Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): Thank you Madam Speaker. It's always a pleasure to follow the Hon Amy Adams absolutely off the leash there with her criticism saying how typical it is—the freedom of the back bench to be able to say what is on one's mind—of this Government to put in place policies of the last National Government. How typical it is of the Opposition to not have put in place their own policies in the nine years when they were in Government leaving it instead to us to do it because they frankly did nothing over the nine years that they were in Government.This is a policy that has been around for a while—this proposal for an infrastructure commission has been around for a very long time and it was ignored by the previous National Government until the point when it appeared that they were about to lose power at which point they adopted it. So it is up to us to put it in place and I want to acknowledge the work of the Hon Shane Jones and all of the background work that he did with agencies to develop this proposal and to bring it to the House to get it through first reading and some of the changes that have come through in select committee.I just wanted to start by coming back to the problem definition: why it is that an infrastructure commission is important. Partially this is in response to some of the things that Amy Adams was just saying about on the one hand it was a National Party policy but on the other hand why bother somehow. It is because we do have an issue in New Zealand with construction companies bouncing from project to project without a great deal of predictability without a good sense of what's coming down the pipe and therefore not recruiting permanent workforces not investing in those workforces not developing the capability leading to the kinds of situations that we've seen over the last few years where you had construction companies actually falling over during a construction boom—one of the strangest phenomena ever. A time of just tremendous activity in the construction sector and you would have companies falling over. Part of that is because of the nature and unpredictability of the sector. So it is really important that we seek to address that and that is one of the key reasons why we've got that.That has also of course led to higher costs than necessary because with that lack of predictability companies have been focusing very much on the near term maximising their immediate revenue because they don't know what's coming next. At least with this idea of having a 30-year infrastructure strategy it does allow all players in the sectors to start to build up that capability but also to get a forward sense of what their revenue is going to look like so we hope that that will lead to some stability in prices as well. I think that one of the key things that this infrastructure commission will be developing is that 30-year strategy and the pipeline that comes with it and that ability to plan for this sector.Now I wanted to respond to something that Andrew Bayly said in some of his comments earlier. He referred to the fact that the commission is advisory and felt that it should have a bit more grunt and a bit more independence. I just wanted to say that it is important to retain the principle of parliamentary supremacy and the idea that actually there is still a role for Parliament and for the executive to have a say in where this comes out. There's a parallel actually in the Climate Change Commission that we're also developing where there is a very strong move from the Opposition to make sure that that is an entirely advisory body as well for much the same reasons. So I think that if we're setting up two commissions a Climate Change Commission and an infrastructure commission you need to sort of say Well you've got to have some consistency between those in terms of the advisory versus executive nature of the powers of those commissions."I just wanted to draw attention to one of the clauses that has come through in the bill which I'm really delighted about and Lawrence Yule in his contribution made a point about it. As we build the next generation of infrastructure over the course of the next 30 years we need to be mindful—and this is particularly important for local government where Mr Yule has a strong heritage—of the need to build infrastructure that is adaptive to the effects of climate change and also helps us to meet our emissions reduction targets. I want to acknowledge again the honourable matua Shane Jones for having included in the bill clause 11 where it says "When … advising on current and future infrastructure needs or the priorities for infrastructure the Commission"—and then it moves under paragraph (b) "must have regard to long-term trends that impact on or are impacted by infrastructure including (but not limited to) … (iii) matters relating to the mitigation of the effects of climate change (including through reducing emissions of greenhouse gases) and adapting to the effects of climate change;". So it's actually expressly written into the bill which I think is a very important clause because what it means is that as we're developing this forward strategy we're not going to create a new generation of hard infrastructure assets that will ultimately become actually quite literally sunk assets because we will need to be mindful of things like threats like sea-level rise coastal and river basin inundation and other changes as a result of climate change. So I wanted to say that this is important because it futureproofs the commission and the kinds of decisions that it will be suggesting to Government as it goes about its work. I do again just want to acknowledge the honourable matua Shane Jones for his foresight in having included that part in the bill. So Madam Speaker on behalf of the Green Party we have supported this proposal. It is not a new proposal. It could have come around a bit earlier and maybe some of our construction sector would be in better shape if it had. But as they say the best time to plant a tree was 30 years ago. The second best time is today and that's what we're doing when it comes to the infrastructure commission. I commend the bill and I commend the Minister for his work on the bill. I commend this bill to the House. Thank you Madam Speaker. Hon David Bennett: Madam Speaker?Ian McKelvie: Oh Benno you take it.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): Sorted?Hon David Bennett: Yeah I think so.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Ruth Dyson): The Hon David Bennett."