Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Although it's very tempting to spend the next five minutes responding to the various fallacies in Mr Yang's speech I'm not going to do that. I'm going to talk about some other news that we've had today of course which is that the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill is finally in the House. What it does is it outlines our plans over the next 30 years to safeguard the future of New Zealand and the futures of those kids who were taking part in school strikes back on 15 March to protest the lack of action by adults who have had the duty of care over their futures. So we are acting now to preserve their futures and the futures of their own children. Last year the United Nations published an incredibly sobering report into what the consequences would be if we allow global temperatures to rise more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. The results would be absolutely catastrophic. The critical thing—the critical thing—and the most important thing in this legislation is that we have to do everything we can to limit global warming to no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius and that is the purpose of this bill. It's written into the very first paragraph of the purpose section that that is our intention. It makes it the law that that is what we are trying to do in New Zealand. As far as we're aware we are one of the first countries in the world to make that commitment to living within that envelope. Now that the bill is finally in the House it will be the subject of a great deal of debate and you can already see this afternoon it already has been debated a great deal and we can anticipate more of that and I welcome that and that is good. But I do want to make sure that that debate has been had with some daylight on it and already there's been some misinformation that's been spread around. So I want to address some of the things that have been said in the House and in fact some of the things that have been said in the media—in particular as it relates to the component of the target around methane. I just want to start by addressing the science of the methane target because we've been accused of not listening to the science and that is incorrect. There have been some reports that have been quoted—in particular the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment who put out a report last year saying that methane needs to reduce at roughly 0.3 percent a year in order to stabilise. A similar report came from David Frame who's a very well-respected leading climate scientist in New Zealand and Dr Myles Allen an Oxford University scientist—similar—and in fact that view is correct unless you are trying to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius which in their models they're not. They're actually operating off a different set of starting assumptions which is what they call no further warming beyond the current pathway and of course the current pathway is not towards 1.5 degrees Celsius. So this has caused some confusion—in particular in the agricultural sector—and that is completely understandable. I can completely understand why that confusion is out there because that is complex. The truth is that as long as we emit any long-lived gases like carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide into the atmosphere you also need to reduce methane in order to create an effect that gets collectively that whole basket of gases—the short-lived and the long-lived—to within 1.5 degrees Celsius of global warming. So the reason why we're having an argument about this is because actually there's different sets of assumptions that have been informing the science and we do need to clear that up. In fact the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on 1.5 degrees Celsius is actually the only scientific report that we have seen that models scenarios in which the world stays within 1.5 degrees Celsius and that is why provisionally we've set the range that they suggested to say that that's what the world needs to do. But because it's not settled about what New Zealand needs to do in order to do that that is exactly why we have asked the Climate Change Commission to go away and do that work. In fact that's the point of the bill. It's to set up the institution to provide us with that kind of independent expert advice. So while I can understand the concerns that people have got I have to say that we have looked at the science. It is informed by the science. It's not perfectly settled and that is why we have set up a process to do that. So I hope that with that caveat the Opposition members can find it in themselves to continue to work through with us to get this bill through the House. Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker.