Mackey Moana: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Mackey Moana: Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill — Procedure Second Reading In Committee 
[Sitting date: 24 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7921. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 I am very happy to follow the “Let them eat cake.” speech made by Nicky Wagner which bore absolutely no resemblance to the bill before us the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill or the process it went through. The gall of that member to stand up and chastise other countries for not doing enough to deal with climate change when we are sitting here under urgency considering legislation that had only 6 weeks at the Finance and Expenditure Committee—only 6 weeks at the select committee. Submitters were rung and told that they had to come in and give their submissions 4 hours later that night after we had heard that the National Government wanted to limit the number of people coming in to only 20 of the hundreds who had submitted. The officials made mistakes in the process because they did not have enough time to prepare the papers. Our deadline did not give us enough time to even do the departmental report properly. We could not get a clause by clause analysis. We could not get a revision-tracked version of the bill. And that member has the gall to stand up in this House and say that Labour was being difficult! 
Labour members were being difficult because all we wanted—and we put a motion before the select committee—was an extension of time so that we could have time to consider the technical amendments that that member just accused us of not being prepared to consider. Well how did that member vote on the motion that Labour put forward asking for another week to properly consider the bill? [ 
Interruption 
] She voted against it. I tell Nicky Wagner not to stand in this House and chastise members of the Labour Party for being difficult. Why could we not have had another week in which to consider at least the technical amendments? 
Nicky Wagner 
: You could have done it if you’d just got on with it. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I do not know whether Nicky Wagner has discovered the power of time travel but it was simply not possible to do it in the time that we had. This bill is an incredibly important bill and it had 6 weeks— 
Nicky Wagner 
: For God’s sake Moana. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh my God! Seriously? It had 6 weeks at the select committee I say to Nicky Wagner. It should have had 6 months at the least. When Labour’s scheme took 8 months National members said it was being forced through. When Labour heard 60 hours of submissions on our emissions trading scheme they said it was not enough. But National allows only 20 submissions on this bill and that member sits there and chastises us for complaining that the process is being rushed. Unbelievable! And that was from a member who claims to have blue-green credentials. She should be standing up in this House and saying stop the madness slow this down and let us have some proper discussion about legislation that will shift $110 billion worth of liabilities away from polluters and on to the taxpayers of New Zealand. 
I heard earlier that the Hon Dr Nick Smith said that my colleague Charles Chauvel was just being ridiculous when he said that the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation was not going to pass in Australia and that he was scaremongering. I am sure the Minister knows by now that Andrew Robb who is the climate change spokesperson for the Liberals spoke against the legislation in their caucus. They had 15 speakers for and 13 against and they have had to hold an emergency meeting. I think the Hon Dr Nick Smith ought to calm down his rhetoric a little. 
While we are talking about the Hon Dr Nick Smith I want to talk about the process that we went through. He has been chipping away at me across the House and to be fair I have been chipping back at him. But the fact is that Labour did not disengage from this process. We absolutely believe that it is critical that we get bipartisan agreement on an emissions trading scheme; we absolutely believe that. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Where were you this morning? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I was at a tangi this morning I say to Dr Smith and I have only just got back so I am sorry about that. I would like to pay my respects to the family of Hawea Vercoe who tragically died over the weekend. I was at a tangi and that was why I could not come to Dr Smith’s meeting. 
The fact is we had a very very good meeting. We had a great meeting with the Minister for Climate Change. We laid out what we thought the areas of agreement were where we thought we could go from here and the things we were not going to agree on that we thought could be put aside because they were not critical to getting agreement on an emissions trading scheme. Then we went away. Over the weekend Labour had its annual conference so we were busy. My colleague Charles Chauvel emailed—I was copied into the email—a copy of Labour’s response with a “Where to from here?” a draft memorandum of understanding. I then got off a plane in Wellington to hear that National had done a deal with the Maori Party. So when the Hon Dr Nick Smith says that Labour walked away that is absolutely not true. He then invented a conversation that he had had with my colleague David Parker saying that he had said to David Parker: “Oh you need to get back to me by Friday.” and David Parker had said that he would. That conversation never happened. The only conversation David Parker had with the Hon Dr Nick Smith was about the Resource Management Act amendment bill that was going through that week. That is not true and the Minister knows it. Does he have to start inventing conversations that never happened? There were three Labour members in the room and none of us told the Minister that we would get back to him by Friday. None of us were under the— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Ask George. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: The member says to ask George ask his adviser. I guess the public will have to go by that member’s record. We did not give that undertaking; if we had why would my colleague have spent all weekend drafting a very comprehensive response which he emailed to the Minister before he went to Cabinet on that Monday before the decision was announced? Then the Minister could not even pick up the phone to ring Charles Chauvel our spokesperson to say to him: “Look we’ve done a deal with the Maori Party.” We heard about it on the news along with everyone else. So when the Minister accuses Labour members of disengaging from the process I say that that is absolutely unbelievable. We did not walk away; there was nothing to walk away from. By the time we had heard on the news that a deal had been done and that we had been excluded— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Why not more deals? Why can’t we include the Maori Party? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Because Labour will not support an intensity of emissions approach without a cap I say to Dr Smith and we will not support 200 years of subsidies as we were told to the biggest polluters. 
Hon Member 
: 200 now. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is what we were told by some of the submitters. To be fair David Carter said only 90 years so I will go with what the Minister of Agriculture said; he is promising subsidies for only 90 years. But the fact remains that Nicky Wagner who got up to say how shameful it was that we were not able to get bipartisan agreement needs to walk down to the front bench of her own party and tell her Minister who walked away from Labour in negotiations who then made up stories about— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: No I didn’t. The door’s still open. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: We are in urgency this bill is being forced through the House and the Minister says the door is still open. That is what negotiation means to National—it is take it or leave it. I want to tell members what happened here. When we had meetings with the Hon Dr Nick Smith earlier in the process he was very reasonable on a whole number of things. He said that agriculture was not a bottom line for him and that if we thought it had to come into the scheme in 2013 then that was fine and he would not have an issue with it. I remember thinking that that seemed very strange because I had been meeting Federated Farmers groups who had told me that the Hon David Carter had promised them that agriculture would never come into the emissions trading scheme and have to face the full cost of its emissions. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Not true! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: You know in this instance I think I believe Federated Farmers I say to Dr Smith. 
Hon Member 
: Everybody’s lying except Nick Smith! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: That is right. Here we are in a situation where everyone is lying except the Hon Dr Nick Smith. 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You cannot use the word “lie”. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I apologise. I withdraw that comment. Everyone else is wrong and only the Hon Dr Nick Smith is right; that is the situation we are in at the moment. Well Federated Farmers members said before the election that agriculture would not come under the emissions trading scheme because David Carter had told them that it would never come under it and that farmers would never have to face the full cost of their emissions. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: He never said that. David Carter never said that. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I say to Dr Smith that all I am saying is what Federated Farmers told me and if we look at this legislation we see that they are absolutely right: National has delayed agriculture coming in for another 2 years farmers are not going to have to face the full cost of their emissions for God knows how long after that and there will be review periods and review periods so that the time frame can be pushed out even further and even further—and I firmly believe that it will be pushed out even further and even further. 
To be fair to the Hon Dr Nick Smith I actually think he does believe we need to do something about agriculture but he was rolled by his caucus. I think he went back to his caucus and told it what the deal was and his caucus said that no the bottom line for it was that agriculture should not have to face the full cost of its emissions. He had made promises—well they were not promises; they were indications—to Labour members that he would be prepared to move on some things and all of a sudden they were off the table. All of a sudden we came back and found out that there would be an intensity of emissions approach without a cap which basically means that we are going to pay polluters to pollute more. 
In fact polluters would do better to lift their greenhouse gas emissions because then they would get more free allocation. That is what this approach means. I do not know why the Minister thinks that is a good policy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. One would think that the point of having an emissions trading scheme would be to reduce our emissions; otherwise what is the point? This emissions trading scheme amendment bill does not do that. What it does is provide incentives for some of our biggest polluters to pollute more because they get more free allocation for doing that. 
What it does most and the worst thing about is is that it turns the existing emissions trading scheme which is a polluter-pays model into a pay-the-polluter model. Who is going to pay the polluter? The New Zealand taxpayer. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: You don’t believe that. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Well where is the $110 billion going to come from? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: You don’t even believe what you are saying! 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I do believe it because that $110 billion has to come from somewhere. It ain’t going to come from private schools; we have already seen that National is happy to take money off adult and community education to give it to private schools. It will come from health it will come from education it will come from social services and it will come from the public sector. It has to come from somewhere. 
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman 
: Tell the truth! 
Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER 
: You cannot use that phrase. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Jonathan Coleman can scream out that I am not telling the truth but I look forward to his telling me where the $110 billion will come from. Where will it come from I ask Dr Coleman. It will come from the taxpayers of New Zealand. This is a disgrace.