Connell Brian: Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
Connell Brian: Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill — Instruction to Committee In Committee 
[Volume:615;Page:11322] 
BRIAN CONNELL (National—Rakaia) 
: 
 I want to say very strongly that National does not support the passage of this legislation. We do not support it on a number of fronts. The first reason is that this legislation is very muddled. I believe it will bring great uncertainty into the energy sector and without doubt it will impose additional costs on councils and ratepayers as they try to come to grips with what this legislation is trying to signal. 
This bill requires councils to plan for climate change when there is huge uncertainty about its causes and effects. Jeanette Fitzsimons conveniently overlooks the fact—and she will know this—that there are 17000 eminent scientists in America alone who say that the theories that underpin global warming are flawed at best and complete rubbish at worst. How then are we to expect councils to deal with this problem with any authority when we cannot even agree about it at national level let alone an international level? 
Jeanette Fitzsimons went on to say that it is unlikely that this protocol will be ratified. Does that imply that the rest of the world is ignorant just because we view this issue differently from the Greens? I do agree with Ms Fitzsimons on this basis—I believe we are going through a period of global warming. What I am not convinced about however is to what extent this is a man-made phenomenon. Given that why would New Zealand buy into what is a global problem and not a problem of New Zealand’s making? 
It might interest this Committee to learn that New Zealand contributes 0.02 percent of all greenhouse emissions. Yet we went at it headlong to sign into this Kyoto Protocol ahead of our major trading partners—as Mr Ardern said. This Government was prepared to put the people of New Zealand at a significant disadvantage on the basis that it wanted to sign into this protocol simply for a photo opportunity. In a very cynical way the people who were going to be asked to pay for this were the farming community of New Zealand through the imposition of a tax on flatulence. That was the beginning of the U-turns that have characterised this Government over recent weeks. They have been the biggest U-turns since David first spied Goliath. 
In Part 1 of the Resource Management (Energy and Climate Change) Amendment Bill clause 3(a) deals with efficiency of the end use of energy. This to my mind is totally illogical. The message is that the Government does not really care how efficient one is in generating electricity but it is concerned about how one uses it. That is why this Government is promoting Project Aqua. It is not concerned about the best use of the resource; it is simply saying that it does not care how electricity is generated or what damage it does to one of our great national resources but in order to support its philosophical position it will have people sign on to Project Aqua. 
There seems to be a view that water in this country is an unlimited resource. I have news for those people. The recent report from Environment Canterbury makes it very clear that on the South Island’s east coast water is over-allocated. If that is seen as a renewable resource then I believe we are mistaken. We are going down a track that will leave New Zealand terribly exposed. I pick up Mr Shirley’s point—I believe we are heading towards a significant energy crisis in this country yet we are ignoring some of our best natural resources.