McClay Todd; Clark DavidHon TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua): Thank you Mr Chair and I thank the Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs for his explanation of the officials in the back room—I was worried they'd gone fishing or something but they're still here.There's another part of the legislation I want to come to—sorry this part but another section of it—and that's around the comply or explain provision. Very clearly for people listening in where an entity is of the view that actually they have no exposure or risk from climate change they could explain why they were not reporting. That was in the original legislation at first reading as tabled in the House. During committee that was changed based on perhaps a submission but advice from Government. I have a Supplementary Order Paper in my name to put that back in and the reason I think this is very important is look we want entities to meet their obligation to do what the legislation says but in the case that there is an entity a private sector entity that actually does not have any effect of climate change upon it for whatever reason it's unreasonable and unnecessary for them to have to go through this procedure—a very long procedure—to report on something to say We have nothing to report." when they could just explain why it is they're not reporting.Now the legislation says you must comply. In the case that a business says "We explain that we're not affected by this." and they are they have broken the law. It's not an exemption from meeting their obligation; it just says there's a shortened procedure in a case that you are not affected by climate change. I would say that it was in the original legislation the Minister brought to the House and spoke of and then it was changed. I think it's a mistake that we've made that change. It doesn't lessen the impact of the bill—although the bill doesn't have a lot of impact anyway but it doesn't lessen the impact. It doesn't alter the requirements of the entities that are covered by this legislation to report properly based on the standards that are being set but if there is an entity that has no obligation no consequence of climate change upon them as a result of the legislation then actually we shouldn't be asking them to go to the extent of what would be a very costly and long procedure to come back and say "Nothing to see here."I don't think it would be used very often but it's actually good lawmaking to say "If this doesn't apply to you we're not going to burden you with it." The Minister did say in his introductory remarks it would create a two-tier system. It wouldn't. It actually wouldn't be a two-tier system; it would be a one-tier system where if somebody's not covered they could explain why and if they got the explanation wrong then they've broken the law under this legislation and they'd be held to account.Hon Dr DAVID CLARK (Minister of Commerce and Consumer Affairs): Well obviously I did cover this off in my introductory remarks as the member notes. I stand by the view that a system that enables two records to be compared with each other is better than one that has two different types of records. The whole point here is to have comparable records. So if somebody is a climate reporting entity and they don't believe they have substantial matters to disclose they still would have to as the bill was originally worded demonstrate that. That was believed to be quite onerous actually because they would have to go through a process of providing an alternative type of report. We would have two different types of report then: one which demonstrates and seeks assurance around not needing to disclose and one which is around disclosure. So it was deemed to be much more sensible to have a system where all reporting entities prepare the same climate statements and those that identify minimal climate risks will have less to disclose."