Brownlee GerryHon GERRY BROWNLEE (National): I speak to oppose this dreadful piece of legislation. I say that because it is without doubt the most vanity-fuelled piece of legislation this House has seen for quite a long time. Let's be very clear: the last time the Labour Government was in power they did bring in a biofuels obligation and it was exactly the same circumstances where there was no capacity to supply the biofuel to meet the targets that were imposed by the legislation.We made it very clear at the time that the expectation that somehow bringing in a biofuels mandate was going to solve some of the transport emissions for the New Zealand vehicle fleet was complete and utter nonsense. Sadly there were a whole lot of gullible people who thought this was the greatest thing since sliced bread invested in it heavily and ultimately lost their money because the National Government wasn't prepared to make the greater population of New Zealand pay for such a dopey idea.So let's just go straight to the regulatory impact statement that comes with the bill. This is not my work; this is the work of the Government agencies who are advising the Minister. This is the Ministry of Business Innovation and Employment—their energy section—and of course Treasury. Now you'll never get me quoting anything from Treasury on authoritative basis because they never produce anything that's authoritative enough to be quoted but they have come up here and said As a biofuels mandate is demonstrable Government action to address climate change the New Zealand Government will also enhance its credibility to influence international climate change negotiations." That is code for "this gives Government Ministers the chance to prance about the world and talk about how wonderfully we're doing in this country to reduce emissions while making very little difference at all—if any." The difference between 2008 when they last tried this stunt and now is that vehicle emissions or fuel consumption per vehicle is considerably lower.The worst of it is this document was produced in September of 2021. The initial document was produced in December of 2020. It predicates diesel price at being around about $1.40 to $1.50. Well that would be great for all those users out there wouldn't it? Even then they were worried about the cost of increasing price through a biofuels mandate.If we're going to have the sort of bill that would allow us to seriously knock back vehicle emissions in this country this is not it. When we look at it we can see that even in here—even in here—they're saying that there are large parts or large percentages of the New Zealand vehicle fleet that will not successfully run on biofuels even with a low percentage. It has an effect on carburettors it has an effect on the internal combustion systems and it will be cause for so many people having to abandon their cars in a much earlier stage in their life.They don't seem worried about those people who are struggling families at the moment who really need those vehicles to get to work who really need to get their kids to all sorts of opportunities that they like to provide for their children. But no they'll be able to say "Well look you don't have a family car anymore because you can't afford a five-year-old vehicle that can run on this garbage. So just take some consolation that you're doing your bit—your sacrifice—for the wee tiny bit of carbon emission that we'll knock out in this process!"I think the worst of it is—why I keep saying it's a vanity project for the Government an opportunity for Ministers to go waving documents throughout the world saying "Look at us look what we're doing aren't we fantastic?" We hear it all the time "the nuclear moment of our generation" all that sort of thing. The reason I say that is there's provision in the bill which allows those who are fuel suppliers of more than 50000 litres a year to defray their entry into the system by up to two years at a cost of 0.01c per litre—an absolutely tiny fee to go about ignoring the dopiness of this Government while they wait for a good Government that knows what they're doing. That's what will happen. So why would a Government write that into a piece of legislation that has been so passionately supported today by members on the other side of the House? I don't understand that for one little minute.So then there is of course the other aspect of this bill which talks about that landed price of petroleum in New Zealand out to about 2025 being between 55c and 58c per litre. Now we know that there's all sorts of price impost on top of that; the fuel importers want a margin the fuel retailers want a margin and the Government wants an enormous margin inside that—more than the cost of the fuel and the margins of everybody else involved. That's why we pay these high prices at the moment.But look what's happened to the price of fuel. It's as if the crisis caused by all sorts of pressures on fuel production around the world—not the least of which is climate change—has not happened in the last 12 months. The signs you see at the petrol pump at the moment don't exist. So now we've got a Government that's happily going to tell New Zealanders that by April next year they'll have passed this legislation to add another 10c per litre on to their fuel plus the 25c they're going to put back in January plus I suspect the annual increment of about 10c—so nearly 50c per litre being put back on to the price of petrol with what is included in this bill.People on the other side of the House have been yelling out "Well what's your plan? What's your plan? What are you going to do?" What we're not going to do is put people in—[Interruption]—I'll come to it. What we'll not do is make New Zealanders pay for something as dopey as this—we'll not make them pay for something as dopey as this.Where is one Government piece of information given to households to talk about how they can individually reduce their carbon footprint—just one? The Government spends tens if not hundreds of billions of dollars a year on communications supposedly with New Zealanders. We all know it's just Labour Party propaganda dressed up as Government information. We know that it's airy-fairy sort of stuff that you get in this type of impact report to try and convince New Zealanders they've got to stick with this Labour Government. Why isn't there just a small amount of information provided to New Zealanders to tell them what they can do in their households now to reduce their carbon footprint? I think the willingness of New Zealanders to do so is very high and that's something that we'll pick up. It's something that we'll run with. But this is not a way in which to move us forward at all.One of the things that's most concerning about this is that on page 18 of the regulatory impact statement there is a graph which shows what happens if this were to be fully implemented and by and large nothing until 2035. So New Zealanders are being asked to pay considerable extra amounts on their weekly fuel bills for an effect that doesn't even begin to drop until 2035—page 18 of the regulatory impact statement; not my work the work of the Government.Then of course there is this extraordinary situation as I mentioned before that suggests that anybody who doesn't want to get into this can just go for a deferral. Well I suspect the Minister will be inundated with requests for deferrals.But if we have a look at things like feedstock where is it going to come from? At the moment the log price out of New Zealand is well ahead of what's predicated in this impact report. Are we going to reduce an export market just like we're reducing farming production apparently under this Government in order to satisfy as I said before the vanity option of New Zealand Ministers running around the world saying "Look at us; how good we are!" We have a lot of work to do; a lot of serious work to do to combat climate change but this is a back-to-the-future completely dumb hopeless piece of legislation that just puts unreasonable costs on New Zealanders who are already struggling week by week."