Hernandez FranciscoFRANCISCO HERNANDEZ (Green): Thank you Mr Speaker. I rise to take a call on this bill. I'm going to divide my speech into four parts. The first part will talk about the wider context that this bill operates in. The second part talks about one aspect of the bill which is the user-pays aspect in clause 5 in new section 167BA.The third aspect sets targets under clause 6. Then the last part of my speech will talk about the Government's use of urgency. Just to be clear I echo the words of my colleague and friend Hon Julie Anne Genter that we will not be supporting this bill.The wider context that this bill operates in is you know since the Budget this Government has passed legislation that's undermined our climate response every step of the way. Earlier today they passed a bill exempting the biggest emitter—the biggest emitter—in our economy the biggest emitter in New Zealand the agricultural sector from having to pay its agricultural emissions. The second bill that they passed today was the Forests (Log Traders and Forestry Advisers Repeal) Amendment Bill. Now we've heard during the committee of the whole House stage that the Minister of Transport didn't commission any analysis around whether it might flood the markets and cause the emissions trading scheme auctions to fail further. The third aspect that they passed was the Waste Minimisation (Waste Disposal Levy) Amendment Bill which again the Minister for the Environment didn't say that they would guarantee that it would be used for waste minimisation funds. Now I'm going to talk about why that's important and why the wider context leads us to distrust the bill.Now the user-pays context that the polluter pays—it's not a bad principle in theory. I think polluters should have to pay for the cost of the pollution. The problem is that clause 6 doesn't actually set the standards; it gives the Minister of Transport the power to set the standards. Now in the context of everything that's going on so far in the context of all the anti-climate action that this Government has taken how could we possibly trust that this Government is actually sincere about reducing emissions?Hon Member: They're not.FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ: They're not—they're not—that's right. They're absolutely not. We've seen that they're willing to exempt our biggest sector from paying emissions. We've seen earlier this year how they were going to—in the changes around the road-user charges how they charged petrol hybrid electric vehicles the same as the big polluters. So with the Minister setting these standards in theory the Minister could actually set higher charges for less polluting vehicles and lower charges for higher polluting vehicles. We just don't know. With the sort of standard of climate policy that this Government is doing I wouldn't entirely rule that out.Now the second aspect of this bill is that it allows the Minister to set the targets it abolishes the existing targets which as we've heard adequately from this House are already set are already established are already certain and they're introducing more uncertainty. We simply have no idea what these targets might be. So the cumulative effect of all of that is to actually weaken New Zealand's climate response. In the Minister's speech he explicitly made a commitment that the targets would be less stringent than the current ones. So in the context of that how could we support this bill when it's going to be a retrograde step for the climate and it's going to be a retrograde step for the people?When we delay the climate transition the cost of it doesn't actually fall on the most well-off in society; the burdens of climate change and the burdens of climate change impact fall on those least able to pay for it. So by delaying the climate transition—which let's be clear the Government has been very explicit that this bill has been designed to decrease the standards which will delay the climate transition and which will lead to New Zealand beyond a dumping ground for high emission vehicles—it's not doing anyone any favours. We've seen that global volatility around the world has led to higher petrol prices. I mean I'm not a ball-gazer I'm not a fortune teller but if I were to make a bet I would bet on more uncertainty in terms of oil in terms of global markets in terms of the price of oil going up.So in encouraging high emission petrol vehicles you're locking the poorest in society in to forms of transport and forms of vehicles that will actually cost them more in the long run. It doesn't make sense. And look the urgency is really bad too but I didn't get to that. Thank you.