Genter Julie Anne; Stanford EricaHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): I'm sorry if I missed it but I don't believe the Minister in the chair has addressed my question about whether a climate impact analysis will be undertaken of any new proposed standards for 2025 2026 and 2027; and whether or not that will be public before those regulations and the new standards come into force. And that's relevant to clause 6 because clause 6 is the part of the bill that is giving the Minister the power to set those standards for those three years under regulation. I appreciate the comments that the Minister has made about the importance of bringing in more low and zero emissions vehicles into our fleet.I think at this point in the debate it would be worth raising the concerns of a range of organisations like Drive Electric Better New Zealand Trust and some car importers who have all expressed concern that their members support retaining the clean car standard settings. They have not had the opportunity to provide those views. Because there was no select committee process on this bill they have not been able to come and talk to this Parliament about why those standards were appropriate. They're concerned that giving the power to the Minister to change standards undermines the certainty of direction for the industry. So rather than providing more certainty there are a range of people in the industry saying that this creates more uncertainty because we don't know what the direction of travel will be. We don't know what the standards will be 2025 2026 or 2027.And any changes to the standards have broad economic implications. They will have an impact on electric vehicle uptake on emissions from transport on ongoing imports of petrol and diesel which cost the economy and effect the current account deficit future liability to buy offshore carbon credits and it will potentially impact our EU free trade agreement because that trade agreement has in it an expectation that New Zealand will be making progress towards its emissions reduction targets and this is one of the key levers that we can use to achieve those targets.So since the removal of the clean car discount the average emissions of newly registered light vehicles in the first five months of 2024 have increased back up to 161 grams per kilometre on average. Now that's up from 136 grams per kilometre last year. Before we brought in the clean car standard and the clean car discount we were trailing the world—we had some of the most inefficient vehicles coming in. And it wasn't second-hand vehicles because we import our second-hand vehicles from Japan—a country that has standards that are far more ambitious than what New Zealand had. New Zealand had zero fuel economy standards.So clause 6 of the bill is what gives the Government and the Minister the possibility of setting new standards in regulation rather than coming to the House—as what happened previously and had a proper select committee process. So the reality is that the axing of the clean car discount has led to a rebound. We're importing more high-emissions vehicles. Our average emissions in the fleet—this isn't just about electric vehicles it's about the average emissions from new cars coming into New Zealand and it's predominantly the brand new large SUVs and double cab Utes and gas guzzlers that are driving the high emissions.However the standard and the discount were able to address that we would get lower emissions versions of a given vehicle in a given class. So the research before we brought this in showed that there were double cab Utes available in the UK that were lower emissions than what was available—CHAIRPERSON (Greg O'Connor): Ms Genter the opportunity to talk about targets comes in the next clause. So I can understand you're giving some context to this but it's a relatively narrow and on the—Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Well I would really appreciate if the Minister could address the question on what is going to happen with the climate impact analysis of any new regulations. I think given that there's been no select committee process it was important to state the concerns of people in the industry like Drive Electric like Better New Zealand Trust and some of the other car importers who have expressed these concerns about this change being brought through about it undermining certainty of direction for the industry and about it having broader implications.So we want to understand—well basically this point just needs to be made in Hansard because we're not having a proper select committee process. And we're only hearing from the Government that somehow they're giving certainty to the industry. It's unclear how that could be the case other than they're giving certainty to those who want to continue bringing in high-emitting vehicles and that will have broad economic implications for New Zealand and cost to us in the long run.Hon ERICA STANFORD (Minister of Education): Thank you Mr Chair. I'm happy to address the question that was raised by the member. And I apologise that I didn't already do it because I was chatting with officials during her last speech. But I'm happy to answer the questions. Regarding the climate impact analysis there will be one there will be a regulatory impact statement and they'll be done to inform the Government's decisions on the targets set by regulations. So that will be done. But more broadly around the question of certainty for the sector the feedback that we have had is that the sector is calling for this certainty they're calling for us to set these regulations and there is broad agreement that that will bring certainty to the sector. Look I think the other point to note is that this was always going to happen eventually. The previous Government realised that this would have to happen at some stage we're just bringing it forward to ensure that the sector is getting the certainty they need so that they also have that forward-planning ability to bring in the vehicles that they need so that they can help us to meet the common goal that I think we all have of reducing emissions.