issues I thank the officials and I thank the other members of the Finance and Expenditure Committee.