Robertson Grant: Sustainable Biofuel Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Robertson Grant: Sustainable Biofuel Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1682. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 The commitment of National to the environment—I remember in my very first days in this House in 2008 two of the first bills that the new National Government took on were to remove the biofuel obligation and to stop the renewable energy preference obligation. Two major issues of environmental policy and the first thing National did was to get rid of them. We see National members stand up and hear them taking credit for things like renewable energy generation when they opposed our target of 90 percent renewables when we were in office. That was opposed by the National Party and the blue-green rinse over there is trying to make a claim that they have got environmental credentials. That is ridiculous.  
My colleague Moana Mackey traversed the history of this matter and I think it is important when we look at the report back from the Local Government and Environment Committee on the Sustainable Biofuel Bill to note that it also decided to cover some of the history of biofuels in New Zealand. There is an interesting sentence on page 2 of the report: “[The committee was] advised that the likelihood of unsustainable biofuels being imported into New Zealand in the near future appears low for three main reasons.” The first of these reasons is “there is a lack of demand for biofuels in the mainstream retail market and they are mainly used in niche markets such as eco-tourism.”  
Well there is a reason for that. It is because the Government dismantled the obligation that would have helped establish the biofuels industry and put in place a subsidy scheme that has been wholly unsuccessful—and as Ms Mackey told us it is now going to end—in actually helping to establish biofuels in this country. I want to go through some numbers in that regard. In the first year of operation of this grand $36 million scheme around $300000 was spent on the biofuels scheme. This increased enormously in the next year—up to $804000—and up until the end of last year had got to another $417000. So that is around about $1.5 million from the $36 million scheme.  
In some reports I have been reading about this great claim is made of the fact that at any one moment there have been up to six companies involved in the biofuels industry sometimes three and sometimes one. That is what the National Government has done to the biofuel industry in New Zealand—reduced it at various points in the last 3 years to one company being able to actually take up this scheme. The National Government has effectively destroyed the biofuels industry in New Zealand and for members of National to stand up in this House today and say they are voting this bill down because of sustainability reasons is frankly ridiculous.  
This bill is a very good bill and added to the work that had been done in the previous Labour Government by David Parker and Jeanette Fitzsimons and others we were moving to a position where biofuels could play a significant role in our fuel market. Yes they should be sustainable biofuels. As Moana Mackey has said there is plenty of evidence that domestic sources were going to be able to provide this. We do need sensible regulation around sustainable biofuels as Moana Mackey said. There is no point in having a greater carbon impact than fossil fuels. Why would we make the conversion? But if we can make the conversion if we can use domestic fuel sources we should be doing that.  
It is bizarre to be in this House tonight and hear the National members say that they are voting down this bill on the basis of environmental or sustainability reasons. It makes absolutely no sense because the end result of National voting this bill down tonight and having repealed the biofuel obligation in its first few days means there are now no sustainability standards whatsoever for biofuels in New Zealand and a dwindling biofuels industry. It simply makes no sense. It does not fit with the image and the brand that New Zealand wants to promote internationally for there to be a clean green New Zealand that is at the cutting edge of new technologies.  
The opportunity was there to help develop the sector. The goals were relatively modest actually: to get ourselves to the point after 5 years that we would have a 2.5 percentage of biofuels within our fuels. That was actually a modest goal but it was based on the fact that there was an industry wanting to get in behind that wanting to do things to promote more sustainable fuels in New Zealand wanting to decrease carbon emissions and businesses that would invest. Then this National Government comes in takes away that puts in place a scheme that has been an unmitigated disaster has brought no new players into the market and has in fact systematically reduced those who were in the market and now it is going to ditch the scheme and we will be left with a fairly much unregulated situation and no sustainability standards whatsoever.  
The Green Party is to be congratulated on having brought this bill to the House. It was to build on some excellent work that had been done by the previous Labour Government to give us a more sustainable biofuels industry in New Zealand. I join with my colleague Moana Mackey in saying that a future Labour-led Government will encourage biofuels. There is a great deal of potential in sustainable biofuels from domestic sources in New Zealand. We should be exploiting that. But rather we have a National Government that seems determined to destroy a sustainable biofuel industry with a pathetic grants scheme that is no longer going to exist and no real commitment to proper environmental standards despite what Ms Wagner might have said.