Volume 659 Week 29 - Wednesday 18 November 2009 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Volume 659 Week 29 - Wednesday 18 November 2009 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7757. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
Wednesday 18 November 2009 
Mr Speaker 
 took the Chair at 2 p.m. 
Prayers 
. 
Business of the House 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Leader of the House) 
: 
 Yesterday the Business Committee in its usual deliberations discussed the matter of the members’ day which we have today on the Order Paper. Members were slightly exercised on the issue of postponement of bills and what that does to the time available for members to have their issues discussed. I can indicate there is a strong willingness by the Business Committee to ensure that the sort of day we have today does not occur too much in the future. To facilitate this members’ day having a bit more substance the Business Committee has agreed that leave be sought for the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill to be set down for its second reading today as private and local order of the day No. 2 despite Standing Order 287. Accordingly I seek leave for that to happen. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Is there any objection to that course of action being followed? There is none. 
Questions to Ministers 
Emissions Trading Scheme—Ngai Tahu Settlement 
1. Hon PHIL GOFF (Leader of the Opposition) 
 to the  
Prime Minister 
: Does he stand by his recent statements on the emissions trading scheme? 
Hon JOHN KEY (Prime Minister) 
: 
 Yes. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Does he stand by his statement made in the House yesterday that a potential court case existed over whether the Crown had information that it should have disclosed about an emissions trading scheme when it signed the Ngai Tahu settlement? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes and in fact that advice was received by the previous Labour Government in May of last year. Labour was so concerned about the issue that it actually sought an independent valuation. Initially the valuation was considered to be in the order of $50 million but a later valuation showed that the liability could be in the order of $78 million to $130 million. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: When he indicated that there was a question about whether the Crown had acted in good faith did he in fact have a Crown legal opinion stating that there was no basis for a claim against the Crown; if so why did he continue to use that indication as a justification for a deal to get the emissions trading scheme legislation through? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Because the advice I have had is that there could potentially be a case. We would not want to prejudice that. But the issue so concerned Labour that it sought its own advice and got its own valuation. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Why did the Prime Minister ignore the legal opinion prepared for the Crown Law Office by Helen Aikman QC that concludes: “there is no evidence of a breach of the Crown’s obligations”; is he therefore using potential legal action simply as a smokescreen so that he can do a secret and dirty deal that cannot be justified? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Because that is a complex issue and it is fair to say that Ngai Tahu actually disagree with the findings. Just because one lawyer puts up a view that does not mean that it is right. Lots of lawyers put up cases. I suppose in a way if one is wondering why Phil Goff is making the comments that he is then maybe it is worth listening to the Green Party co-leader Metiria Turei who on Radio New Zealand National this morning said “It’s not about being race based. It’s about the value of those settlements and Labour can take some responsibility for issues around the valuation of settlements themselves from when they were in government. It’s a silly comment from Phil Goff and playing to the worst kind of politics.” I happen to agree with her. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Apart from that being a bit rich—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon Phil Goff 
: —you should not have allowed that Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: There will be silence in the House. The honourable Leader of the Opposition will stand withdraw and apologise for that comment. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I withdraw and apologise. I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Throughout my entire career in this House which is longer than any other member’s I have never indulged in the politics of race. I take— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Order! 
Hon Phil Goff 
: In fairness I am asking you to ask the Prime Minister to withdraw that comment which reflects on my integrity. 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: I cannot withdraw— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Prime Minister will now resume his seat. The House has got into a mess. I invite the honourable Leader of the Opposition to reflect on the question he asked. He accused the Prime Minister of doing a dirty deal. The Standing Orders rule out that kind of supplementary question. The member may not make that kind of assertion or use that kind of innuendo in a supplementary question. I let it go because I do not wish to intervene all the time when supplementary questions do not comply with Standing Orders. When asked a question like that the Prime Minister naturally responded in a political way as well and he quoted someone else. [ 
Interruption 
] I am on my feet. The dilemma I have is that I did not hear the Prime Minister make an assertion that the Leader of the Opposition was behaving in a racist way; the Prime Minister was quoting another member of the House. That is the dilemma I have. I certainly will support the member though if he feels that he has been accused of racism and is trying to seek a remedy but I am not sure what the remedy is. I will sit down so that the member can identify whether the offence came from the quotation. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I will leave it up to the integrity of the Prime Minister— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I ask the member to be cautious. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: But since you have invited me to make a comment Mr Speaker I took clearly from the Prime Minister’s statement—if I heard it correctly—an implication that this was being raised on the basis of race. I have given you the assurance Mr Speaker that it was not and I take offence at any such implication. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will just check with the Prime Minister as to whether he said anything that was not quoting another member of Parliament. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am dealing with a point of order here. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: I am speaking to the point of order. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am trying to sort out an issue that has caused offence. When offence is taken over something like this I accept it is a matter that I should not just ignore. As I understand it the Prime Minister did no more than quote another member of Parliament. 
Hon Member 
: He said he agreed with it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: He said he agreed with it? OK. I ask the Prime Minister to withdraw his final comment and leave it—[ 
Interruption 
] I am asking the Prime Minister if he would be prepared to withdraw just the final comment. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: You have accepted— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I invite members to just take a deep breath. Offence has been taken over a matter that I know the honourable Leader of the Opposition feels deeply about. I accept that. As Speaker I must show respect to members of this House when they feel deeply about issues. All that I am asking the Prime Minister is whether he would be prepared to just withdraw the bit he added in which he agreed with the statement he quoted. Is the Prime Minister prepared to do that? [ 
Interruption 
] I am asking him to just stand and withdraw his statement that he agreed— 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: I withdraw. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I thank the Prime Minister. Does the honourable Leader of the Opposition have a further supplementary question? 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I seek leave of the House to table a legal opinion prepared for the Crown Law Office dated 26 November 2008 from Helen Aikman QC entitled “Impact of Emissions Trading Scheme on Te Rununga o Ngai Tahu” 
. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I seek leave to table the letter from Ngai Tahu where they say that Labour acted in bad faith in not advising them of either the terms of reference or the person who was to do that review despite promises to the contrary. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table a letter from Ngai Tahu. Is there— 
Hon Members 
: Is there a date? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Some members want to know the date of the letter. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: I cannot remember the exact date. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table this letter from Ngai Tahu. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Charles Chauvel 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. In light of the fact that the Minister has just successfully tabled that letter which I understand has been withheld to date under the Official Information Act would he be willing to table the other withheld material relating to the emissions trading scheme? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will resume his seat immediately. I invite members not to abuse the point of order process. That is not a particularly helpful start to question time. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Is the Prime Minister telling the House that if his Government changes any policy that affects an asset that was at any point part of a Treaty settlement then a full and final settlement would be reopened even when he knows that there is no need or legal obligation to do so? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Actually it is quite the contrary of that. We have made it quite clear that the Crown always reserves the right to change land use or any other aspect that may have been subject to a Treaty claim. But there is as the member will be well and truly aware a specific difference if in putting together the negotiation a party feels that the other party was not acting in good faith. That is the basis of the opinion and yes it could be tested in law. That is the point for Ngai Tahu; they are thinking about a court case. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: What estimates has the Prime Minister been given of the cost of the deal to buy Maori Party support for the emissions trading scheme legislation and is it likely to be as high as the $2 billion estimated by the Kyoto Forestry Association? 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I believe that that question transgresses the Standing Orders by suggesting that somehow a political party is being paid or bought off for its members’ votes. That is absolutely against the Standing Orders. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Speaking to the point of order— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: No I do not need help on this matter. The point that the Hon Rodney Hide has made is perfectly correct. The question was technically outside the Standing Orders because it alleged that the Government has bought support for something which is to allege bribery. Given that a member has objected to the question I must uphold the Standing Orders. I ask the Hon Leader of the Opposition to reword his question in order to bring it within the Standing Orders. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: What estimates has the Prime Minister been given of the cost of a deal to win Maori Party support for the emissions trading scheme legislation and is it likely to be as high as the $2 billion estimated today by the Kyoto Forestry Association? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Firstly the $2 billion figure is about as accurate as the Treasury’s $110 billion figure. I am not going to go into the details of it because it is confidential. But it is fair to say it is a very insignificant number in the scheme of things. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: Why is the Prime Minister willing to set aside an emphatic legal opinion prepared for the Crown Law Office by an acknowledged legal expert in this area simply to reach a deal with the Maori Party of which the Prime Minister will not tell us the cost to the taxpayer but which others have estimated is as high as $2 billion? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Well firstly if a deal is concluded then in due course that will be in the public domain. That is the first thing. The second thing is that it is for the same reason that I set aside the emphatic legal opinion I saw from Queen’s Counsel for banks who were arguing that the banks did not owe the Crown billions of dollars for structured deals. 
Economy—Fiscal Challenges 
2.  
AARON GILMORE (National) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: What fiscal challenges does the Government face as the economy comes out of recession? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 The Government faces considerable fiscal challenges. The effect of the recession has been to significantly reduce tax revenue. At the same time there is a strong build-up of Government spending. In fact in the past 5 years Government spending has increased by more than 50 percent. The current Government is borrowing $250 million a week to fill the gap between expenditure and revenue. Clearly we have to look closely at value for our public spending. 
Aaron Gilmore 
: What are some of the reasons for this increase in Government spending? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I think the main reason has been the momentum built up under the lax administration of the last Government. There was a sharp growth in spending particularly across back-office functions with no clear evidence of better services for the public. For instance Public Service pay has risen by 4.5 percent each year since 2000. The Government is keen to see better smarter public services and we will have to do that with little or no new money. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Does he stand by his statement this morning that it is “good for the economy” to push the country into deep recession making it harder for struggling Kiwi workers to make ends meet; if so why? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I have absolutely no idea what the member is talking about and I suspect he does not either. 
Aaron Gilmore 
: What are the Government’s expectations for future Public Service pay increases? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: The Government expects that there will be plenty of negotiation with the Public Service about pay rises but we expect that those pay rises will reflect what is happening in the rest of the community where many people have taken low pay increases or have reduced their hours of work in order to keep their jobs. There will be legitimate pay rises and we want to make sure that any pay rises that eventuate come with better ways of working. The Government needs to get some benefit for the public from increases in public servants’ pay. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: If he believes it is good for the economy to make spending cuts of $2 billion to $3 billion how can he also believe it is good for the economy to give $110 billion worth of subsidies—according to his department Treasury which his Prime Minister obviously cannot rely on—to big polluters in foreign-owned multinationals? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I believe that what the Government is doing is good for the economy. It is charting a careful path between the need to pump money into the economy to keep it ticking along on the one hand and not running up excessive public debt on the other. At the moment we are borrowing at the rate of $250 million a week and under that member’s policies it would be much higher. We believe that would be irresponsible. 
Whanau Ora—Purpose and Outcomes 
3.  
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for Social Development and Employment 
: What definition if any did her Associate Minister Hon Tariana Turia provide to her to explain the purpose and intended outcomes of the Whanau Ora programme? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Social Development and Employment) 
: 
 I have had many discussions with Minister Turia on the definitions of Whanau Ora. The member does not understand that it is not a programme; it is a way of working that leads towards positive outcomes for whanau independence and positive well-being. Frankly the integrated provision of health education and social services for all New Zealanders is something Labour talked endlessly about but never accomplished. This Government is working towards it. 
Hon Annette King 
: Does she stand by her statement that she does not envisage carving off a billion dollars to go into that sort of scheme; if so where will her Associate Minister get the billion dollars she has claimed will fund the Whanau Ora programme? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: We are still working through developments on how that programme will come together. I can say that is looking really positive. What I have said is that under Labour welfare dependency increased; sickness invalid and domestic purposes benefit numbers went up; and abuse and neglect of children increased. What Labour did in the past did not work; Whanau Ora has the potential to work. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Is the Minister deaf? I called for order several times. She continued to give an answer that was absolutely irrelevant to the question asked. It is unnecessary. 
Hon Annette King 
: Does the Minister agree with her Associate Minister that “to be quite frank with you there’s probably a billion dollars already being wasted now”; if so what programmes or initiatives is her ministry wasting millions of dollars on and will these programmes be cut to make way for the new Whanau Ora programme? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: We are looking at value for money for every taxpayer dollar that this Government is putting in and we make no apologies for it. I tell members that our ministries are excited about the prospect of Whanau Ora this Government is excited about the prospects of Whanau Ora and we believe that it can make a positive difference for all families. We will continue to work towards that. 
Hon Tau Henare 
: What does the Whanau Ora taskforce say about the current delivery mechanisms and the outcomes for Maori? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: The taskforce discussion document states: “Despite Government investment across a number of sectors the results for whanau are often disappointing.” It continues: “The taskforce is not convinced that whanau and taxpayers are getting value for money or that the efforts of Government are matched by the measurable gains for whanau.” That is what we need to address. 
Hon Annette King 
: What has she done to convince her Government colleagues to now support separate and identified funding for Maori service provision something that members opposite opposed when in Opposition and called race-based funding; and how did she convince Tony Ryall to agree to the Whanau Ora programme when only a short time ago he said that race-based funding had to come to an immediate end? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: What that member does not recognise is that Whanau Ora has the potential to be good for all families for all New Zealanders. Through a different delivery mechanism we will see positive outcomes; we will see changes that we did not see in the 9 years of the Labour Government which just piled programme on top of programme. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Tena koe. Kia ora tatou. Kei te hangai pu te Whanau Ora ki nga ratonga hauora ki nga ratonga whakahiato ora noa iho? 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
Is Whanau Ora just about health and social services? 
] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: No. Whanau Ora is focused on re-empowering families to take responsibility for themselves. It is about the contribution that iwi hapu communities and extended whanau make to family outcomes. Maori economic development contributes to Whanau Ora as do the services associated with health social services housing justice the community and voluntary sector and education. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Dr Rajen Prasad. [ 
Interruption 
] I apologise to the member but if his own front-bench colleagues would only be quiet so that we could hear the supplementary question from Dr Rajen Prasad I would be obliged. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. As the person who asked the question I unfortunately did not catch pretty much half of the delivery from the Minister. I just could not hear it from here. Is it possible to have a rerun of the end part? I did not hear it. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: In fairness I—[ 
Interruption 
] A point of order is being dealt with. I do not know what was in the lunch that some members had today. [ 
Interruption 
] Has the Hon Paula Bennett quite finished? I say to the honourable member that I could hear the Minister’s answer reasonably clearly. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: Did she see the reported comments at the weekend from her Associate Minister the Hon Tariana Turia that the Minister’s views on the “whanau first” policy a key aspect of Whanau Ora are hugely controversial; if so what discussions has she had with her Associate Minister and have they decided which social services will be covered by the Whanau Ora interventions framework? 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Actually that statement was factually incorrect. What I can tell the member is that we have some real challenges ahead of us as a country on how we deal with our abused and neglected children. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Blah-blah-blah. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Sorry what was that? The member does not see it as being important? 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: You heard me. 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Has she got a problem with that? 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I am not entirely sure what happened during that interchange but after a question from the member Rajen Prasad the Minister looked at somebody made a comment then sat down. We did not get a complete answer to the question that had been put by Dr— 
Hon Tau Henare 
: No. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Mr Henare keeps interjecting during everyone’s— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I ask the House please to come to a little more order today. It is not very tidy at all. What happened—in answer to the honourable member’s question—was that the Minister simply disagreed with the statement contained in the member’s question. I think she then felt that she had continued on for long enough. So I think the matter was dealt with. I was just waiting for the House to settle down. 
Dr Rajen Prasad 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The term “hugely controversial” was attributed to the honourable Minister in the— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I realise that the member has not been here for many years but he cannot use the point of order process to litigate a question in that way. The Minister— 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Actually it was I who said it was hugely controversial. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am on my feet; I just do not know what has got into members today. Where the member asking a question inserts a statement into the question and the Minister refutes the statement the question has been answered—because the Minister has refuted the statement. It cannot be litigated by way of point of order. 
Te Ururoa Flavell 
: Kei te tautoko ia i te kaupapa Whanau Ora? 
[An interpretation in English was given to the House.] 
[ 
Does she support the Whanau Ora approach? 
] 
Hon PAULA BENNETT 
: Of course I do. Whanau Ora has the potential to transform whanau in an unprecedented way. It is consistent with my goals—and this Government’s—of having service providers working together more effectively for whanau. I also strongly support anything that encourages families to take responsibility for themselves. 
Schools—New and Replacement Buildings 
4.  
LOUISE UPSTON (National—Taupo) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: What recent announcements has the Government made about school property? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 Last week I announced $29.8 million of funding for new buildings at 27 schools across New Zealand: 17 schools will be funded for new buildings and 10 schools will receive funding to replace existing buildings. 
Louise Upston 
: Which schools in the Taupo electorate will benefit from the Government’s commitment to enhancing school property? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: In Budget 2009 the Government pledged $523 million towards school property over the next 4 years. I am pleased to advise the member that in this funding round Taupo-nui-a-Tia College in Taupo received almost $3.5 million to replace an art room a classroom and its technology block. 
Catherine Delahunty 
: Tena koe Mr Speaker. How many primary schools is the Minister considering for closure? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. How does that question relate to the primary question which was about school property? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The primary question asked what recent announcements the Government has made about school property and the supplementary question asked about the matter of school closures. I think it does bear a reasonable relationship to the primary question. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: In answer to the question I say to the member that a couple of primary schools have asked to be considered for closure. If the member would like to put her question down as a written question to me I can make the names of those schools available to her. 
Catherine Delahunty 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. My question was quite specific. It asked how many— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member will resume her seat. When a supplementary question is some distance from the primary question in the way that question was—although I ruled that it was in order—the Minister will not necessarily have the specific information. She indicated that if the member wants to put down a question specifically on that matter—[ 
Interruption 
]. I am on my feet ruling on a point of order. If the member wants to put down a specific question the Minister has indicated that she will answer it. I think it is unreasonable to expect the Minister to have that specific information at her fingertips when there is not such a close relationship to the primary question. 
Jo Goodhew 
: What does the Government’s commitment to school property mean for schools in the Rangitata electorate? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I am pleased to advise the member that in this funding round Wakanui School received $455000 to increase its buildings and Hinds School will receive $900000 to replace two classrooms and its manual training block. 
Television New Zealand—Boundaries of Shareholding Minister’s Role 
5.  
Hon DAVID CUNLIFFE (Labour—New Lynn) 
 to the  
Minister of Finance 
: Has he received any recent advice on the appropriate boundaries of his role as shareholding Minister in Television New Zealand? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (Minister of Finance) 
: 
 No not since I answered written question No. 16594. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Now that Television New Zealand (TVNZ) has admitted it was wrong to produce the “in plain English” ad will he now admit that he was wrong to star in it? 
Hon Members 
: Oh! 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I apologise to the honourable member. A point of order has been raised and members must show some courtesy to this House. That is all I am asking for. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Clearly I caused offence by referring to the Minister of Finance as a star and I withdraw and apologise. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The honourable David Cunliffe will get to his feet and apologise for that discourteous treatment of this House. I made certain that the member’s point of order could be heard and then he just abused the point of order process. That is not good enough and I ask him to apologise to the House for doing that. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I am flattered by the member’s description of my participation as “starring” because in my understanding that is a description he usually applies only to himself. 
Brendon Burns 
: Does he stand by the statement that he made only minor factual corrections to the “in plain English” script when documents released under the Official Information Act reveal that he changed more than 60 percent of the script? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: If the member saw the original script he would see why Mr Cunliffe might have gone on TV to say that stuff but I thought it was nonsense and I would not say it. 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: In respect of the answer to that question the question that I heard being asked was about why he— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Is this a point of order? 
Hon Pete Hodgson 
: Yes it is. It is challenging the veracity of the answer or at least whether the answer addressed the question. The question was around whether the Minister stood by his earlier position that there were minor amendments in the face of the facts and he has not addressed that aspect of the question. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The Hon Gerry Brownlee knows better than to interject when a point of order is being considered. In fairness I say that I think the Minister in answering the question pointed out that he disagreed with so much of the original script that he would not say it even if certain members of the Opposition might have been prepared to say it. In my view that was an adequate answer to that particular question. 
Brendon Burns 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. The question I put to the Minister asked whether he stood by the statement that only minor factual corrections were made to the script when in fact documents released under the Official Information Act show that substantive changes were made. 
Hon Gerry Brownlee 
: Relitigating the question! 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Members must not interject on points of order. I have ruled on the matter. I do not accept the point the member is making. In the Minister’s interpretation of the changes he made he considered them minor because they were not changing the whole substance of the script. I gather from what he said that he was removing stuff he felt would make him look silly in saying it. In his view that was minor. So I cannot help the member get a further answer to that. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Further to the Minister’s admission that he did in fact change two-thirds of the script how can he maintain there is no conflict of interest when TVNZ said that it was “happy” to give him “final sign-off” and that he would “really like it”? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I understand that the member’s main concern as expressed this morning at the select committee was that he did not feature in the promotion alongside me—to which I can only say that if he had something worthwhile and relevant to say he would have been in that promotion. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I enjoy a good joke— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member must come to his point of order. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: In response to a straight question the Minister has misrepresented the questioner and that cannot be addressing the question. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am not sure where members have been this morning but it surely was not a helpful place. I invite the Hon David Cunliffe to repeat his question but if he expects a concise answer he had better make it a concise question. 
Hon David Cunliffe 
: Given that the Minister has now admitted that he changed two-thirds of the script how can he maintain there was no conflict of interest when TVNZ executives gave him an assurance that he would have final sign-off rights and would be “happy with the outcome”? 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: I do maintain that position. 
Brendon Burns 
: I seek leave to table an email from Peter Parussini of TVNZ to Craig Howie of the Minister’s office in which TVNZ seeks the Minister of Finance’s assistance in promoting a series of programmes on TVNZ. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Brendon Burns 
: I seek leave to table an email from 14 September from Scott Spicer of TVNZ attaching for the Minister’s press secretary Craig Howie a very rough indicative script for the promotion. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Is there any objection to that document being tabled? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Brendon Burns 
: I seek leave to table an email from the Minister’s press secretary Craig Howie to Scott Spicer and Peter Parussini of TVNZ. The email details the Minister’s shoe size shirt size and trouser size and contains an amended copy of the script which the Minister was happy with. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. [ 
Interruption 
] I guess it is members’ day so it is the members’ own time that they are wasting. Leave was sought to table that document. Is there any objection to that? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Brendon Burns 
: Mr Speaker—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I say to the member that this is getting disorderly. If there is a set of documents he wishes to table I ask him to seek leave to table them as a set not individually. 
Brendon Burns 
: I seek leave to table the balance of the documents received under the Official Information Act in relation to the “in plain English” promotion. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table those documents. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Documents by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Roading Victoria Park Project—Start of Construction 
6.  
NIKKI KAYE (National—Auckland Central) 
 to the  
Minister of Transport 
: What progress has the Government made on progressing the Victoria Park road of national significance? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE (Minister of Transport) 
: 
 I am pleased to report that last week I turned the first sod on construction of the new $400 million Victoria Park project which is the first road of national significance project to get under way. This is also one of the first projects to benefit from the Government’s decision to increase State highway construction funding by $1 billion over the next 3 years. It provides further certainty in an important and vulnerable time for the construction industry. I am pleased to report that the project is expected to employ 450 people: 350 directly on-site and a further 100 in downstream jobs. 
Nikki Kaye 
: What long-term economic benefits will the Victoria Park project provide? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: This project will greatly ease congestion for the 160000-plus vehicles that use this route every day as well as allow for improved bus priority measures between the city and the bridge. It is expected that by 2016 the project will deliver time savings of up to 20 minutes during peak times. In addition the Auckland Harbour Bridge is a key freight route through the region and this project will improve access to markets economic efficiency and productivity. 
Darien Fenton 
: If fast tracking such roads of national significance is considered by this Minister to be a measure of his Government’s success how does he quantify the increased numbers of schoolchildren who could be injured or even killed because of the millions of dollars he has cut from New Zealand’s community road safety programmes? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: We have not cut millions of dollars from New Zealand’s road safety programmes. The demand management and community programmes category in the National Land Transport Fund is steady at $120 million and the New Zealand Transport Agency is determined to spend that money wisely in terms of promoting safety in the land transport sector. 
Nikki Kaye 
: What progress is expected to be made on the other roads of national significance? 
Hon STEVEN JOYCE 
: Over the next 3 years there will be significant construction on five out of seven of these vital routes with all seven to be substantially advanced within 10 years. Within 3 years we expect to complete the Victoria Park project and begin construction of the Waterview Connection the Waikato Expressway and the Christchurch Southern Motorway. Design work continues on the Wellington Tauranga and Puhoi to Wellsford routes. The roads of national significance are being developed alongside key regional roads and public transport services and they will all help secure a step change in economic growth for this country. 
Accident Compensation—Proposed Increase in Levies 
7.  
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for ACC 
: Does he stand by his statement “the scale of the increases proposed by the Accident Compensation Corporation board will not need to be advanced.”? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for ACC) 
: 
 Yes but the member should have used the full quote from  
Hansard 
 where I preceded that statement with: “I am confident with the changes this Government is advancing to the accident compensation scheme that we can make some savings”. 
Hon David Parker 
: Is it not true that the Minister has known for many months that the accident compensation increases to motorcycle levies do not need to be as high as those he allowed to be published? Why did he embark on another of his scaremongering campaigns? Is it because he has to justify the accident compensation scheme as being insolvent in order to justify privatisation? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I note that John Judge the chair of the board of the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) has made very critical comments about the previous Government’s financial management of the accident compensation scheme. I also ask the member to note that the board is required to make recommendations on the basis of the current law. I am changing the law to enable the increases to be less. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: Is the Minister aware that the previous Government increased accident compensation levies for motorcycles from $134 to $212—a whopping 57 percent increase—in 2003? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Yes I am. The increase was justified by the then Minister for ACC Lianne Dalziel in response to a protest at the time. She said: “Injuries from motorcycle accidents tend to be of a more serious nature a longer duration” and motorcycles are a higher risk. The irony is that Miss Dalziel now joins in the protests and says exactly the opposite. 
Hon David Parker 
: Why does the Minister not accept his responsibility as the Minister for ACC and take responsibility for his own scaremongering rather than blaming the ACC board which he hand-picked for the excessive increases he caused it to publish? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: There is absolutely no need to do any exaggeration in respect of the accident compensation scheme’s finances because the facts speak for themselves. The annual report signed by Maryan Street discloses a $2.4 billion loss the greatest loss of any Government organisation in the history of Parliament. 
Michael Woodhouse 
: What advice has the Minister received on the levy differential between motorbikes and other vehicles historically? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The differential was increased by the previous Government to 1.5. That is it decided that for motorbikes the levy paid would be 1.5 times that for the average car. The Hon Ruth Dyson recommended to Cabinet some years later that the differential should be further increased to 2. The Cabinet minute noted that even with that increase the levy payments would meet only 35 percent of the cost of motorcycle accidents. I find it ironic that the very facts that Cabinet noted when Phil Goff was in Cabinet are now described by him as “crap”. 
Hon David Parker 
: Has the Minister had time to consider why more than 6000 motorcyclists yesterday described his explanations as “bullshit bullshit”? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I am not at all surprised because whether there is a Labour Government or a National Government people do not want their levies to go up. But I note that when Mr Parker was in Cabinet Cabinet noted that motorcycle fees met only 35 percent of the actual costs. It is not consistent for this Government to argue that the numbers are wrong when he in Cabinet argued just the same. I say to Mr Parker that I think a bikie would call it a backfire. I seek leave to table a press release—and I realise it is a press release but it is from some years ago—from Lianne Dalziel the then Minister for ACC justifying the very large increase— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I think the House should know before the member goes into the details how many years ago. What is the date? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: The press release was in 2003 which is quite recent. I think the House should know what Lianne Dalziel said in 2003. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I will not accept that. It is contrary to the principle of the ruling I made the other day. The member is seeking leave to table a document purely for political purposes and not to provide information to the House. I will not accept that. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Can I seek leave to table her blog of 15 November? 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Nice try but no. 
Question No. 4 to Minister 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 I seek the leave of the House to give an answer to a question that was asked earlier. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: What should the Speaker say? I suppose a Minister can seek leave to do anything. The Minister has sought leave to provide an answer to a question that was asked earlier. The question I presume was the question asked by Catherine Delahunty. The Minister has sought leave now to answer that question. I put it to the House. Is there any objection to that course of action? There is none. 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: The answer is nine. 
Petroleum Production—Royalty and Taxation Payments to Crown 
8.  
JONATHAN YOUNG (National—New Plymouth) 
 to the  
Minister of Energy and Resources 
: How much did the Crown receive in royalty and taxation payments from petroleum production in 2008-09? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister of Energy and Resources) 
: 
 Mr Speaker— 
Hon Member 
: I know it is the wee small hours of the afternoon. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I tell members that in the wee small hours of the afternoon Phil Goff looks around to see who has a  
Hansard 
 hanging out of the back pocket. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Earlier today you asked one of my colleagues to apologise for making a derogatory reference; in that case it was made at the conclusion of the question. In the Minister’s case he started off once he had finally got to his feet with a jibe at the Opposition. All we were trying to do was alert him to the fact that he had to answer the question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Was it a derogatory comment? If it was derogatory I ask the member to withdraw. If it was felt to be derogatory by the members that it was directed at I think the member should withdraw the comment. I ask the Hon Gerry Brownlee to do so. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I withdraw. In answer to the question I am pleased to advise the House that the Crown received approximately $965 million in taxes and royalties from petroleum production in the 2008-09 financial year. Furthermore the value of New Zealand’s oil exports in the 2008 calendar year was $2.8 billion making oil our third-largest export earner behind only dairy and meat exports. 
Jonathan Young 
: What is the potential value of New Zealand’s petroleum basins? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: GNS Science has recently undertaken a study of 10 petroleum basins to establish an estimated unproven resource that could reasonably be expected to exist. Even when taking a conservative approach it is estimated that the Crown receipt alone could increase to more than $10 billion per annum over the next 40 years adding $400 billion to Government revenues. The petroleum sector could also generate over $30 billion per annum in export earnings by 2025. 
Jonathan Young 
: What will the Government do to unlock some of that potential? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: Earlier today I announced an action plan on petroleum for the Government. Its aim is to ensure that New Zealand becomes an attractive global destination for petroleum exploration and production investment. The action plan has a number of elements to it including explicit Government encouragement of the sector a review of the Crown’s capability to manage our petroleum estate adjustments to our royalty regime and legislative amendments to the Crown Minerals Act. 
Catherine Delahunty 
: Can he confirm that the Crown received royalties from gold mining that totalled less than 1 percent of the mining companies’ earnings in 2008? Why is he so keen that the New Zealand public give up even more conservation land to be destroyed and polluted by foreign-owned mining companies? 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: No. 
Sue Moroney 
: I seek leave of the House to table an invoice addressed to the Minister of Women’s Affairs the Minister of Labour and Business New Zealand asking them to pay New Zealand women the $4 billion they are missing out on because of the 12 percent gender pay gap. The invoice is from the Pay Equity Challenge. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am not entirely clear in my mind exactly what the document is but I will leave that for members to judge. 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE 
: I think we should know who generated the document before we can make a consideration. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: The member makes a valid point. I ask the member who generated this document. 
Sue Moroney 
: I said when I sought leave that it is from the Pay Equity Challenge coalition. It is dated 18 November 2009. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Emissions Trading Scheme—Cost to Taxpayers of Deal with Maori Party 
9.  
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
 to the  
Minister for Climate Change Issues 
: Does he stand by his reported comments that he cannot put a figure on the cost to taxpayers for his proposed deal with the Maori Party to secure support for the ETS? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH (Minister for Climate Change Issues) 
: 
 Yes and for two reasons. The first is that one cannot put a figure on a deal that is not yet finalised. The second is that there are matters such as the agreement to halve the power price and petrol price increase that would come from the previous Labour Government’s emissions trading scheme and that does cost the Government $400 million but as the National Government and the Maori Party have made that agreement how is it possible to assign it to one party or the other? 
Charles Chauvel 
: What is the total cost of any liabilities to the Crown that could result from the legal proceedings that the Minister is trying to avoid by the exercise of his “political judgment” in reaching a deal with the Maori Party? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I have received advice from Crown Law but as members opposite would know when one is seeking to resolve such issues where there is the potential for legal action Ministers need to be cautious about sharing that advice. I assure the member opposite that I am acting in the best interests of the taxpayers in seeking to resolve this issue. 
Charles Chauvel 
: If the Minister cannot put a figure on the costs of the deal that is being proposed does he have any idea whether either of the two following figures are correct: $130 million which is what Ngai Tahu says or $2 billion which is what the New Zealand Kyoto Forestry Association says? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: I heard Mr Dickie make the claim that 30000 hectares of Department of Conservation land for afforestation and carbon credits would be worth $2 billion. I invite him to come to my office because I would love to put a Cabinet paper up so we could earn $2 billion from just 30000 hectares. I can advise the member that the Department of Conservation has entered into agreements for carbon farming that are a very small fraction of what Mr Dickie claims and that is why the member is again guilty of gross exaggeration in his numbers. 
Charles Chauvel 
: If Ngai Tahu the New Zealand Kyoto Forestry Association Dr Christina Hood the Sustainability Council and Treasury are all wrong about the cost of his deal for the changes to the emissions trading scheme just where is the Government getting its advice about emissions trading scheme costs from? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Let me make the point very plain. In 2030 Labour’s scheme would cost farmers $30000 per year in terms of advice— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: On this occasion the member asked a fairly clear question. He asked the Minister where he was receiving his advice from not details about the scheme itself. As I heard the question it pointed out that certain people did not seem to be people the Government was accepting advice from and it asked who the Government was accepting advice from. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: We are receiving advice from Government officials. Let me share some of that advice. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Not Treasury. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: It and the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry say that the existing scheme will cost farmers $30000 per year in 2030. The amended scheme will cost farmers $3000 per year. As a consequence of our changes it will cost a whole lot less. The last point I will make is that it is no surprise at all that in the advice we received if the assumed carbon price is doubled then—surprise surprise—the value of the assessment is doubled into the future. 
Hekia Parata 
: Tena koe Mr Speaker. Tena tatou. Has the Minister any advice on the cost to the taxpayer from the Labour Government’s deals to secure support for its emissions trading scheme? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Yes it cost the taxpayer $1 billion to secure the changes sought by the Green Party. I am advised it cost $2.5. billion to secure the support of New Zealand First. However these costings do depend on the assumed price of carbon and if I use the same approach that Mr Chauvel uses and add compound interest the cost comes to $8 billion for the agreement of the Greens and New Zealand First. 
John Boscawen 
: Would the Iwi Leadership Group’s afforestation proposal which he is considering fully compensate iwi for the $1.9 billion in land value they have lost as a result of the inclusion of pre-1990 forests in the emissions trading scheme? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Iwi who own pre-1990 forests are affected in the same way as other pre-1990 forest owners are affected by the scheme. The Government’s policy is that after full and final settlements we need the flexibility to be able to deal with modern issues. The area on which we are working with Ngai Tahu is a specific issue about the integrity of its Treaty settlement. 
John Boscawen 
: If the credits earned under the Iwi Leadership Group’s afforestation proposal are sold offshore what would be the impact on the Crown balance sheet of the afforestation proposal? 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: Whether it be iwi who plant trees or whether it be other New Zealanders—and I stress that the Department of Conservation has entered into agreement with other parties to farm carbon credits—my question to the ACT Party asks why it is OK for overseas companies to plant trees in New Zealand and gain carbon credits but it is not OK for iwi. That to me seems illogical. 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. With the greatest respect one cannot answer a question with a question. The question was precisely what the impact on the Crown balance sheet would be—which was not addressed in any way shape or form. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I ask the Minister whether he could answer that part of the question. 
Hon Dr NICK SMITH 
: If any groups plant trees—iwi or anybody else—they earn the carbon credits. If they export those overseas it makes no difference to the New Zealand position because the carbon credits would not have existed without the planting of those trees. 
Clean Green Image— 
Guardian 
 Article 
10.  
DAVID CLENDON (Green) 
 to the  
Minister of Tourism 
: What advice if any has he sought regarding the impact on New Zealand’s tourism industry of last week’s UK  
Guardian 
 article which says that our “green image increasingly defies reality”? 
Hon JOHN KEY (Minister of Tourism) 
: 
 I have not asked for specific advice because I already understand the impact that such articles can have as I pointed out to Federated Farmers in my speech to them this morning. However that does not mean that I accept all the points made in the particular article the member is referring to. 
David Clendon 
: Did he seek advice earlier this year when the World Economic Forum’s  
Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Report 
 ranked New Zealand 92nd on climate change performance; if so what advice did he receive? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No but I did lament that we had 9 years of a Labour Government that did absolutely nothing in that area. 
David Clendon 
: What is he doing in response to New Zealand coming last according to the same report at protecting threatened species and does he think this delivers on our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Could I ask the member to repeat his question? It was little noisy on the other side of the House. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I absolutely accept the Minister of Tourism’s point. I ask David Clendon to repeat his question and I ask the House to show some courtesy to a new member. 
David Clendon 
: What is the Minister doing in response to New Zealand coming last according to that same report at protecting threatened species and does he think this delivers on our “100% Pure New Zealand” brand? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: We are working to improve that area. We have made it clear in areas like conservation that we are keen to engage with the private sector to deal with areas like that. When it comes to climate change we are working hard to have policies that actually work as opposed to rhetoric from the previous Government. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Is the “100% Pure New Zealand” brand still the focus of tourism policy in New Zealand; if so how is it compatible with opening up the Department of Conservation estate to further mining with Gerry Brownlee’s petroleum action plan announced earlier today with a $110 billion subsidy to polluters and with an emissions trading scheme that the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment says will actually see an increase in greenhouse gas emissions? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes “100% Pure New Zealand” is still the brand campaign that we are running. Secondly I remind the member that there are 82 concessions currently on the conservation estate many of which were issued by the previous Labour Government— 
Hon Ruth Dyson 
: That is irrelevant. 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: That is a good one actually! That is a little bit like the carbon neutral statement that the previous Government wheeled out—unfortunately it then allowed our emissions to go through the roof. But that is OK; this Government will fix up that problem. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I call David Clendon. [ 
Interruption 
] I have called David Clendon. I ask members to show some courtesy to the new member at the back of the House. I want to hear him. 
David Clendon 
: Does he agree with the United Nations World Tourism Organization that New Zealand has managed to capture the world’s imagination with its consistent branding and does he also agree that it is crucially important that the reality is in turn consistent with that branding? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: Yes and yes and that is why we work hard to protect our environment. 
Metiria Turei 
: Will the Minister then accept the very kind offer made by Greenpeace to pay for his fare to the climate change conference in Copenhagen in order to demonstrate to the many potential international tourists that New Zealand does take its environmental responsibility seriously? 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: No I will not be accepting the cheque from Greenpeace to go to Copenhagen. It is very unlikely that I will be going there. I will be well represented by Tim Groser and Nick Smith. Anyway I will be far too busy reading the comments from the co-leader of the Green Party about why she thinks that Phil Goff is a racist. 
Metiria Turei 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. I take exception to that comment. What I said on the radio this morning is absolutely accurate and I stand by those words. But the description of them by the Prime Minister of this country was derogatory and disgusting. I ask that he withdraw and apologise. 
Hon Rodney Hide 
: Point of order—[ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I do not need further help on this. I do not know who made that interjection but it was not helpful either. It is fortunate that I did not pick up who it was. I say to the Prime Minister that his comment was totally unnecessary; I ask him to stand withdraw and apologise for that comment. 
Hon JOHN KEY 
: I withdraw and apologise. 
Charles Chauvel 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. [ 
Interruption 
]  
Mr SPEAKER 
: I called that I would hear a point of order from the Leader of the Opposition’s own colleague and he made an interjection that is totally unparliamentary and he knows that. I now ask the honourable Leader of the Opposition to stand withdraw and apologise for that. 
Hon Phil Goff 
: I withdraw and apologise. [ 
Interruption 
] 
Mr SPEAKER 
: A point of order is being heard and the senior members—[ 
Interruption 
] The Prime Minister will also be quiet. I say to the Deputy Prime Minister the Prime Minister and all senior members that we have had a fair bit of fun today but I think we should show a little decorum. There have been a lot of visitors in the gallery who would not have been too impressed. 
Charles Chauvel 
: I seek leave to table a copy of a cheque raised by Greenpeace members via cake stalls and sausage sizzles for $4781 to enable the Prime Minister to attend the Copenhagen climate change conference. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I recently made a ruling in which I made it clear to members that I would not be seeking the leave of the House for members to table articles that have nothing to do with providing information to members of the House. When a request to table an item is purely political grandstanding it is demeaning of this Parliament. I ask members not to do it or I will take serious steps in the future. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I ask you to reflect on that. The Prime Minister in his answer referred to the cheque from Greenpeace. He introduced that material into the House in his answer. My colleague is simply tabling the information that the Prime Minister referred to in his answer. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I have ruled on the matter and that is the end of it. 
David Clendon 
: I seek leave to table New Zealand’s country profile in the World Economic Forum’s Travel and Tourism Competitiveness Index which ranks New Zealand near the bottom of the world— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Literacy Programmes—Manukau Family Literacy Programme 
11.  
SU’A WILLIAM SIO (Labour—Mangere) 
 to the  
Minister of Education 
: Is she prepared to back up her support for literacy programmes by funding the expansion of the Manukau Family Literacy Programme a programme that PricewaterhouseCoopers says has already boosted the income of participating families by an average of $200 per week? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY (Minister of Education) 
: 
 The City of Manukau Education Trust’s request for funding for brokerage and administration for this programme was initially declined as it did not fit in any of the current funding forms run by the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission. However the Government is committed to finding a way to support the programme and I have instructed the Ministry of Education to work with the trust on a solution that allows the programme to continue. 
Su’a William Sio 
: When will she make her final decision and is she aware that if the City of Manukau Education Trust does not receive the minimal investment of $35000 this week the Manukau Family Literacy Programme as upheld by PricewaterhouseCoopers will fold? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I repeat that I have instructed the Ministry of Education to work with the trust to find a way to support that programme. I understand that discussions are happening as we speak. 
H V Ross Robertson 
: Can the Minister confirm that the $350000 sought by the City of Manukau Education Trust—COMET—for a programme recognised by her as a high-quality programme has been declined; if so why has the Prime Minister told the trust to go back to her saying that she should look harder? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I repeat what I said in answer to the primary question. The trust’s request for funding for the brokerage and administration for this programme was initially declined because it did not fit any of the current funding models within the Ministry of Education and the Tertiary Education Commission. I have instructed the ministry to work with the trust to find a way to support the programme and it is working on that as we speak. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Given that the Minister is looking to backtrack on her decision to cut funding to the Manukau Family Literacy Programme are there any other ill-considered decisions that she has made that have been overturned by the Prime Minister that the public should be aware of; if so what are they? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I totally reject the original premise of that question and that answers it. 
Carmel Sepuloni 
: Given that the Minister is looking to backtrack on her decision to cut funding to the Manukau Family Literacy Programme due to the Prime Minister’s intervention does this mean that the other ill-considered decisions she has made such as cuts to adult and community education funding will also be reviewed? 
Hon ANNE TOLLEY 
: I repeat: I have not cut any funding to the City of Manukau Education Trust. 
Su’a William Sio 
: Mr Speaker— 
Mr SPEAKER 
: I am afraid that by my reckoning all the supplementary questions available to Labour today have been used. 
Su’a William Sio 
: I seek leave through you Mr Speaker to ask one more supplementary question. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to ask a further supplementary question. Is there any objection? There is objection. 
Su’a William Sio 
: I seek leave through you Mr Speaker to table a PricewaterhouseCoopers report outlining the significant dollar value for dollar investment in the Manukau Family Literacy Programme. 
Mr SPEAKER 
: Leave is sought to table that document. Is there any objection? There is no objection. 
Document by leave laid on the Table of the House. 
Probation Officers—Recruitment 
12.  
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
 to the  
Minister of Corrections 
: Has she received any progress reports on the recruitment of additional probation officers following a $255 million funding boost in the Budget? 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS (Minister of Corrections) 
: 
 Yes. The Government inherited a community probation system under extreme stress. Budget 2009 provided funding for 134 additional probation officers. I am pleased to report that 91 front-line probation staff have already been appointed. Funding was also provided for a further 112 probation officers who will be recruited in the first half of next year specifically to improve the quality of parole and home detention management. Public safety is the No. 1 priority when offenders are released on parole and this Government is serious about fixing the probation system and improving the safety of the public. 
Sandra Goudie 
: What other steps is the Government taking to recognise the important role carried out by Community Probation and Psychological Services which often has to deal with some of society’s most troubled people? 
Hon JUDITH COLLINS 
: It is not easy being a probation officer and it is a job that is often under-recognised by the wider community. At my suggestion the Department of Corrections has established a Minister’s Excellence Award to recognise outstanding achievement among new probation officer graduates. I was delighted to present the first award last week. It was also the first time that a formal ceremony has been held for graduating officers. It is important to recognise the important contribution that probation officers make to our justice system. 
General Debate 
Hon GERRY BROWNLEE (Minister for Economic Development) 
: 
 I move  
That the House take note of miscellaneous business 
. Tomorrow marks the 1-year anniversary of the new National-led Government and the first year of the premiership of John Key. It has been a very interesting year. 
To take people back a little bit I point out that when the new Government came in it inherited an economy that was in very very bad shape. New Zealand had been in recession for almost a year at that stage and the fundamentals of the economy were in extremely bad shape. To put that comment into context the tradable sector in the New Zealand economy had been in recession for 5 years—it had shrunk by some 10 percent over that period of time—but the non-tradable sector which is the bit that does not bring income into the country had grown by some 15 percent. 
In short under the brilliant economic leadership of the previous Labour Government the part of the economy that brings in income had shrunk and the part of the economy that demands income had grown. That is why we face very large deficits for a few years ahead and why we have had to make some difficult choices. Those choices by and large have been made with the best interests of the New Zealand people in mind. I think that the way in which the public have responded to this Government indicates that they understand that. 
I will list a few things that the Government has done in the last short while. Firstly there have been $1 billion worth of tax cuts to stimulate the economy. Front-line services have been boosted in health education and policing. Superannuation payments have also been maintained. The 2009 Budget attempted to put a curb on the growing national debt. Savings have been protected through the Crown Wholesale Funding Guarantee Facility and Crown Retail Deposit Guarantee Scheme. The Job Summit generated an environment where people could talk about the way in which we work together to save jobs in the economy. We have assisted 3500 workers through the Job Support Scheme and the 9-day working fortnight proposal. We have created 17000 Youth Opportunities jobs which will provide those opportunities over the next 2 years. We have supported 5500 people through the Restart package after they were made redundant. We have made 180000 homes warmer and drier through our insulation programme. 
We have capped the number and size of the core bureaucracy and we have put $7.5 billion into infrastructure and $500 million into a general relief package to make life simpler and easier for small businesses. The Resource Management Act has been simplified. Major reviews are about to conclude to improve taxation and the health system to get a better deal out of the electricity system and to improve building regulations overseas investment and next week the emissions trading scheme. A further $190 million has been invested over 4 years in the Primary Growth Partnership. 
All of that leads to a package of measures that shows leadership for the New Zealand economy at a time when things are tough. That is where the difference comes between this Government and the Opposition. Labour members have no economic credibility whatever. What we saw today in question time demonstrates just how bad it is. Rather than those members asking serious questions about how this country grows the economy how we protect jobs how we lift incomes for New Zealanders and how we give our young people a brighter future we had David Cunliffe the Opposition spokesman on finance asking why he never got on TVNZ 7. That is the biggest issue on his desk at the present time: trying to work out why he was not the one who was picked to do the promotion. 
I think that highlights the second problem Labour members have which is that they have no leadership whatsoever—no leadership whatsoever. Day after day they wheel poor old Phil Goff into the House with his shaking hands as he trembles his way through his questions reading them off the bits of paper that Annette King has just handed him. He gets pummelled by the Prime Minister and by anybody else whom he dares to put a question to. In the public perception he is simply not making cutting points which I think is causing a degree of confusion in the minds of many many New Zealanders. 
Hon ANNETTE KING (Deputy Leader—Labour) 
: 
 What are the real issues the daily issues that New Zealanders wake up to every morning and worry about when they go to sleep each night? What are the things that impact on the family at “No. 1 Struggle Street” New Zealand? What are the aspirations and the dreams that Kiwis have for themselves for their families for their communities and for their country? These are the real questions that need answers from the Key-led Government. These are the issues this Government should be devoting its time to. But what are we getting from this new Government? We are getting sideshows and show ponies and we have a shambles. We have a shambles from that Government opposite. 
I cannot remember a time when a Government fell apart so fast. One year and the wheels are falling off this Government. Its members might laugh and think that it is Opposition members who think that. I tell Government members to read the newspapers listen to the television read the blogs hear the talkback radio and hear the political commentators. A common theme is coming through. People are saying that this Government has no plans its approach is short term its approach is expedient and it is chaotic. It is held together by the charm of a very nice man with a lovely smile. As Bill English said John Key bounces from cloud to cloud; as Rodney Hide said in a rare moment of honesty he does not do any work either. Increasingly there is a call for this Government to make some decisions to take some action to give some leadership and to straighten out the shambles that we see in this House day after day. 
If one is looking for the most shambolic of the Government’s Ministers one has to say that it is the Minister for ACC the Minister for the Environment and the Minister who is responsible for the emissions trading scheme: one Nick Smith. He is afflicted by the opposite of the Midas touch. In his hands everything turns to custard to chaos and to shambles. There were 6000 motorcyclists out on the front lawn of Parliament yesterday protesting against the Minister’s rise in levies. What did they call it? Animal manure they said. That is what is wrong with his levies. He has created a crisis in order to scare New Zealanders into accepting his Government’s long-term desire to privatise the accident compensation scheme and no one believes a word he is saying. All his huffing and his puffing and his peering down the lens of the television camera are being laughed at by New Zealanders because Kiwis are not mugs. Kiwis know that the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) took $1 billion more in income than it spent last year and it has the largest reserves it has ever had—$11 billion in reserves. Kiwis know that the levy this Government is putting on motorcyclists is unfair. 
Of course the Minister for the Environment always has a problem with figures. He is always getting his figures wrong. It is not just with regard to accident compensation. What about the whole emissions trading scheme? It has just been shot to pieces by the latest figures from Treasury. There is a $50 billion mistake. It is unbelievable—$50 billion. Broken down that is $92000 for every man woman and child in New Zealand. They will pay that for Nick Smith’s folly. That is what it will cost. The cobbling together of a flimsy coalition will force through a disastrous cost on ordinary hard-working Kiwis so that Nick Smith can go to Copenhagen and strut on the international stage. It is such a shambles that his own leader the Prime Minister refuses to go to Copenhagen because he has said nothing will happen there anyway. Nothing will happen so what is the rush? I ask why Nick Smith is prepared to put at risk the economic future of all New Zealanders in order to go to a conference that will not achieve anything. In my view Nick Smith and John Key are prepared to reopen for purely political purposes wounds that have been healed by comprehensive settlements in this country. 
Hon PHIL HEATLEY (Minister of Fisheries) 
: 
 I thank Labour members for applauding me before I start my speech. It is a wonderful pleasure to have that ovation. After 1 year in Government National is working hard to deliver on its election promises and to deliver a brighter future for New Zealanders. We are seeing some of the signs of that recovery thank goodness! No longer is the economy looking like the Labour Party polling record: it is no longer diving in the way that Labour support is. We have put in a rolling maul of initiatives to protect families from the sharpest edges of the recession and it is working well. 
I will take members behind the thinking of the way that we are dealing with the recession and I will comment particularly on the fact that we are pumping capital expenditure into the economy by investing in infrastructure. That is investment in roads investment in housing investment in schools and investment in broadband. What John Key did—and members might be interested in his approach—was to suggest to Ministers around the table that we should stimulate the economy by investing in the infrastructure that is creaking in this country and in infrastructure that needs investment like roads and broadband. 
Mr Key said that we should dust off all the reports that the previous Labour Government had on the shelf and all the previous announcements on new roads broadband and new schools that the Labour Government had announced once twice or three times. Those reports relate to all the times that the Labour Government brought out a review about roading and said that it would form a committee or an action group that it would have a meeting on it and that it would have an independent review on it. Mr Key said that we would dust off all those reports and go down and actually build the roads. He said that we should get some money out and invest in houses do up the schools that require investment and invest in broadband. In other words he said that we should get some cash and actually do all the great projects that the previous Labour Government talked about. Mr Key told Ministers to take off the shelf all those projects collecting dust sort through them decide which were the ones that we could do quickly and then invest in them. What did he do? He invested half a billion dollars over 18 months to get the roads built. It has been an absolute delight I can tell members to see more roads being built and more schools being invested in. 
But I can also tell members about one point of shame. We have seen New Zealanders take up the insulation scheme across this country—180000 houses across New Zealand will be insulated top and bottom over the next 4 years. People will no longer be living in cold and squalid conditions knowing that Labour would do nothing about that. Labour did nothing about that in regard to State housing and it did nothing about that in regard to private housing. It has been a delight to be involved in that process. 
That raises the other point of shame which is the way that the previous Labour Government for 9 years refused to fund Herceptin. While claiming that it supported women it refused to fund Herceptin. John Key was in Government for 10 minutes and we saw Herceptin funded for the early stages of breast cancer. National is rescuing those women but for a decade the previous Labour Government said that the bureaucrats would not let it fund Herceptin. 
Members of the previous Labour Government said the bureaucrats would not let them help women with early-stage breast cancer. They said they refused to do that because bureaucrats said they should not fund Herceptin yet John Key was in Government for 10 minutes and he funded Herceptin. I can tell members that on this side of the House that is the sort of thing we are proud of achieving in this first year. It is interesting to know that the Labour Party is calling meetings up and down the country to get support. We have heard that it is hiring Portaloos but no one is turning up. 
Hon DAVID PARKER (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to speak in the general debate. According to the National Party this is just about a happy anniversary of 1 year in Government. The speech that we just heard from the Hon Phil Heatley had no substance. It was Crosby/Textor slogans. What did he say? He said “rolling maul” and “avoiding the sharp edges of recession” and he gave no policy of substance. He did not defend the Government’s programme on amendments to the emissions trading scheme and he did not speak to the controversies around the accident compensation system because he has no answers to the criticisms that are being made. 
We have heard in this House this year exaggeration after exaggeration from Dr Nick Smith. He came to this House and told everyone initially that the accident compensation scheme was insolvent using a new measure of insolvency under which the scheme would have been insolvent since the first day it was formed. He has scaremongered up and down the country. He had the newspapers reporting that everyone’s car registration fees would go up $133 per annum; then he said they would go up by $30. Now $30 is bad enough but we have to ask ourselves why the Minister exaggerated more than fourfold. It was because he was trying to present the scheme as fundamentally broken when people know it is not. He is trying to do that because it is the only way he can justify privatisation and moving away from the no-fault liability principles that lie under the scheme. He has been seen through. 
Yesterday 6000 bikers came to Parliament. They turned up and heard Dr Nick Smith. They gave him a hearing and at the end of it they were unimpressed by his flimflam. They said as my deputy leader has said “Belgian Blue manure Belgian Blue manure”—I use a euphemism for the Speaker’s benefit. So the bikers have not been taken in. He had hoped that by proposing such outrageously unfair levy increases for bikers they would say the scheme is so stuffed that they want it privatised. But they did not fall for the bait. They turned up and took a principled approach. They said that no it was not fundamentally broken and no its principles were right. 
Hon Annette King 
: Who’s next? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: They also asked who is next. They asked if the Government is picking off bikers now who will be next. The accident compensation debacle has been a shambles for the Government. It is turning against the Government and we can already see the Government turning back from some of its rhetoric. We can see that Mr Joyce is being brought in to help Nick Smith who is plainly failing in the portfolio. Mr Joyce is being rolled into the negotiations and the Government is softening its language saying to people that it might not be that bad and that we do not need levy increases at that high level. 
But an even more outrageous thing Dr Smith is doing at the moment is in amendments to the emissions trading scheme which will land $110 billion of extra debt on future generations. Treasury says that by 2050 that is what the debt figure will be. What do the Prime Minister and Dr Smith say in response? They write off Treasury as “irrelevant”. What a nonsense! In Treasury’s own regulatory impact statement it warned the National Government that it was rushing the process and that Treasury’s analysis was incomplete. 
It is not just Treasury. It is also the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment business groups environmental groups and the Ministry of Economic Development. In the Treasury paper under which Cabinet agreed to the changes the Ministry of Economic Development also put up its hand and said the changes to the rate of free allocation for major emitters was wrong. It results in massive subsidies from taxpayers to major polluters and debt goes up in a way that is plainly unsustainable for New Zealand in the long term. This visits costs on future generations and it makes a mockery of the Government’s own policy position about New Zealand’s long-term fiscal statement which was released just last month and does not take into account that $110 billion of extra Government debt— 
Hon Annette King 
: $110 billion? 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: That $110 billion of extra Government debt occurs as a consequence of this one decision alone. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Fiscally irresponsible. 
Hon DAVID PARKER 
: It is just fiscally irresponsible. It really is back to the days of Muldoon with a rising debt trap. Muldoon did it through supplementary minimum prices. Dr Smith Mr Key and his Government are doing it through emissions pricing through subsidies from taxpayers to major emitters which are worth more than $100000 per worker per year in the case of some of the subsidies going to major emitters. There is long-term wealth destruction in New Zealand when we see this artificial lift in land prices. 
CHRIS TREMAIN (National—Napier) 
: 
 Tomorrow will mark the first anniversary of the National-led Government and I take this opportunity to say a very big thank you to the people of New Zealand for giving us the opportunity to be the Government. I say through you Mr Speaker that it is an absolute privilege to be the Government of this country a privilege that we do not take lightly. Day after day month after month we are focusing on the issues that matter to New Zealanders. That is the key point I want to make. I also thank the people of Hawke’s Bay for giving me the opportunity to be their MP and I take that as a real privilege as well. 
At the start of the term of our Government I started one of my speeches with a whakatauki called “Whakataka Te Hau.” At the end of that whakatauki the proverb says: “E hi ake ana te atakura. He tio he huka he hauhunga.” I want to remind people what that means. The last piece of that proverb says: “Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened air a promise of a glorious new day.” The point I was making was that this country at that time wanted change. It wanted to see a new vision for this country a new way of doing things and a way forward. 
One year on despite the rhetoric of the Opposition the New Zealand public are seeing that change across the country. They are seeing a new dawn for this country and they are excited about what is happening. The focus of this Government is on the matters that count for New Zealanders not on the issues that we heard the Opposition talk about today such as the size of someone’s underwear the size of his pants or whether he should be a star in an advertisement. The public are concerned about the issues that matter to them: how we will get people into jobs and how we will raise wages. Those are the key points that they are concerned about. 
I am pleased to say that commentators across the country—even some of our staunchest critics—are now saying that yes the Government is getting on with the job and it is doing what it said it would do. 
Hon Damien O’Connor 
: Name one. 
CHRIS TREMAIN 
: We are keeping our promises. That is one of the things I am most proud of in this new Government. We are delivering on employment. 
I have been asked by the Opposition to name a number of the promises we are keeping. I am happy to take up that challenge not just once but on a number of occasions. In a global sense let us look at the 16900 youth opportunities that the Minister for Social Development and Employment has put into the market. 
What about the commencement of the Warm Up New Zealand: Heat Smart programme which is delivering over a 4-year period 180000 insulated homes into the New Zealand economy? That programme is delivering new jobs and warmer homes. What a great thing! What about the $7.5 billion that has been invested in new infrastructure? I have named just a few to answer the Opposition’s critique. Those are the bigger things. 
I would like to echo what Mr Heatley said in respect of some of the smaller things that are making a difference to New Zealanders’ lives. Mr Heatley talked about the 12-month programme of Herceptin for women with breast cancer. What about lifting the minimum wage from $12 to $12.50 per hour? Within a month of coming into Government we were there lifting the minimum wage for New Zealanders. That was something that surprised the Opposition. It could not believe it. 
We have also introduced teacher and doctor bonding and we have focused on small communities to make sure that teachers and doctors are brought into those communities. Eight hundred and thirty-four people have signed up to that programme—834. These are things that are delivering results. What about the 24-hour PlunketLine? That was a commitment we made—a small thing that makes a big difference to young parents with children. They know that when they get on the phone PlunketLine is there to support them and their children. That is guaranteed. 
What about the Community Response Fund? That is an “under-the-radar” sort of scheme that came about through the Ministry of Social Development and delivered $50000 for community groups that were struggling. I know that in my own community in Napier DOVE is one of a range of community groups that benefited from that programme. That small policy alone has allowed community groups to continue through one of the toughest recessions in a couple of generations to deliver the most urgently needed services to Kiwi families and to those on the breadline. That is the sign of a Government that is out there doing great things for our community. 
Some of the initiatives that are happening in the Hawke’s Bay are occurring on a provincial level. I know that all my colleagues here today can stand up and say that they have seen things happen in their provincial areas. Having been elected we have got on and delivered for this country in our first year. I am proud to say we are doing great things. Thank you. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 That was a very very interesting contribution from the member for Napier Chris Tremain. He was crowing about the National Government’s record in office after 1 year. He should be ashamed of himself. Hawke’s Bay has the highest regional unemployment of any region in the country at the moment. What is that member doing apart from “helping around the margins” with the rest of his colleagues to make a difference to those unemployed people in Hawke’s Bay? What about the fact that over 60000 young people are on the dole queues at the moment? About 25 percent of the unemployed are young people. 
Dr Cam Calder 
: We are working on addressing that! 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: That is a terrible record. Dr Calder should not make light of that. The really terrible thing is that we have the highest level of youth unemployment in this country since the 1990s. That is not something that anyone wants to hear members opposite crowing about when they talk about the record of the last year. 
Today I want to repeat some of what we have heard already about the shambolic handling of the emissions trading scheme by Nick Smith who is the Minister responsible for it. Members might want to recall what the Prime Minister said at the allocation of portfolios late last year. Mr Key said on that occasion that Nick Smith had “a brain the size of the South Island”. Well his management of the emissions trading scheme has gone from bad to worse and it has culminated in this $110 billion blunder that we found out about last week. Ministers were told about this on Tuesday and made no public comment about it. It fell to the Labour minority members on the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee to reveal the blunder to the public a week after Ministers themselves learnt about it. 
What is good about that record in terms of economic management? We are now told that the cost of Nick Smith’s changes to the emissions trading scheme in 2050 could be up to 16 percent of GDP on to the national debt—16 percent of GDP. That is a $92000 burden on hard-working Kiwi families every year. That is $44 extra a week that they will end up having to pay because Nick Smith and Treasury could not get the numbers right and not only could they not get the numbers right but they would not own up to it. They left it to the select committee to carry the can and make the announcement telling the public that the figures were wrong. 
What was the Prime Minister’s defence of his embattled Minister when we found out about this? It was to attack Treasury and to say “Never mind about Treasury’s numbers. Treasury can’t even work out what the deficit will be next year so we don’t have to worry about their long-term projections.” Well I ask members opposite who if we cannot believe Treasury modelling are we supposed to believe? Nick Smith’s dismissal of those Treasury figures as speculative because they look beyond the next 10 years should be a real worry for all New Zealanders. Responsible Governments like the Labour Government that was in office over the past 9 years plan ahead as far as they can. They do so for those big-ticket multi-generational programmes like superannuation like accident compensation and like health; they have to. 
Why is the Government ignoring Treasury advice on the cost of the emissions trading scheme? The reality is that the Government is simply running a diversion to cover for the fact that its emissions trading scheme changes will cost billions and billions of dollars in the years going forward. What do we get for this in terms of environmental outcomes? The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment an independent expert of this House was very clear. She told us in her evidence to the select committee that under the changes Nick Smith wants to this emissions trading scheme emissions from greenhouse gases will rise; they will not come down. We will pay billions and billions of dollars in order to see our greenhouse gas emissions as a country rise. What sort of a scheme is this Minster being allowed to foist on this country? The reality is that under National’s scheme taxpayers will be writing huge cheques to subsidise big polluters for years to come at the expense of education health and growing the economy. 
This is not the first time that Nick Smith has fumbled the numbers on climate change. He likes to pick and choose prices of carbon to suit his needs. When the Sign On campaign was in full swing he was using a carbon price of $200 a tonne because it suited him then. But when he was outlining the costs of the Government’s emissions trading scheme he used a carbon price of $100. In his Cabinet paper he was using $25 only to be caught out trying to hide a $110 billion subsidy. 
ALLAN PEACHEY (National—Tamaki) 
: 
 Twelve months ago tomorrow the dark deep gloom of socialism was lifted from New Zealand and life extended into 12 months of optimism of positivity and of growth. The reality is that New Zealand has entered a new era in its history an era in which New Zealanders understand that good moderate sensible government can make a difference to their lives. 
Out on the streets of Tamaki the electorate that I have the privilege to represent in this House the message is clear: “Thanks heavens for the change of Government! Now we can look forward to controlling more of our own incomes.” There has been $1 billion in tax cuts which have affected 1.5 million New Zealanders and their families. The importance of that is an acknowledgment by the National Government that people who earn the money know better how to spend it than a bunch of socialists who from time to time somehow find themselves in Government. The people in my electorate of Tamaki really appreciate that. They look forward to having more to come as this Government works steadily and honestly to get the economy under control. That is very very apparent out on the streets of the Tamaki electorate and in working-class suburbs like Glen Innes. 
Glen Innes is a suburb where 58 percent of the housing is still owned by the Housing New Zealand Corporation. There are people who generation after generation as National Governments have allowed them have purchased their State houses and become private home owners. The people of Tamaki are delighted and grateful to this Government that once again they will have the opportunity to purchase the State houses they live in and are raising their families in. On this side of the House the National Government believes in private home ownership. Why the socialists will not let them buy their own homes is beyond the understanding of the good people of the suburb of Glen Innes whom I represent. 
These are people who welcome the moves on law and order made by the current Government. For 9 long years they have had to sit back unsafe in their homes and watch the organised gangs control their streets watch the P houses trading up the street. Those are the houses that their children have to walk past every day to get to school. Now at long last a Government has stood up and said to the gangs that this will stop. There will be no more. 
These people have aspirations for their children that were not being met under the previous Labour Government. They have aspirations that their children should go to good schools and with this Government we are seeing interventions in schools including schools in my electorate that have been failing children. For 9 years the Labour Government preferred to make excuses and to make decisions in the interests of people in the education sector who were not the parents and who were not the children. The people in my electorate are now delighted— 
Dr Cam Calder 
: Relieved! 
ALLAN PEACHEY 
: —and relieved as my colleague says that a Government is finally doing something about the quality of schooling. They understand as this side of the House understands that the key to advancement is through good schooling. That is what this Government after 1 year in office is advancing. 
KEITH LOCKE (Green) 
: 
 A week ago on behalf of the Green Party I sent the Minister of Immigration Jonathan Coleman an email suggesting that New Zealand should help Australia to solve its boat people crisis. That crisis came to a head because of 78 Sri Lankan Tamil refugees on an Australian customs ship the  
Oceanic Viking 
 off the Indonesian island of Bintan who wanted to go to Australia. There was another group of Tamils on an Indonesian naval ship off Java. 
I proposed a repeat of what we did back in 2001 when we helped Australia by taking 131 Afghans who had been picked up out of the sea off Australia by the Norwegian boat the  
Tampa 
. New Zealand won plaudits for that humanitarian action. Over the years fair-minded Australians have said that it showed that our Government was more caring than theirs. Their previous Prime Minister John Howard used the  
Tampa 
 incident to whip up anti-refugee sentiment and win the 2001 election. Most New Zealanders are now proud of what we did in 2001 and proud of how well some of those Afghan refugees known as the  
Tampa 
 boys have done academically and in sport. 
Unfortunately Dr Coleman turned down my request to now take in some of the Tamil asylum seekers but he did say that the Governments of both Australia and New Zealand would “continue to keep closely in touch on the issues involved.” This leaves the door open for New Zealand to share the load with Australia in the spirit of ANZAC cooperation and be part of the solution. And why not? New Zealand is so far across the Tasman Sea that asylum seekers in their rickety boats never make it to our shores. We also now get very few people claiming asylum at our airports. The total number of such people for the whole of 2008-2009 was only 23 a tenth of what it was in the early 2000s. 
The Green Party just wants us to help. We do not particularly care whether these Tamil asylum seekers come in under the annual 750-person refugee quota as the  
Tampa 
 refugees did or are additional to that quota. There is certainly an argument for concentrating on Sri Lankan refugees at this time. The plight of the Tamil population in northern Sri Lanka is a dire one. In the aftermath of the civil war hundreds of thousands of Tamils are in detention camps in miserable conditions and they are not allowed to go home. A sense of hopelessness has set in among the Tamil population as their human rights are violated on a massive scale and they are told by the Sri Lankan Government to give up their dream for an autonomous Tamil administration in the north of the country. 
New Zealand can help to address this source of the refugee problem at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting later this month. Our Prime Minister should raise this issue as one requiring the urgent attention of the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group or CMAG as it is called which is tasked with upholding human rights in Commonwealth countries. The Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group has been very engaged with Fiji. It would be inconsistent to say the least for the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group not also to engage with the Sri Lankan crisis. The Rajapaksa Government in Sri Lanka needs to get the message that there will be serious consequences if it continues to violate the democratic principles of the Commonwealth as outlined in the Harare Commonwealth Declaration. 
When Dr Coleman announced that New Zealand would not take some of the Tamil asylum seekers from the  
Oceanic Viking 
 he said he did not want to reward queue-jumpers. The reality is that Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka today commonly cannot find a queue to sit in. They are not safe in Indonesia which has not signed the 1951 refugee convention and which is now talking about deporting some of the Tamils back to Sri Lanka. Mr Coleman can do three things now to help these desperate people on the boats: firstly he can ask Indonesia not to return Tamils to possible persecution in Sri Lanka; secondly he can ask Indonesia to allow the officials of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees access to all the people on the boats to determine who are genuine refugees; and thirdly he can indicate to Australia and Indonesia that New Zealand is open to taking a significant number of these United Nations High Commission for Refugees - endorsed refugees. 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 Twelve months ago tomorrow New Zealanders woke to a breath of fresh air in this country. They woke up and the sun was shining. It was like the lifting of the Iron Curtain or the first brick that was pulled out from the Berlin Wall. It was an end to being lectured an end to being looked down on an end to the repression and an end to a Government that had had enough of New Zealanders and had put its own issues and interests first. Thank goodness for that! 
In its place New Zealanders got John Key a new National Government and a breath of fresh air. They got fresh ideas integrity determination and absolute commitment. These are things that New Zealand had forgotten about. They are things New Zealanders had not witnessed for the last 9 years—9 lonely years of Government for Labour. Thank goodness Labour is now on the opposite side of this House in Opposition. 
I mentioned repression and being lectured but the last 12 months have seen action delivering on promises listening to New Zealanders and delivering for New Zealanders. What a lot of work we have seen in the last 12 months! There has been $1 billion of tax cuts for 1.5 million New Zealanders. What did Labour say? Labour said that it was not good enough. Labour said we should not be doing it; then it said we should be spending more. Labour said we were delivering tax cuts for the richest New Zealanders. 
Members will remember that we are in the deepest recession in 60 years. It started in New Zealand before any other country in the world. The previous Government saw in the recession for us a year before the Government was changed. 
There is extra funding for the front line. We have seen additional funding for health and education. We had better remind Labour members that they did not and still do not know that the front line means doctors nurses and teachers delivering for everyday New Zealanders and Kiwi battlers. Funding for the front line is about making sure that doctors and nurses are there in the hospitals doing what is needed to help New Zealanders in their time of need and it is about educators and teachers helping young children to read and write. 
The Opposition tells us that that is not important—that young kids in New Zealand do not need to know how to read and write and that everything was all right under the regime the Labour Government put in place. But the parents in the streets in our electorates are telling us that that is important to them. 
What else has the new Government done? There is $7.5 billion of infrastructure spending over the next 5 years. That means more roads more houses and more schools. It means broadband in urban and rural areas. I tell members that people in the rural areas of my electorate Rotorua such as the farmers cannot wait for us to deliver on that commitment to better broadband. That $7.5 billion of infrastructure spending means that New Zealand will be more competitive more productive and have a much better economy. 
That is what the National Government has done in the past year. Somebody came up to me in the street in Rotorua over the weekend and he said: “We may not agree with everything your Government is doing but at least you’re delivering on your promises and you’re doing exactly what you told us you would do.” He said he would find it hard to support a tired old party that had run out of ideas keeps recycling some of them and has lots of excuses but no new direction for New Zealand. He was talking about Labour. I cannot wait to get out on the campaign trail in 2 years’ time and campaign on our record and on the future—not about the past and all the things they have been hiding. 
One of the most important things we have done relates to law and order. During the campaign last year people told me that law and order was the biggest issue. Criminals are soft on crime and the Labour Government was soft on crime. I heard a story today. I heard that Phil Goff during the last election campaign was in prisons asking for votes. He was asking prisoners for votes. 
I find it hard to believe firstly that Phil Goff would stoop to such low levels and secondly that there are criminals out there who would believe the hype that Labour put out. Do members know what prisoners were telling Phil Goff? They said that they quite liked John Key and that he seemed to know what he was doing. They said that he wanted to put in place laws that would help people keep out of trouble when they are young and help them get back on the right path so that they would not fill up the prisons. 
But Labour members were soft on law and order and let me tell members where they were soft and why they were soft. We have delivered new powers to the police. Labour members said they did not like that and did not want it. I think they voted for it—but they said they did not like it and did not want it. 
Tougher penalties for organised crime and criminals is a good measure. Labour members did not like that measure and did not want to introduce it when they were in Government—but let us see what happened. Labour members voted for it. They tried to say it was their idea but they had 9 years to deliver on their ideas and what did we see? They were chucked out and then they voted for our bill. “Well done!” I say to Labour members. They are finally listening to New Zealanders and listening to the Government. We are also looking at tougher sentences for crime—another tough law and order message. 
DAVID GARRETT (ACT) 
: 
 Recently Mr Hone Harawira wrote an email spelling out how he feels about white people. The email’s contents are well known far and wide. But I want to talk not about Mr Harawira but about the role of the Race Relations Commissioner both in regard to that recent incident and in general. 
Mr Joris de Bres is quite sure about his role; he says his hands are tied. He says Mr Harawira is entitled to the fundamental right of freedom of speech and he was exercising that. I am inclined to agree with the commissioner on that point. However this raises the question of why we have a Race Relations Commissioner in the first place. Perhaps it is to intervene when someone says something that de Bres does not like because his belief in freedom of speech seems to be very selective. 
When Paul Holmes made a comment about a “cheeky darkie” a few years ago the commissioner was very quick to get involved. Holmes’ supposed freedom of speech on that occasion was less important than what he said. Holmes was forced to write a letter of apology to Kofi Annan—the target of his comment—among other touchy-feely “bridge-building” exercises. Holmes’ original public apology was deemed insincere by Mr de Bres so he was forced to make a better one. Members of the public will have made their own judgement regarding Mr Harawira’s apology and Mr de Bres’ claims that he cannot get involved. 
Perhaps we can find the explanation for this double standard in 2002. That was the year the commissioner gave a speech that described European colonisation of New Zealand as “a sorry litany of cultural vandalism”. He then went on to compare colonisation in New Zealand with the Taliban’s destruction of 3rd century Buddhist statues in Afghanistan. Did he apologise for any of that? Oh no! He refused to say sorry despite a massive public uproar. 
And he is not the only one. Such questionable behaviour has been seen before in his office. Mr Wally Hirsch an earlier Race Relations Conciliator as he then was was asked to act after activist Hana te Hemara told young Maori to “kill a white and become a hero”. Mr Hirsch’s reaction was to demand an apology from a Sunday 
newspaper 
for repeating those comments. All those characters are entitled like the rest of us to freedom of speech. The problem many people have is that taxpayers have been paying for people like Hirsch and de Bres to espouse these double standards for more than 20 years. So I return to my original question of why we need a Race Relations Commissioner. 
Race-based discrimination is already illegal; there are already mechanisms in place to deal with it. The most important mechanism though which is more powerful than any court of law or tribunal is the court of public opinion. The old saying that “sunlight is the best disinfectant” springs to mind. The public can recognise stupidity ignorance and prejudice and judge people accordingly. People will judge those of us here on the quality of the ideas we bring and the values we espouse and practise. When Holmes made his comments he lost a lot of public support. Mitsubishi withdrew its sponsorship from his TV show and he was tried by the public and found wanting. As an elected member of this House Mr Harawira will have to face the judgment of the electorate sooner or later as we all do in one way or another. 
But what about our Race Relations Commissioner? He is not elected by the people; his is a political appointment. He may have suffered a backlash for his Taliban comments but he is still there at the taxpayers’ expense blundering his way around exercising double standards and determining when free speech can be practised without penalty and when it cannot. It is absurd to pay someone to proclaim that racism is wrong. We all—at least most of us—know this already and have for a long time. Absurdity is one thing but sinister motives are altogether another. The evidence seems to be that not just this guy but race relations commissioners in general come with their own agendas. Harawira and de Bres like the rest of us are perfectly entitled to hold and express their views— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: I regret to advise the member that his time has expired. 
MOANA MACKEY (Labour) 
: 
 It has been a very telling general debate. We have had National member after National member getting up to brag about how great their first year in Government has been. We were treated once again to the always enjoyable court jester routine by the Minister of Housing Phil Heatley but not once did he mention why in an entire year of being Minister he has not done a single thing on affordable housing—apart from tell his department not to promote any of the programmes Labour put in place—so that he can hand money back to the Government to pay for its shambolic $110 billion emissions trading scheme blunder— 
Hon Member 
: And his electorate office. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: —and his electorate office. Chris Tremain went on about how great this Government has been but he did not mention the rising unemployment in his own area and the impact that that has on the people he represents. Allan Peachey still thinks he is fighting the Cold War and that it is his solemn civil duty to weed out the socialists but he did not say a single thing in his speech about the rising unemployment in his area. We had Todd McClay—and when he has to start quoting what an unnamed man on the street said to him we know it is made up I say with the greatest of respect. That member was not able to get the eastern arterial link for his area of Rotorua but he did not say anything about that and I know that his constituents are very unhappy about that. 
But I want to talk about the absolute shambles that the emissions trading scheme has been because it has been a very bad year for the Hon Nick Smith—a very bad year in Government. Other colleagues have talked about accident compensation; I want to talk about the emissions trading scheme because in my time in Parliament I have never seen such a disgraceful process as the process the emissions trading scheme amendment bill has gone through. Last night in the House Dr Wayne Mapp said it was “just an amendment bill.” Well it is an amendment bill that just shifts a $110 billion liability from polluters to taxpayers. Labour had a scheme whereby the polluter paid; we are now going to have a scheme under this National Government with the support of the Maori Party that pays the polluter. This scheme will actually pay polluters to increase their emissions when it is meant to be a scheme one would think that would reduce emissions. 
I know why John Key does not want to go to Copenhagen with Nick Smith. I want to point out that we have a copy of a cheque here: Greenpeace has raised the money through grassroots fundraising to send John Key to Copenhagen. My colleague Charles Chauvel will hold up an example of the boarding pass he can have. Members will notice that the seat number is 7A which is in business class and I note that Greenpeace has raised enough money to send him only one way. I think they will do the fundraising for the return trip while he is still over there. But I know why John Key does not want to go to Copenhagen with the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It is because he is embarrassed. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Point of order Paul Quinn. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Speaking of embarrassing! 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Order! 
Paul Quinn 
: I raise a point of order Mr Speaker. Can I refer— 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Excuse me. I am on my feet and have called order. The member will stop speaking thank you; I have called Paul Quinn on a point of order. 
Paul Quinn 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Can I refer you to Standing Order 108(1) and note that it is the member speaking who must use a visual aid and not any other member. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Rick Barker) 
: Although the member is technically correct as I understand it the member concerned had spoken with the Speaker prior to the debate and advised him of what she and her colleagues were intending to do. My advice from the member—and I accept the member’s word because we are all honourable members—is that the Speaker had said that that would be OK. I am not going to overturn the Speaker’s OK. I invite the member to continue. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Thank you Mr Assistant Speaker. Paul Quinn always focuses on the important issues at hand! 
As I was saying I know why John Key does not want to go to Copenhagen with the Hon Dr Nick Smith. It is because he is embarrassed. I think the Christchurch  
Press 
 editorial headline today sums it up: “Farcical”. That is what the Christchurch Press editorial said. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: About Paul Quinn? 
MOANA MACKEY 
: I am not talking about Paul Quinn any more; I am now talking about the emissions trading scheme. It was described as being farcical. The Labour Party agrees just as it agrees with the comments of the  
New Zealand Herald  
yesterday that this legislation is far too important to be put through such a disgraceful process—the kind of process we have seen at the Finance and Expenditure Committee where we spent barely 6 weeks on the bill. We finished hearing submissions but did not have time to go through a full departmental report and clause by clause analysis. We also did not have time to get a revision-tracked version of the bill. Why? Because Nick Smith wants to be able to go to Copenhagen and brag that he has passed legislation. 
Chris Tremain 
: This has a familiar ring to it. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Then I ask Mr Tremain why it is being forced through. 
Chris Tremain 
: It has a familiar ring to the first round of legislation which was passed by the Labour Party. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Oh great! Mr Tremain says this is familiar and goes back to the round of submissions that the previous Labour Government heard. But Labour when its legislation was going through spent 60 hours hearing submissions over 6 months! Under the National Government the select committee had 20 hours over 4 weeks. Chris Tremain complained about 60 hours over 6 months when we were in Government but suddenly now that he is in Government 20 hours over 4 weeks is an adequate amount for legislation that shifts $110 billion of liability on to the taxpayers of New Zealand. 
Todd McClay 
: We’re four times as efficient as you are. 
MOANA MACKEY 
: Do members know why Treasury made the mistake with the figures? That happened because Treasury was not given adequate time to do the analysis properly. It is absolutely incredible to see Government officials come along to a select committee and have to say that they have made a $50 billion mistake because of the completely unreasonable time pressures they were put under. What a shambles! 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA (National—Maungakiekie) 
: 
 It is a real privilege and an honour to make the last speech in this general debate. Many on our side of the Chamber have already alluded to the fact that it has been almost a year since our National Party became the Government. It is a real privilege because last November the people of New Zealand said: “We trust you.” We are hugely honoured to have been given that privilege to govern this country. The reason people said that they trusted us was that we have a leader in the Hon John Key who relates to the people of New Zealand. We have a party a set of members of Parliament and a party structure that listens to New Zealanders when we go out into our electorates. 
One of the first promises we made and followed through on before Christmas 2008 was a tax cut package that gave back to New Zealanders some of the money they had earned because we trust New Zealanders to spend their own money. The message from suburbs like Ellerslie and Onehunga is that people want to be trusted with their own money. There are hard-working New Zealanders out there who want to see the Government focus on Government services. 
As a Government we continued on with the retail banking guarantee— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: Who started that? 
PESETA SAM LOTU-IIGA 
:—which has allowed financial institutions both retails banks and finance companies—and the Hon Lianne Dalziel knows this—to lend to those businesses that require capital. So the business package reforms that we have put in place have allowed businesses to carry on employing people exporting goods and services and growing this economy. The National Government was endowed with an economy that had been in decline for the past 5 consecutive years in terms of exports. We came in and set up a package that was friendly to business and friendly to employees. 
We have put together a $7.5 billion infrastructure package which will improve State highways like State Highway 20 which runs through Onehunga. It will improve the traffic congestion and delays that we get in Auckland City and allow people to go about their business in a more effective and efficient way. That package includes I might add $30 million for the restoration of the Onehunga foreshore which is a joint Auckland City Council and central government project. It will beautify the suburb of Onehunga. The Government has provided a $500 million relief package to make life simpler for small businesses and we have reformed research and development. We did that because the people of New Zealand—businesses developers and those who want to get on with their lives—said to us: “We don’t want any more bureaucracy or red tape around consents.” Those consents include resource consents building consents and a whole raft of bureaucracies that were created by the previous Government. This Government was effective in bringing that reform into place. 
I am also reminded of my maiden speech when I stood in the House and reflected on what is important to New Zealanders. I reflected on the education system in this country and that the education system required a lot of work. It requires national standards which will improve the educational standards of our children and of our grandchildren. This Government made an announcement last week of a $523 million investment in education as part of that reform. 
The debate having concluded the motion lapsed. 
Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill 
Third Reading 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY (Labour—Palmerston North) 
: 
 I move  
That the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time 
. This bill has received broad support in its progress through the House and because of that broad support the Business Committee has seen fit to circumvent the Committee stage and go directly to the third reading. I thank the Business Committee for that decision which assists in getting the bill through the House. The bill is both on the face of it and in fact fairly technical and non-controversial but that is not to say it has been without some question and some controversy. I will address that issue in a moment. 
Just to go through the basics of what this bill is about I say firstly it provides for the transfer of the management and control of the land that comprises the Palmerston North Showgrounds from the Palmerston North Showgrounds Board of Control to the Palmerston North City Council. Secondly it allows for the dissolution of the Palmerston North Showgrounds Board of Control. Thirdly it repeals the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act 1974. This bill has basically come about because the organisers of the local A and P show no longer wish to use the Palmerston North Showgrounds. Indeed for some time they have not been using the showgrounds for that purpose. The A and P show has shifted over to Feilding and is now hosted at Manfeild Park and the organisers do a fantastic job of running it there. The Palmerston North Showgrounds are used for a whole host of other reasons. They are effectively being managed by the Palmerston North City Council and this bill simply certifies that position and brings it into law. 
There was one question mark over this bill and it has been sitting over it right from the start. It was initially raised and has been raised repeatedly by the Maori Party and is the question of Ngati Kauwhata’s Treaty claim and their concern that by passing this legislation the land comprising Palmerston North Showgrounds would become inaccessible and more difficult for them to make a claim on through the Treaty settlements process. 
I know this question taxed the Local Government and Environment Committee. The committee took it very seriously and looked very closely to see whether Ngati Kauwhata’s concerns were valid and there was anything that could be done to relieve their concerns. I know from the former chair of the committee Steve Chadwick that the committee took it very seriously and looked for some solutions. I know that the current select committee in this term chaired ably by Mr Auchinvole who is sitting across the House from me this afternoon also took the submission from Ngati Kauwhata very seriously. But the committee came to the conclusion that this change does not essentially make any change to the status of the land and therefore Ngati Kauwhata’s claim is in no way damaged. It does not really change the situation for them at all. Although I note that the Maori Party continues to voice Ngati Kauwhata’s concerns I hope that it will see that the select committee’s decision is appropriate and that Ngati Kauwhata will be able to continue in their Treaty claim process and get what they are seeking out of that. 
That is probably the most important point that needs to be addressed in relation to this bill. But it is worth noting something else that is going on relating to the Palmerston North Showgrounds. The showgrounds host all sorts of activities. Just this morning I was at a diabetes expo. People like the primary health organisations and non-governmental organisations that are involved in diabetes prevention were there offering their services and advice to people. We have basketball and volleyball facilities there. A number of concerts are hosted there. The Robertson Holden International Speedway is hosted there and that brings people from all across the North Island to Palmerston North on a regular basis. So the showgrounds serve an inordinate number of purposes but probably the best-known use and the one that the Palmerston North and Manawatu communities engage with the most involves our local provincial rugby team the Manawatu Turbos which has its home ground at Arena Manawatu the showgrounds. And there is— 
Hon Lianne Dalziel 
: I’m afraid I’m from another district. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: I have a colleague sitting next to me who says she is afraid she is from another district. 
Hon Member 
: She’s got only one eye. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: She does not have her eyepatch on today but that is OK. There are provinces in the country other than Canterbury I say to Ms Dalziel and I will talk about what is happening in my province: the fight to keep the Manawatu Turbos in the top division. 
Unfortunately for reasons that are lost on us in Palmerston North the New Zealand Rugby Union is looking at axing a number of teams and it seems as though our team is on the chopping block. I think we have been putting up a pretty sound argument against that. I will go into that briefly if I may with the indulgence of the House. One of the main concerns of the New Zealand Rugby Union has been about the financial stability of a number of unions and it is worth pointing out that the Manawatu Rugby Union is projected to be back in the black by the end of this year and forecasts healthy surpluses in the years to come. In fact the Manawatu Rugby Union has never been bailed out by the New Zealand Rugby Union and that is something that not all provinces can attest to. The Manawatu Rugby Union is proud of that and the New Zealand Rugby Union should note that. The second point is that weakening the game in the provinces weakens the game of rugby right across the country. The provinces are the grassroots for our All Blacks. They are where young people get their grounding in the game. If we do damage to the provincial rugby competition then we will do damage to rugby in our nation. 
We get great numbers coming along to the rugby; usually around 10000 people come along to watch our team. There is huge support for the Manawatu Turbos. It is common for around 10 percent of the local population to turn up for games. I do not think that even Christchurch can claim it has a higher percentage than that one. I think Wellington is quite good at getting people along to its games but Auckland certainly could not claim to get anything like that percentage. 
Hon Member 
: We’ve got other things to do. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: Sorry what was that? The member has other things to do? Well that member lost a football team because he could not get along to— 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: To Wellington. 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: Yes to Wellington. I will come back to that football team in a minute actually. 
The proposed new division one—the lower division—really does mean huge losses for the teams that will be dropped down because we will see the sponsors walk away. We will see our great players go. At least three Manawatu Turbos players have really shone this year and they have caught the attention of the Hurricanes’ selectors. I know that others are potentially in the draft to go to other Super 14 teams as well. We will lose those players. 
Paul Quinn 
: What’s this got to do with the bill? 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: It has everything to do with the bill because this happens at the Palmerston North Showgrounds I say to Mr Quinn. It is of serious concern to our community that we will lose our local players. 
Do members know what might just happen? The New Zealand Rugby Union needs to pay attention to this. Not so long ago our national football team had a sensational win: they got themselves to the World Cup. I can see a lot of youngsters getting interested in football. We have a sensational football team in Palmerston North as well: YoungHeart Manawatu. It is one of the powerhouses of the competition. I can see a lot of young people shifting away from rugby and paying more attention to football. Indeed the Phoenix—that Wellington football team—is coming up to play its first home game outside of Wellington at the Palmerston North Showgrounds on 12 December. It will be playing against Sydney FC. 
Hon Darren Hughes 
: Will the member be there? 
IAIN LEES-GALLOWAY 
: The member will be there. I think the message to the New Zealand Rugby Union is loud and clear. It needs to pay attention to the detriment and damage that it is doing to provincial rugby by making it clear that the union wants to axe the Manawatu Turbos from the competition. We have put a huge effort into getting our team into the right shape so that it can stay in there. Over $300000 has been raised to get the team into that position. That is an important point which I think needs to be made. 
Coming back to the bill I say in conclusion that I thank the parties who are supporting the bill. I thank the select committee and the chairs of the select committee for the work that they have done. I also thank the Palmerston North City Council and Ngati Kauwhata for their submissions and for taking the time to submit to the select committee. It is a great pleasure to see this bill in its final stage in the House. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 My compliments to Iain Lees-Galloway on a remarkably long speech on a very very short subject. It is interesting the way football keeps creeping into the bill. 
Hon Member 
: Rugby! 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Rugby football yes—one has to be particularly careful nowadays. I notice that National’s senior whip Mr Tremain spoke on rugby during the first reading so there is something that brings it about. 
It is with pleasure that I rise to speak in support of the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill. The bill was referred to the Local Government and Environment Committee and we returned it to the House with no amendments at all. However I will say that in returning the bill with no amendments it certainly does not mean that we did not give the matter our serious attention. It was not treated lightly at all; we were conscious of the local content of this sort of legislation so it was quite the reverse. The bill does three things: firstly it provides for the transfer of the management and control of the land that comprises the Palmerston North Showgrounds from the Palmerston North Showgrounds Board of Control to the Palmerston North City Council; secondly it allows for the dissolution of the Palmerston North Showgrounds Board of Control; and thirdly it repeals the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act 1974. 
There was only one particular issue the committee concentrated on and that was the question raised in the first reading by Te Ururoa Flavell relating to Ngati Kauwhata’s Treaty claims in the Palmerston North area. We checked through all the appropriate sources of legal information and we found that essentially the land as it is at the moment would be inaccessible to a claim. With the change that is proposed in this bill that status will not change so there was no issue there. 
Looking back over the first and second readings I note that the bill was introduced by the Hon Steve Maharey. As I mentioned the senior whip for National has spoken on it mentioning rugby as well as has the member for Rangitikei the Hon Simon Power. The bill is currently in the control of Iain Lees-Galloway the member for Palmerston North who is apparently looking forward to seeing what Palmerston North City Council staff will say to him when he goes back there because up until now they have been able to ask him how the bill is going. Well to assist it going rapidly I will call it a day at that. 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I rise to take a very short call on the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill. I stand in support of the bill for a number of reasons but first and foremost because it is a common-sense bill introduced by my colleague and friend Iain Lees-Galloway who has proven himself to be a very able and capable replacement for the Hon Steve Maharey. In fact it is good to see that Mr Lees-Galloway is in the process of once again turning Palmerston North into a Labour Party fortress. 
I will make one comment however on Mr Tremain’s general debate speech. He talked about the wonderful things that he had done for the provinces. Well Mr Tremain and the House will be disgusted to know that in fact unemployment in Hawke’s Bay is at the highest rate of any region in this country. In 2 years’ time Mr Tremain and the National Government will be called to account for that. 
I come back to the bill. Last time Mr Lees-Galloway spoke on this bill in its second reading he spoke about the Manawatu rugby team. He said that he was about to head across to my home town of Napier to watch the Manawatu Turbos play the Hawke’s Bay Magpies. This bill has gone very well for Mr Lees-Galloway. However something that must have caused him some difficulty is the fact that a couple of months ago he had to walk down the main street of Palmerston North—and no doubt around the showgrounds—wearing a Hawke’s Bay Magpies rugby jersey as a result of losing a most challenging bet when the Hawke’s Bay Magpies thrashed the Manawatu Turbos. Mr Assistant Speaker Barker as a former rugby player and a proud supporter of the Hawke’s Bay Magpies will appreciate the discomfort of losing such a bet. 
That aside and coming back to the point at hand this bill was first introduced into the House by the then member for Palmerston North Steve Maharey basically because the A and P show that had previously been held at the showgrounds had moved to Feilding. It is a pity that Mr Lees-Galloway is not the local member there as he would be a much more appropriate MP than the current offering. There is no doubt about that. In Feilding as those members who know the place as I do will know—my partner grew up there; lucky thing she has now seen the light and calls Hawke’s Bay home—there is a very large and suitable area called Manfeild Park where large shows can now be held. 
Feilding has won the award for the most well-kept and prettiest town in New Zealand 13 times. The reason for that of course is that Napier has not entered the contest because we in the Bay believe it is only fair to share these awards around. Most else that needs to be said on this bill has already been said a number of times. On that note I commend this bill to the House. 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I rise with pleasure to support the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill. It is right and proper that legislation should support the day-to-day reality that the Palmerston North City Council already owns the relevant land and most other assets and that the council staff have effectively taken over the day-to-day management of the showgrounds for the last 2 years. 
When the Local Government and Environment Committee received the bill it seemed a very straightforward bill a mere ratification of decisions made by the Palmerston North community. Simply put the Manawatu and West Coast Agricultural and Pastoral Association had disposed of its property to the Palmerston North City Council because it did not need it any longer for the show. There had already been a transfer of ownership back in 1974 through the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act. At that time the agricultural and pastoral association unable to finance desired improvements and additions to the showground facilities did a deal with the city council: the council could develop the land for recreation as long as it could be used for a specific number of days a year by the agricultural and pastoral association. 
Although we have evidence that the showgrounds property was first acquired on 1 June 1886 and was vested in the Manawatu and West Coast Agricultural and Pastoral Society Inc. by the Governor of the colony of New Zealand William F Drummond Jervois at Government House Wellington under the Public Reserves Act 1881 for the site of an agricultural and pastoral showground that is not the end of the story. Ngati Kauwhata challenged the legitimacy of the ownership claiming it to be part of their lands and Treaty claims. 
The select committee heard a submission from Ngati Kauwhata and sought further details from the original Government purchase. We discovered that in 1864 when the original block was purchased from the Rangitane people there was a local dispute over the ownership. So the select committee sought further information finally concluding that despite Ngati Kauwhata’s claim—even if it was successful for the Waitangi Tribunal—the Waitangi Tribunal would have no jurisdiction to recommend the return of the showgrounds. Therefore the select committee decided that this bill affects only the management and control of the land and its enactment will not result in prejudice to any Treaty claimants. We therefore all support the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill. 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 Arena Manawatu the venue at the heart of the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill hosted a massive 2064 events during the year an increase of 132 on the previous year. Yet in reports to the Palmerston North City Council’s Finance and Performance Committee just 2 days ago it was revealed that the organisation had an $85480 deficit in the financial year to the end of June. In comparable figures Arena Manawatu’s equity is now down from $99600 to just $14121. Apparently the deficit is due to the bad weather as nine speedway nights were affected by the weather with six cancelled outright and three transferred incurring low attendances. 
But there is another cost that drives us to oppose this legislation at this third and final reading of the bill and that is the cultural cost the community cost of neglecting and rejecting the relationships with key mana whenua throughout Manawatu. A significant submission received during the course of the Local Government and Environment Committee’s deliberation was that of Ngati Kauwhata. Ngati Kauwhata pointed out the disappointing reality that some 3 years on from the passage of the Manfeild Park Act the Crown is again enacting another Treaty breach against Ngati Kauwhata by means of this bill. One would have thought that a very basic assumption of Treaty justice would be that we would not seek to create fresh breaches on top of pre-existing claims. We recall that the submission that Ngati Kauwhata made on the Manfeild Park Bill included the request that representation for mana whenua be provided on the Manfeild Park Trust board. That did not happen. However Ngati Kauwhata continued with their quest for representation both at Manfeild Park and now in this case with the Palmerston North Showgrounds. 
I put to the House the simple question I raised at the first reading of this bill: what would be so wrong with receiving the request from Ngati Kauwhata with listening to and considering their point of view? What would be so wrong in letting Ngati Kauwhata be part of the governance structure? The reality is that there are many longstanding reasons for understanding that mana whenua are committed towards upholding their responsibilities as tangata whenua to protect the land and natural resources of their district. In the case of Ngati Kauwhata in order to be able to honour these duties and responsibilities there must be a clear understanding of the history of the people. It is a history in which Ngati Kauwhata has been marginalised from their lands and trapped in poor health to forever keep them dependent on the Crown as beneficiaries. We remember the well-established advice from my whanaunga and Ngati Kauwhata member Professor Mason Durie. Basically the lack of access to tribal land must be woven into explanations for the chronic poor health status of Maori. 
Ngati Kauwhata contend that the land in question is part of the Te Ahu-turanga Block taken from them by proclamation and is subject to two Waitangi Tribunal claims Wai 784 and Wai 972. Ngati Kauwhata did not sell interest in the Te Ahu-turanga Block. In their view it was taken by stealth and under devious purchasing practices by the Crown and its agents. At the select committee Ngati Kauwhata members were quite clear and they asked that the bill be delayed until the status of the land in respect of ownership can be determined. There are other reasons too. Various Treaty claims are ongoing including a new claim Wai 1461 regarding the Rangitikei-Manawatu Block. This is a conjoint claim between Ngati Kauwhata Ngati Raukawa and all of Nga Iwi o Te Reureu. 
The Maori Party continues to oppose legislation that will allow the Palmerston North City Council to take control of Arena Manawatu. We understand that the council has effectively managed Arena Manawatu in the past 2 years and that this bill is merely a formality but the adage that possession is nine-tenths of the law is not correct and possession of ownership does not make it right. The council in its defence has undertaken public consultation on the change and has received no submissions in opposition. However it does seem as though there have not been any specific efforts to engage iwi. The council advised that iwi-specific consultation is more on environmental and cultural matters rather than regarding strategic economic assets. The council’s submission to the select committee did not discuss any consultation that it may have had or not had with local iwi including Ngati Kauwhata. 
However one of the key assumptions made about the way this bill enacts with the heritage and research of Ngati Kauwhata is that they believe they have the right to at least have the land in question considered as part of their claim. In the end that is for the Waitangi Tribunal to investigate consider and determine not the select committee or this Parliament. We cannot in good faith support this bill. 
Dr CAM CALDER (National) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise and speak in support of the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill. It is a modest bill—small perhaps but perfectly formed. 
It has been known for me on occasions when speaking in the House to take the opportunity to lambaste the late unlamented Labour administration for year after year of supervised neglect perhaps suggesting that Labour members were legislative sybarites embracing a default position of lassitude languor and inaction. It is not my intention to do so today. 
This bill in fact reflects cooperation across the House with a sterling effort from the Hon Steve Maharey and an able picking-up of the ball by Iain Lees-Galloway. I acknowledge the hard work the latter has done to bring the bill to its final stage in the House. I acknowledge also the inspired chairmanship of the Local Government and Environment Committee by my colleague Chris Auchinvole. 
One of the other things I should say about the honourable member Mr Iain Lees-Galloway is that he is a very able member of the parliamentary rugby team. Unfortunately he was unable to make the recent trip to Rarotonga although I am sure he would have made an able contribution. But I am hopeful that in the years ahead he may perhaps arrange a rugby game on this particular ground because as we know everything will remain the same; it is just a matter of transferring ownership. I commend the bill to the House. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Palmerston North Showgrounds Act Repeal Bill be now read a third time. 
Ayes 117 
New Zealand National 58; New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; ACT New Zealand 5; Progressive 1; United Future 1. 
Noes 5 
Maori Party 5. 
Bill read a third time. 
Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill 
Second Reading 
BRENDON BURNS (Labour—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 I move  
That the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill be now read a second time 
. This is a private bill and it was my privilege to introduce it to the House on behalf of the Methodist Church of New Zealand which is centred in my electorate of Christchurch Central. That is home also to the mighty Crusaders and Canterbury rugby teams but unlike other members we do not need to dwell on their various glories. 
The Methodist Church as every member of this House will know is a very well-respected religious institution. It has had a very long and proud history here in New Zealand dating back to the earliest days of European settlement. It has a very strong role and purpose in our communities in terms of sharing resources and assisting the poor and the disadvantaged and that very proud tradition continues to this day with a wide range of services and interventions provided by the church. 
Over the years the Methodist Church has attracted a large number of benevolent contributions and some of these have been preserved in the form of trusts for charitable purposes. As a consequence of that long history the Methodist Church now holds some of those trusts for purposes that have become obsolete. Of particular relevance to this bill is that a large number of trusts have been held in the past for Methodist orphanages and children’s homes. The Methodist Church like all other churches now no longer undertakes the care of children and there are no such institutions still in operation. The amount of money held in trust is generally quite small and unfortunately it cannot be utilised for the purposes for which those trusts were established—hence the requirement for this bill. At the moment the only real alternative for variation to the purposes of those trusts is by way of application to the High Court which is an expensive lengthy and sometimes impractical way to deal with trusts and changes to trusts. 
The purpose of this bill is twofold. Firstly it provides an alternative process to the one under the Charitable Trusts Act of 1957 to vary charitable trusts in general held by the Methodist Church and secondly it widens the purposes of the children’s trusts to allow those trust funds to be used for the benefit of children in New Zealand. 
At this point I thank my colleagues on the Finance and Expenditure Committee under the chairmanship of Craig Foss. I am also grateful for the support we received from the Parliamentary Counsel Office and from the Ministry of Justice and indeed for the submissions received from the Public Trust and Trustees Executors. They were very helpful in terms of shaping this bill. The select committee gave the submissions considerable consideration. At times it seemed to take almost as much time as some of our more omnibus and sizable tax bills but I think we have ended up with a bill that we can all be relatively pleased with. 
I should note that a number of changes have been made to the bill as introduced. The original clause 12 specified that trusts for charitable purposes would be referred to the Attorney-General for his oversight and consideration but we considered that such specificity might exclude some church trusts. Our suggested recommendation then makes it clear that all schemes prepared under Part 2 relating to any church trust would have such oversight. In relation to trusts dealing with orphanages and children we are making some suggested changes to clause 18(1) in Part 3 as the clause applies to trusts funds and trust properties held for Methodist orphanages and children’s homes in New Zealand or for the care and welfare of children. The amendment we are suggesting removes any doubt as to whether the funds could in future be applied for non-charitable purposes. 
Perhaps the most contentious change that has been suggested by the Finance and Expenditure Committee relates to clause 21 which we suggest be removed and replaced by new clause 19A. This clause provides that if trustees of those trusts who have in the past been delegated to look after the interests of children by orphanages and other institutions are to be appointed or removed then that can happen only after consultation with those trustees. There was a view in the select committee that if clause 21 had proceeded as originally devised it may have given a rather unfettered power to the Methodist Church. That is perhaps not a very likely prospect; as I said in my introduction the Methodist Church is a very long-established church with a very proud history of service to the poor and needy in our community. But obviously legislation has to be framed in a way to make sure that any possible contingency has to be covered. 
Again I thank the Finance and Expenditure Committee for its support of this bill and its passage through the House. I ask the House to support the bill through this second reading and the bill’s remaining stages. I hope that the House is able to conclude the progress of this bill before a particular date in December which all good Methodists and other Christians will be celebrating. 
CRAIG FOSS (National—Tukituki) 
: 
 I take a very brief call on the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill. Picking up on the sentiment and words of the previous speaker Brendon Burns I say National will continue to support the bill. As members—particularly those on the Finance and Expenditure Committee—are aware we are very supportive of the intent of the bill on its way through the House. 
Members will note that the Finance and Expenditure Committee recommended a few changes to the bill under advice from the officials particularly those from the Ministry of Justice whom I acknowledge and thank. The previous speaker alluded to some of those changes regarding the definition of property—trust property at least—and we had an inquiry and discussion with the Attorney-General about some matters which members will know are picked up on in the commentary on the bill. We will obviously touch on that during the Committee stage. 
I quickly note a couple of points. This bill is quite different from a normal bill in that the select committee received it from the House on 6 May 2009 and the way in which we ask for submissions on a bill like this is that we ask for submissions from particularly affected parties: those that are listed as interested parties in the petition from the promoters of the bill. I congratulate the member on picking this bill up; I think Tim Barnett originally ran this bill. Is that correct? Yes it is. [ 
Interruption 
] OK I give my apologies there if that is incorrect. But anyway I congratulate the member on getting the bill through as far as this and I also congratulate the members of the committee who have helped to steer it through. They have raised some interesting points and have effected some amendments to better the bill. One point I would flag is that it was very interesting to note the support that the member opposite Brendon Burns had from his colleagues when the bill was finally deliberated on in our committee. 
On that note I say I look forward to this bill progressing through the House quite rapidly. I look forward hopefully to achieving the same date that the previous member alluded to. Thank you. 
Hon LUAMANUVAO WINNIE LABAN (Labour—Mana) 
: 
 Kia ora talofa lava and warm Pacific greetings. I am quite humbled and honoured to stand in this House to support my colleague Brendon Burns the MP for Christchurch Central who is sponsoring the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill and I am also pleased to speak to the bill’s second reading. The group that is critically important to this bill is the Methodist Church of New Zealand Te Haahi Weteriana o Aotearoa. I thank the Methodist Church which has been in place since the early 1820s. Just about every New Zealander is affected by church or the history of missionaries including those from the Methodist Church. 
This bill is quite visionary because it follows a precedent that has already been set with Catholics Anglicans and Presbyterians. The main aim of this bill is that where the original objects or purposes are now impossible or impractical or where it is inexpedient to carry them out we can remove that legal technicality so that we can carry on with the business in terms of supporting those most in need in our country and in our society. 
I also acknowledge the Methodist Church in terms of its commitment to Maori and also to Pacific people. All over the region the Methodist Church has contributed enormously to those countries and to those people when they are in need. 
We are very pleased with the Finance and Expenditure Committee. I thank its members so much for doing the great work they have done on this bill particularly to do with the amendments that my colleague Brendon Burns has alluded to. 
We really look forward to seeing the passage of this bill through the House. It will be a welcomed bill particularly by all the Methodists who comprise the fifth largest Christian church in New Zealand. I also acknowledge the wonderful contribution that they make to those in need. Thank you. 
AMY ADAMS (National—Selwyn) 
: 
 I am very happy to rise this afternoon and take a call on the second reading on the Methodist Church of New Zealand Trusts Bill. I echo the words of the speakers who have already spoken setting out that there appears to be broad support in the House for the bill. Certainly when the Finance and Expenditure Committee considered the bill there was very wide-ranging support for the bill from the outset and the time that the committee spent on the bill was very much as Mr Burns has said about making sure that the bill was in as good a legislative state as we could get it. No committee should ever take that matter lightly. No matter what support a bill has I think it is the duty of all of us to ensure that the laws we pass are as good and as correct as they can be. Although when we are dealing with an organisation like the Methodist Church we have no reason to fear its motives my view has always been that the legislation has to stand alone and we cannot give any law a free pass on the grounds of the particular people involved. 
From my perspective and from my background in trusts law I was particularly concerned in our work on this bill to ensure that we set the parameters correctly. As has been said already in this debate this bill was about ensuring that the church did not need to go through what would otherwise be the normal process for amending trusts. We recognised that this particular set of circumstances warranted the Methodist Church having a cleaner simpler cheaper way of tidying up some obsolete trusts. Given that we were providing it with effectively an easier path through than other trusts would have I think it was incumbent on us to ensure that we did not let that provision go too far and that appropriate safeguards were in place. 
As Mr Burns has already described we worked on a number of amendments in committee to ensure that was the case. We have talked about ensuring that all amendments under Part 2 would need to go before the Attorney-General. I think that provides an important check and balance to ensure that if there were any improper conduct there would be the potential for some oversight. The other important change that the committee recommended is about the appointment and removal of trustees. The width of the provision was the subject of some debate. I take responsibility for being the main proponent for requiring the change and my view was that the ability to appoint and remove trustees which goes right to the heart of controlled trusts and trusts law should only extend to the sorts of trusts that the church came before us to seek help in amending—that is the obsolete impractical out-of-date children and orphanages trusts that we all recognised it had a problem with. In terms of the way that the bill had been originally presented to us the concern was that it would give the church an unfettered ability to change trustees in any trust with which it had an involvement. I think that would cut across too many important principles of trust law and the rights of the settlors of those trusts when they were set up. 
We spent some time on it but I make no apology for that. I think it is important that we get these things right. I think we got to a very good result and I note that through this bill the Methodist Church has been brought into line by being given similar powers to those this House has already given to the Roman Catholics the Presbyterians and the Anglicans. It is certainly something this House has done before. That notwithstanding we looked at this bill on its merits and on its face. As I said I think the committee has done some very good work in ensuring the appropriate safeguards and checks and balances are in place. I think they are now. 
I conclude by saying that this bill always had our support in terms of the objectives it was trying to achieve. I think the committee has done excellent work in refining the detail of the legislation and I am very pleased to support it. 
Bill read a second time. 
Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill 
First Reading 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
 Tena koe Mr Deputy Speaker. He mihi nui ki te Whare Paremata. I am proud to introduce my very first bill the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill and I would like it to be referred at the appropriate time to the Local Government and Environment Committee. The bill has a clear purpose which is to regulate the import of timber and timber products at our border. Only products that are both legal and certified to be sustainable by a robust certification scheme will be accepted. Deforestation of the planet requires countries to do more than invent voluntary codes and labelling schemes. We must stop wasting time and must set up a regulatory framework before we have lost the rainforests and the other old growth trees of the world for ever. 
As we stand on the brink of the Copenhagen talks we have this opportunity to take a specific action to reduce world climate emissions by saving forests. The carbon storage capacity from these forests which are often described as the lungs of the world is vital to the whole of humanity. Daily forests are being logged and that land is then replanted as palm oil plantations. We are the customers for these unsustainable products from countries such as Malaysia Indonesia West Papua Papua New Guinea and Myanmar as well from the old growth forests from Tasmania and across Africa. Regulation can help us end a war against the natural world against the forest peoples and ultimately against ourselves. This could sound like an exaggeration but it is worth thinking about the 137 different species of plants animals and insects becoming extinct every day as a result of forest destruction. This collapse in biodiversity includes our remarkable second cousin the orang-utan of Borneo and Sarawak. It includes the colourful cassowary of West Papua and all those tiny unique unknown species that are lost as a direct result of our refusal to see the bloodstains on the barbecue furniture and decking in our very own backyards. 
But primarily I am motivated by the statistic that 60 million forest peoples globally depend on the forest for their survival. The forest is their entire world. It may not literally be genocide to cut down their forest but it is within a hair’s breadth. I came to understand the extent of this loss when I met a West Papuan woman who is now living in exile in Melbourne. Paula Makabory showed me recent pictures of the citizens of West Papua who had tried to resist illegal logging and who were macheted to death for their courage. As their kwila forests are devastated and sold into our retail outlets the people in the way who are standing up to the Indonesian military and the corporate forestry companies are literally risking death. In that country which is not far away no foreign journalists are allowed there is no International Movement of the Red Cross and the Red Crescent and people can be jailed for 15 years for raising the Morning Star which is the West Papuan flag. Illegal logging is steeped in blood and in phoney certification paper trails and we need to cut the link that fills the pockets of the people who are controlling the trade. 
One other exceptionally good reason for stopping this devastation is to help our own forestry industry which is undermined to the tune of $270 million per year by the effects of illegal and unsustainable logging. While cheap and nasty timber is widely available and can cross all borders our own bona fide products are undermined and can be seen as being expensive by comparison. There is a 2008 Cabinet paper based on research undertaken in 2007 to assess the economic impacts of illegal logging on our forestry producers. The total revenue by 2020 to the New Zealand forestry sector could be around US$178 million per year if cheap illegally logged wood products were removed from international markets. 
Not surprisingly this bill has the strong support of forestry organisations environmental groups and the tropical timber importers group. Those groups have a legitimate self-interest in ending this trade and in supporting good wood products. They include the New Zealand Forest Owners Association the Wood Processors Association of New Zealand the New Zealand Farm Forestry Association the New Zealand Pine Manufacturers the Forestry Industry Contractors Association the Douglas-fir Association the Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society Greenpeace the Environment and Conservation Organisations of New Zealand the World Wide Fund for Nature New Zealand and the Ecologic Foundation. 
But why legislate? Why not just educate the consumer the importer and the retailer? At this time it is extremely difficult for all these parties to even identify where timber products have come from. Trees logged in West Papua or Borneo may be processed in Viet Nam and marketed from China. How can we be sure without any border regulation where these items have been logged? A great deal of dedicated work has gone into educating retailers and consumers and I particularly commend groups such as the Indonesia Human Rights Committee the Green Party members the Auckland Rainforest Action Coalition and the leadership of the Ecologic Foundation—Guy Salmon—on these issues. I also commend the totally dedicated Wellington rainforest activists who have worked with me on the bill since it was drawn from the ballot. I have also been inspired by the campaign led by Russel Norman nearly 2 years ago that named and shamed the ANZ for investing in companies whose involvement with rainforest destruction is legendary. 
But my special thanks must go to a man who was born on the denuded Hauraki Plains and who has given so much of his life to forest protection in the Pacific. Grant Rosoman is a champion of robust forestry certification. Thanks to Grant and to Greenpeace forestry certification has stayed on the agenda through years of Government inaction and denial. Grant is the first to say that education is not enough. It has lifted the performance of companies such as the Warehouse and the BBQ Factory. It has led them to recognise that robust certification must meet the standards of the internationally rigorous Forest Stewardship Council certification scheme known as FSC but that is not enough. 
In the new schedule 11 proposed to be added to the Customs and Excise Act by clause 7 of this bill that scheme and other robust schemes would be listed so that customs officers can be sure that any product entering the country meets the schemes’ requirements. These requirements are that a product is ecologically economically socially and culturally sustainable and not something made up in the offices of dodgy corporate raiders. However if the timber outlets can start taking steps—and I have visited many of them and many of them I have congratulated on starting and they have expressed their confusion—we have to ask why the Parliament of New Zealand cannot help them out and save the rainforests. 
I acknowledge the support of the Maori Party and Labour on this matter. It is high time that we took action to protect the climate from change to protect biodiversity and to protect indigenous people’s rights as well as to protect our own forestry industry. As somebody with some vague political influence was once heard to say: “Yes we can.” 
I am asking everyone in this House to do the right thing tonight and to please support this bill. We need it to go to the select committee. We need it to be improved. We are not saying that this bill is perfect in its form; we are saying that we need to support our industry without the competition of the bloodstained trade. It is an opportunity for this House to do something that the consumer already wants. The Prime Minister already knows about it because more than 700 people through Greenpeace and through our e-card have been writing to him and to the Minister of Forestry about this issue. It is high time that people listened to this issue and stopped using excuses such as world trade. We already have opportunities under the World Trade Organization for acknowledging environmental issues so it is high time that something was done about this. 
I am horrified to see on the World Wide Web that one can still buy kwila that is not certificated and one can still buy mahogany and teak from Myanmar. We know for sure that most of this product is being logged at the point of a gun. We know for sure that what happens after the logging is the planting of palm plantations. We know for sure that we are colluding with this trade if we do not legislate. We cannot wait; we must take action now. I would not have been so motivated about this bill which I inherited from the Green Party if I had not met the people of West Papua whose lives are on the line while we sit here and decide whether we think it is possible that we might be brave enough to make a decision in favour of the climate and the people. It is high time that we took that stand. I ask members to please support this bill and to remember as Barack Obama said: “Yes we can.” Thank you. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 I rise on behalf of the National Party in opposition to the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill. It was interesting to listen to the member who has just resumed her seat Catherine Delahunty talk about the tragedy—and I agree entirely with her that it is a tragedy—of the clear-felling of indigenous rainforest on the scale that has taken place internationally. I absolutely agree that it is unsustainable and that it should not be allowed to continue. But to introduce a layer of compliance on our forestry sector the one sector that can help New Zealand with its greenhouse gas position is beyond comprehension. 
I say to the member who brought this bill to the House that when she uses terms like “the denuded Hauraki Plains” and in the same speech uses comments like “this is about the environment and the people” there is something that she is missing out of the equation in this debate. It is that the triple bottom line is just that; it is social economic and environmental considerations. If the Hauraki Plains were put back into native forest the economic production that comes out of that area would be missing from the equation and that would make New Zealand less sustainable. The export loss we would have from that area would be amazing. 
I have to ask the Green Party to be consistent in what it brings forward. I admire the fact that the Green members are champions of environmental debate and I think that is worthwhile in this Parliament. To farmers the concept that we should leave our land in better condition than we found it in is absolutely ingrained in us. I find it offensive that those who do not plant trees do not invest their capital and do not have an active role to play in environmental enhancement or sustainability and who have an urban lifestyle and enjoy all the trappings of urbanisation travel the world to conferences expending huge amounts of fossil fuels in doing so. Then when they come back to New Zealand they say to the foresters of New Zealand that they want them to meet a whole layer of compliance because they want to save the rainforests on the other side of the world. That is not the approach we should take. 
I say to Ms Delahunty and the Green Party that we have international agreements through the World Trade Organization (WTO). We do not use them as excuses; we negotiate each agreement. I was recently at a conference in Africa. If members want to see a place that is denuded and that could benefit enormously from some of the agricultural policies that we employ in New Zealand they should visit Tanzania. That is what I invite the member to do. I invite her to go and ask the people there what they think of the notion that further compliance should be placed on them to develop things like a forestry industry or an agricultural industry and then come back to me to tell me how that works. We negotiate within the WTO; that is not an excuse. I invite members to listen to the discussion at those conferences on issues of global climate change and economic change and on some of the tragedy of experiments that have been carried out there both by the West and by African Governments themselves. If they then come back and say the WTO process is not the process that we should be signed up to then I am sorry but we will have to agree to disagree. We should look at the tariffs that those countries pay to get their exports into wealthy Western nations. New Zealand is by and large successful—well above its weight—in its ability to export into some of those nations because we have always continued to carry the argument in support of free trade around the world sometimes at huge cost to ourselves. That is the best thing we can do for small undeveloped Third World countries and large continents like the African continent. 
We oppose this bill on that basis and I look forward to further debate as we move through this process. 
Hon MITA RIRINUI (Labour) 
: 
 Let me start by congratulating the Green member Catherine Delahunty on bringing the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill and its associated issues of illegal logging and associated trade to the attention of this House. The Labour Opposition will support the first reading of this bill. We are adamant that an issue like this should be discussed widely by a select committee and to that end we will be supporting it. 
I am not surprised at National’s position on this bill but I am stunned—flabbergasted actually—at the comments from the member who has just resumed his seat Shane Ardern. He presented some bizarre examples to the House in terms of Catherine Delahunty’s reference to internal matters. He referred to the Hauraki Plains and said that had there not been any development in that area it would have had an economic impact on that area. The bill that Catherine Delahunty introduced will not turn back the clock. If it could we might as well say that if it had not been for a meteor coming out of space and hitting the Earth we would still be talking to Jurassic creatures or dinosaurs. It is a bizarre example of what this bill is intended to do. 
I understand that the purpose of this bill is to make amendments to the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to prohibit the import into New Zealand of timber and wood products produced illegally and unsustainably. This is consistent with the position taken by the previous Labour-led Government in 2006 2007 and 2008. That position is still held by the Labour Opposition in 2009. 
The key elements of the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill are outlined in the explanatory note and the clause by clause analysis at the beginning of the bill. In particular two key clauses set out how the legislation would ensure that all wood products imported into New Zealand are sourced from sustainably managed forests. Clause 5 inserts two new sections into the Act. New section 54A makes it unlawful to import into New Zealand timber and wood products not certified under a new schedule 11. That is a very important matter for this House to consider and I hope that the select committee considers it very seriously. 
New section 54B provides that the Minister may add or omit certification schemes from the list in schedule 11. It also provides for the matters that the Minister must have regard to when making a recommendation by Order in Council for changes to schedule 11. 
This bill will be properly scrutinised by this House and carefully considered by the select committee. Should any Minister in the future decide that changes to schedule 11 are necessary then that particular Minister will have to undertake a thorough process before any changes can happen. 
Of course there are potential benefits in this bill to this country. For example it will confirm New Zealand’s position in terms of reinforcing the message that New Zealand will not support illegal logging that New Zealand supports producers and suppliers who are legally and sustainably producing wood products and the list just goes on. There are some practical difficulties and if I have time I will touch on those. But to continue with the potential benefits the bill provides exporters with the opportunity to have legal conformance labelling on exported wood products. It also provides a less resource-intensive type of regulatory approach because the point of intervention rests with the supplier. The industry has a stake in ensuring that it all works and that a system of regulation may occur. 
The bill also offers flexibility in terms of the implementation of the sustainable timber documentation approach and it allows changes to the regulations to be gazetted relatively easily. It is a very straightforward process. I do not see any reason why National members would have difficulty with these compliance requirements. 
In particular the bill does not discriminate against the country of origin. Often it is the case that the country of origin is not necessarily aware of illegal logging activities—and many countries deny that they are aware—but under this bill a country will not be discriminated against in any way shape or form whatsoever. 
The bill also reduces the likelihood that suppliers that are already verifying the legality of wood products will be undermined by other suppliers selling cheaper wood products that cannot be verified as being legally sourced. As members will understand the Labour Opposition is keen to support this bill’s referral to a select committee. 
COLIN KING (National—Kaikoura) 
: 
 As the previous speaker for the Government Shane Ardern mentioned we will not be supporting the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill for a number of reasons. To start with I draw to the House’s attention that over the last 150 years we as a nation have cleared the majority of our land. We have turned it into what is today primarily pastoral land which contributes massively to our country’s economy. It would also be worthwhile to mention that in about the year 2000 sustainable indigenous logging was stopped on the West Coast. As a consequence of that action we saw a perverse effect happen. We had to weather a flood of unsustainable forestry from other countries. There is no doubt that the Green member Catherine Delahunty has introduced this bill with a view to controlling that effect. So from that point of view this bill does come to the House with a noble sentiment but we do not believe that it is workable. 
In the present context this legislation would create immeasurable problems for those people who presently import forestry products. If it was to become law we would find that people would be subject to prosecution. On that basis the bill is lacking a transitional provision and that would need to be a serious part of any consideration. The main point that I make is that from the Government’s point of view it would be impossible presently to enforce this legislation if it became an Act because of the way that timber is traded as a commodity. It effectively goes from one country to another in a manufactured state. When we consider that this bill covers all wood products I do not find that it is possible to support this bill because we would not be able to enforce it. 
STUART NASH (Labour) 
: 
 I applaud Catherine Delahunty for introducing the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill. I think it is a great bill. I think it is a principled bill. It has a lot of real-world application. 
One of the main reasons I support this bill is the fact that the previous Labour Government did a lot of work around the issue. I will let the House know what the Labour caucus and the Labour Cabinet were doing with regard to this issue before Labour met its untimely election defeat. It will be only another 2 years before we are back; I think everyone knows that. The last Labour Cabinet invited the Minister of Forestry and the Minister of Trade to report to the Cabinet economic development committee by February 2008 on actions to address the sale in New Zealand of illegally sourced wood products. Given the linkages between international and domestic measures to address illegal logging and deforestation this report back was broader in scope to include the proposed international engagement. 
Our international engagement on forestry connects three components emerging in international forestry. If they had been acted on together the Labour Cabinet believed that had the potential to make a significant difference to the global environment and global wood markets. The components were reducing deforestation and forest degradation addressing the trade in illegal timber and wood products and capacity building and technology transfer for sustainable forest management in developing countries. Action on deforestation and capability building may prove to be the key in the long term. 
In the absence of action to address illegal logging global efforts to reduce deforestation and promote sustainable forest management are likely to continue to be undermined. When we are debating in this House an emissions trading bill I would have thought that every party in this House would support any measure that promoted sustainable forest management and reduced deforestation. 
The proposed approach to international engagement on illegal logging is part of the wider forestry strategy. That strategy includes engagement on and leadership in the development of international financial mechanisms for reducing deforestation in developing countries; active support and advocacy for regional and multinational solutions to address the trade in illegal wood products; ministerial-level bilateral engagement with key producer and consumer countries and in particular Australia; commissioning research to assess what further steps can be taken at a global level or by countries over and above current efforts to effectively address international trade in illegal wood; supporting efforts to have kwila listed under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora; and participating where appropriate in key multilateral fora addressing issues directly related to international logging and engagement with the wider New Zealand forestry sector—this includes the industry non-governmental organisations and Maori—to elicit their support and involvement both domestically and internationally in progressing this strategy. 
As members of this House will ascertain the Labour Cabinet was a long way down the road to addressing this issue and that is why I applaud Catherine Delahunty for this bill. It is a very good bill and it should be supported for a whole raft of reasons. For New Zealand a single species kwila is estimated to represent up to 80 percent of the illegally sourced wood products sold in New Zealand. Officials therefore evaluated a range of options to address the sale of illegally sourced kwila wood imported into this country. The Minister of Forestry sought Cabinet’s guidance on which domestic action or combination of actions it considered New Zealand should initiate to address the sale of illegally sourced kwila products. This action would be a consumer awareness campaign focusing on illegally logged kwila and the development of a voluntary pan-industry practice to encourage the verification of legally sourced kwila imports; and/or the mandatory labelling of all kwila products sold in New Zealand at point of sale requiring disclosure of wood species and whether the supplier has verification of the legality of the wood; and/or immediate ministerial-level bilateral engagement with key countries to develop bilateral mechanisms to prevent illegally logged kwila imports from entering New Zealand. 
This is a very good bill. It is a principled bill. It is a practical bill. As I said because of the emissions trading scheme and the global awareness around these sorts of issues everyone in the House should be supporting this bill. Labour definitely supports it. I support it as a past forester and I think the National Government should support it. My personal belief is that it would be foolish not to. I congratulate Catherine Delahunty and I thank her for a fine bill. Thank you. 
TE URUROA FLAVELL (Maori Party—Waiariki) 
: 
 Kia ora tatou katoa. Kia ora koe Mr Deputy Speaker. The Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill as other speakers have mentioned amends the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to prohibit the importation of illegally and unsustainably produced timber and wood products into Aotearoa. The sponsor of this bill Catherine Delahunty talked about doing the right thing tonight. When we think about the right thing the Maori Party knows that what is right is to keep our natural resources and environment healthy safe and intact for everyone and for future generations. 
Forestry of course is extremely important to Maori. Some estimates put total Maori forest interests at more than 1.2 million hectares. We have a unique interest in forestry within the distinct context of collective ownership and management. But we know also that the economic benefits of international trade agreements need to be balanced with the considerations of local regional and national progress and environmental enhancement. In thinking of the other values that might be useful in this debate tonight I think of the concept of our forest and the significance of it to our identity. We have many names in Maoridom that symbolise the importance of the forest to our identity ngaherehere nehenehe ngahengahe waonui and waoku. We treasure the forest for the scope of its beauties its spiritual presence and its bountiful supply of food medicines and weaving and building materials. 
We have been alarmed at the issue of illegal logging in the context of the value that we as Maori place on forestry. We share the views of indigenous peoples around the world that the tropical forests are critical to the survival and well-being of people all round the world. We appreciate that many people depend on the forest for food shelter income medicine and clean water so we are greatly concerned at the laundering of illegal timber from some parts of the world’s most endangered forests. The report  
Sharing the Blame: Global Consumption and China’s Role in Ancient Forest Destruction  
documents illegally logged timber particularly from the “Paradise Forests” of the Asia-Pacific region being shipped to China. When it gets there it is made into furniture floorings and plywood for domestic consumption and for export to satisfy the rising global demand for inexpensive wood products. 
This bill makes it illegal to import into Aotearoa timber and wood products that are not from a verified legal and certified sustainable source. We in the Maori Party support the move to establish a new schedule that lists verified legal and certified sustainable timber and wood production certification schemes. Finally we are aware that Greenpeace is urging China and the other 187 signatory nations to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity to protect the world’s last ancient forest by establishing a global network of protected forest areas to ban the trade in illegal and destructively logged wood products and to introduce a legally binding mechanism under the convention to combat illegal and destructive logging. We welcome that move and in light of that we welcome this bill and we support it to go through to the select committee to allow all of that discussion to proceed. Kia ora tatou. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 I am proud to rise to support the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill and to congratulate my colleague Catherine Delahunty on the huge amount of work she has done on this issue. It is one that has been important to the Green Party for many years. We have put a lot of work into it. We have tried to get previous Governments to take the action set out in this bill. We did get some engagement from the previous Labour Government but although there were some discussions and sympathy in the end it did not take any action either. That is why this bill is necessary. 
Let us be clear about what we are talking about here. New Zealanders as consumers are supporting the destruction of old-growth tropical forests home to a vast richness of huge trees luxuriant shrubs the remaining orang-utan and other mammals and invertebrates not yet even described by science. We have seen the pictures of the slaughter of 50 orang-utans a week in Indonesia. We cannot pretend as parliamentarians that we do not know what it is we are supporting. These forests are the lungs of the world producing our oxygen storing carbon holding soil together and cleaning the air and water that flows through them. They are the home of millions of forest peoples who depend on them for their food shelter medicines building materials and in fact for their whole sustenance. Those who are not killed in the deforestation end up living in urban slums where they are unlikely to survive and probably wish they had not. We are supporting their destruction by buying furniture and decking made from that timber that makes that logging economic. 
Often we are doing it without knowing. We are buying kwila ramin yellow balau Asian mahogany and Burmese teak which used to be the home of countless people and endangered wildlife. We are supporting the destruction of these forests by providing a market for the palm oil grown in place of these forests. We have just persuaded Cadbury’s to stop using it in chocolate but there are countless other food-related uses and there is nothing stopping it coming into the country being made into bio-diesel and getting a Government subsidy. The Greens have a bill at a select committee to set some standards around that. 
We are supporting these forests’ destruction by providing the main world market for palm kernel expeller the solids left when the oil is extracted and we are using that to make our dairy industry more and more unsustainable. My colleague Kevin Hague has demonstrated that there are severe biosecurity risks for New Zealand in that practice. 
Let us be clear: those who are speaking and voting against this bill tonight propose that we should go on doing all those things. They are voting for accelerated climate change because 20 percent of that is now coming from the destruction of old-growth forests. They cannot be put back. Once they are gone they are gone for ever—for eternity. 
Let us look at the rather pathetic arguments that have been raised tonight such as compliance costs for foresters. This bill places absolutely no compliance costs whatever on foresters. It does not require New Zealand foresters to do anything; it simply prevents these products from coming into New Zealand. Of course the Government is concerned that under the World Trade Organization this might be an interference in free trade. So are we in favour of free trade in blood? Two-thirds of our forestry industry is already certified sustainable; the rest could get there very easily. 
I take offence at the suggestion from Shane Ardern that we in the Greens are urban people who have never planted a tree. I have planted thousands of trees along with the natives I have watered and released and the timber trees I have thinned and pruned. It is an insult to suggest that we do not have practical experience of what we are talking about. 
Those members talked of difficulties for importers. I ask how that compares with the people who are losing their lives and their homes. We have beautiful timbers growing sustainably in this country. We stopped logging our own native forests and we have a range of other species that are fit for beautiful furniture and decking but those who are voting against this bill want to see those New Zealand businesses undercut by imports of tropical timber because it is always cheaper to get timber that one did not have to plant and where there are no rules about how to treat the local people or about what happens to the wildlife the soil and the water. 
SANDRA GOUDIE (National—Coromandel) 
: 
 I am delighted to get up and speak on the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill. I fully endorse all the comments made by my most learned colleague Shane Ardern. Mind you perhaps the bit about Jeanette and the Greens planting trees might have been a bit off the mark. But he was absolutely right when he said this bill is about trade. Here we have a bill that is just about timber but it is about timber that is growing in another country. We cannot isolate out the fact that whatever importers bring into this country is part of our trade between nations. We cannot isolate out an item like timber to the degree that this bill does without having some effect on our trade negotiations with other countries. For that reason I think it is very sound to take the position not to support this bill. 
The bill covers both raw and processed products so we are talking about a huge range of products. This bill talks about trade with another country and before we start to go down that track we have to talk to that country first. Once we start to do that with regard to timber another country might say it will do the same to us with regard to another product and it would start to escalate— 
Stuart Nash 
: You’ve missed the point! 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: No this is not about missing the point. We are not allowed to sustainably log our own native timbers even though that could be done. This bill is to make amendments to the Customs and Excise Act—I understand that—to prohibit certain imports into New Zealand. Imports are products that are traded from another nation into ours. 
Stuart Nash 
: For 8 years? 
SANDRA GOUDIE 
: If they are not I fail to understand that member—this is nuts. 
I think it is absolutely marvellous that we have taken a pretty sound position. We can justify that position quite well. Shane Ardern did that so I will leave it there. 
CATHERINE DELAHUNTY (Green) 
: 
 I really was fascinated by the responses to my bill the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill and also by the strange description of me and Jeanette—who have spent most of our adult lives living in rural areas working on farms supporting farming working with forestry and planting hundreds of trees—as if we have absolutely no idea of how the rural economy functions nor of the importance of looking after our land. As Sandra knows having spent 10 years working in a shearing gang and planting many different trees I have a great passion for forests—forests with justice. This is not a light matter. It is not a matter of debating who in this House understands it best; it is a matter of understanding what is going on in the world and taking this country’s responsibility on illegal logging seriously. 
I thank Mita Ririnui Te Ururoa Flavell Stuart Nash and Jeanette Fitzsimons for their constructive comments on what is a very very serious matter. In my meetings with the current Minister of Forestry he conceded that voluntary efforts are not working to control illegal and unsustainable wood products. So doing nothing is not an option unless we want to collude with basic and well-documented vandalism. Even the rules of the World Trade Organization acknowledge that there are environmental reasons for regulation in specific instances so there is no need for National to panic about having no ability to negotiate this. For example when dolphins are found in tuna nets or rainforests lie in the path of bulldozers it is possible even under that Draconian institution to negotiate environmental protection. 
It just takes some leadership to identify that this is an opportunity to help our own industry. Far from being something that our forestry industry rejects the industry has written to the Minister. In my previous speech I listed the names of the foresters and the forestry organisations alongside the environmental ones that stood up and said to the Minister that it was time to do something. The importers of tropical timber asked the Minister to support my bill; it is not as if the Green Party is in isolation or asking for something outside the agenda of the forestry industry. The forestry industry wants this bill because it will benefit New Zealand forestry. 
The bill as defined is not perfect. In order to improve it I urge members to send it to the select committee where work can be done to make it more practical and workable. In terms of international best practice a number of countries are working to regulate illegal and unsustainable tropical timber. These include the United States where the Lacey Act bans the sale of illegal and unsustainable timber within the United States and the European Union where a number of countries are working on bilateral agreements with timber-producing nations. 
This effort of the Green Party may not appear significant and I am aware that the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry thinks it could impose compliance costs on our own timber. But Jeannette Fitzsimons asks members to read the fine print of the bill where they will find nothing that actually disadvantages our own industry—nor does our own industry think that anything in there does. I believe that the bill could be modified at the select committee to negotiate a way through the compliance issues within Aotearoa New Zealand. 
As Jeanette also said our forestry industry is embracing the opportunity for there to be robust certification. Other speakers have mentioned that it is obviously important to be able to demonstrate certification in the world market and the countries we trade with that make up lie about and distort what is going on in their own timber industries should not be colluded with in the name of trade. We stand for fair trade and we stand for trade without blood on its hands. Ultimately all timber products need to meet a robust standard in order to stabilise the climate protect biodiversity support our forestry industry and—most of all—protect the people who still live as one with the forests. Their human rights are on our conscience and their relationship with the forest holds a line that we should resolutely uphold for the sake of us all. I have been privileged in the last few months to talk to the forest peoples and they are watching tonight to see whether members of this Parliament have the courage of their convictions; some of us do. Kia ora. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Customs and Excise (Sustainable Forestry) Amendment Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Noes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Motion not agreed to. 
Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill 
First Reading 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill be now read a first time. 
 This bill is a climate change bill. It is about making some small progress on reducing New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and it is about the Government providing a small amount of leadership on reducing emissions from the Government’s vehicle fleet. 
There has been a lot of misconception about climate change. One of the things that I think is the hardest for people to get their heads around is the effect of climate change in 2100 because 2100 seems a long time away. Yet if the children who have been born today—and there were lots of them—live to be 91 years old they will be alive in 2100 so the actions we take today will affect the lives of children who were born today. In fact the longevity of greenhouse emissions—in particular carbon dioxide emissions which have increased dramatically from New Zealand over the last 15 years—means that they will affect not only children born today but children born for many generations to come. 
If we do not take action now to reduce emissions both in New Zealand and globally then we will be stuck particularly with the carbon dioxide emissions for generations and generations to come. There are those who say that the cost of reducing emissions is too high. If we were to take one of the most pessimistic views about the cost of reducing emissions which would be that it might cost say 1 percent of GDP by mid-century then we need to put that in context. By mid-century the New Zealand economy might grow by say 40 percent or 42 percent of GDP. If the most pessimistic projections around the cost of climate change emissions are true it will mean that the New Zealand economy instead of growing by 42 percent of GDP by 2050 will grow by only 41 percent. That would be the cost of our taking action to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions under the most pessimistic scenario of the cost of cutting emissions. 
So when people say that the cost of reducing emissions is so expensive and that it might cost say 1 percent of GDP what they mean is that instead of 42 percent per capita GDP growth by mid-century we might have only 41 percent per capita GDP growth by mid-century. In this debate about the future of the planet and about the kind of world our children—in fact the children born today—will inherit I think it is very very important that we put the costs into perspective. I think that in this debate around the emissions trading scheme and elsewhere the cost of taking action on climate change is over and over again completely exaggerated. 
The Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill is a very modest bill. It aims to decrease the emission of greenhouse gases by requiring the State sector to purchase or lease only those passenger vehicles that are energy efficient through having a better than average emissions performance of 170 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre or approximately 7 litres of petrol per 100 kilometres which is the same efficiency standard that is set out in the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy of 2007 for the New Zealand fleet as a whole. Measuring fuel economy in terms of carbon dioxide rather than mileage has many advantages as it makes no prescription concerning fuel or technologies so we will stick to measuring fuel economy like that. So it is a very modest proposal whereby the State sector must purchase or lease only passenger vehicles that can reach 7 litres per 100 kilometres or 170 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. 
Transport produces 20 percent of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and has been the fastest rising source. It is one of the main areas in which we can improve environmental sustainability. The bill targets the low-hanging fruit of economy-wide emissions reductions. It does not address the broader issue of the investment in roads. We have seen a kind of road obsession over the last 15 years in New Zealand as Government after Government has prioritised spending on new motorways rather than on public transport walking and cycling which would actually produce the mode shift that is required to reduce emissions. 
This bill very modestly targets one part of the vehicle fleet and the fuel efficiency of that fleet by requiring the Government to run an energy-efficient Government fleet. It seems to me to be a very modest bill. The  
Current Government Fleet and Procurement Practice  
report of 2006 found that “except for the district health boards there is significant potential to reduce vehicle size across the fleet”. The current average emissions performance is 210 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre or 9.2 litres per 100 kilometres—that is the current average emissions performance is quite poor. This bill seeks to achieve a modest 20 percent improvement in carbon dioxide emissions over time. That is a saving of approximately 22400 tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum across the Government fleet of 21000 vehicles. 
This bill is a very small start but start we must. Some Government departments are already demonstrating leadership in this area. District health boards lead the way with fleets of small-engined highly efficient cars—the Toyota Echo and the Honda Jazz amongst others—to enable their staff to do their work. Other departments are not doing as much. Their fleets are full of the large-engined Ford Falcon and Nissan Maxima amongst others to achieve the same purpose—moving one person on average 40 to 80 kilometres per day. 
These significant potential emission and fuel savings do not come at the cost of flexibility in purchasing decisions. This bill is an extremely practical bill that provides specifically for exemptions for special needs. Within the bill there are exemptions for vehicles used by firefighters the ambulance service the Defence Force and the Department of Conservation. Those special-purpose vehicles will not be required to meet these fuel-efficiency standards. 
This bill targets the low-hanging fruit of emissions reductions—our vehicle fleet. It is about the Government taking small practical steps to reduce emissions which in turn will influence corporate fleet-buying decisions and ultimately private vehicle ownership. It is about creating a culture of change in our car-buying habits starting with the Government’s fleet of 21000 vehicles. 
New Zealand’s light motor vehicles use on average over 10 litres of fuel to travel 100 kilometres. That is 210 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. By comparison the EU fleet is currently at 170 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre on average and has notified a standard of 130 grams to be achieved by 2015. 
The situation in New Zealand is not getting better. Although technology is improving the vehicles coming into the country are getting bigger and their carbon emissions are increasing. New vehicles entering our country are more fuel consuming than second-hand ones which is an extraordinary fact. 
The International Energy Agency recently warned member Governments that there will be a serious oil supply crunch in 2015 and a peak in oil production around 2020 both of which will occur in the lifetime of any new vehicles purchased today. Rapidly rising oil prices are just around the corner so it makes sense to ensure that we buy the most efficient vehicles now to save the taxpayer from a fast-growing fuel bill in the future. Using the best car for the job will save taxpayers at least $30 million a year in fuel costs. 
This bill uses standards to drive efficiency gains and desirable economic outcomes without compromising the flexibility of Government departments to buy vehicles that are fit for purpose. We need to use the right combination of market signals standards and regulations to achieve the very best outcome from our market economy. We need to use vehicle efficiency standards. 
This bill is to be referred to the Transport and Industrial Relations Committee which I think is the best place for it. So far we have received support for this bill from the Labour Party and the Maori Party which I appreciate. I hope that the other parties will support this bill. It is a very small practical step towards achieving our climate change goals and towards the Government providing a small amount of leadership on climate change reduction. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE (National—West Coast - Tasman) 
: 
 The Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill aims to decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases by requiring the State sector to purchase or lease only energy-efficient passenger vehicles. The bill proposes that all passenger vehicles—vehicles designed to carry six or fewer people—purchased or leased by State sector organisations must be greenhouse gas emissions efficient emit no more than 170 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre and be amongst the top 10 percent for fuel efficiency in their class. The purpose is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions both from State sector vehicles and from elsewhere in the New Zealand transport sector. 
National opposes this bill while nonetheless recognising the worthy sentiments as did the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment in her commentary on the Biofuel Bill which is currently before the Local Government and Environment Committee. However the worthiness of this bill including recognition of the changes that are proposed falls short of the requirement to do the job. Although the bill contains worthy sentiments it potentially would impose high costs on the State sector and be impractical to implement. We accept that transport is a major contributor to New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions and is one of the main areas that we can move on but we do not feel that this bill is the way to do it. The reporting requirements in the bill may be onerous and would need to be clarified substantially. 
It is not clear that sufficient vehicles exist to meet the practical needs of the purchaser whilst complying with the carbon dioxide requirements of the bill. There are relatively few vehicles in the top 10 percent band and the bill could reduce purchase choices to one or two vehicles. In reading through the bill this afternoon I recognised that clause 7(2) allows for exceptions and it lists them as applying to law enforcement vehicles conservation vehicles and emergency services vehicles but I suggest that the topography of some regions such as my own electorate of West Coast - Tasman which I have the great privilege of serving requires consideration beyond simply regulation. It requires consideration of what the vehicle requirements might be for the topography and the terrain. 
The bill does not take into account other important considerations such as the safety of passengers or pedestrians. The bill’s prescriptive regulatory approach is not consistent with the Government’s statement on regulation or the Bluegreens’ vision on managing traffic impacts by using incentives to ensure that transport choices are priced to reflect their true impacts. We feel that legislation is not needed in order for State sector organisations to adopt the vehicle procurement policies suggested in the bill. It does not require a fixed piece of legislation. National does not believe that the legislation is the appropriate way to determine Government procurement policy. 
At the last election if I just might reflect the requirement from people was for change. This bill takes us back to the way that Labour did things and it is a disappointment. Major improvements have been made in Government vehicle procurement practices since the 2006 report that Russel Norman referred to. In 2007 the Government fleet procurement guidelines were introduced which stated: “Public Service departments must: require that tenderers submit fuel economy information in their responses and to include fuel economy as a criterion in tender evaluations for all new tender exercises for vehicles to be purchased leased or hired.” National is already putting in place policies to encourage a reduction in emissions from the transport sector and our approach to reducing emissions from the transport sector is through the New Zealand emissions trading scheme. 
Sitting suspended from 6 p.m. to 7.30 p.m. 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: To continue— 
Grant Robertson 
: Why? 
CHRIS AUCHINVOLE 
: Well because I think it is important that we explain to the House that we recognise the sentiment of this bill. I have recognised the merits of it throughout my speech; we just do not think that legislation is the way to go. My colleague Charles Chauvel will probably speak next and I know that he too has an aversion to this Stalinist sort of thinking. We will be making something against the law when it is not necessary. Prior to the dinner break we debated the fact that there are ways of achieving regulation without legislation. We are talking about Government procurement. We recognise the influence that Government has—it is a big purchaser—but we also feel that incentives are a better way to go than making obligations through the law which was the sort of thinking that occurred before the present National Government. 
We are doing quite a lot. We are putting in place policies to encourage a reduction in emissions from the transport sector. Our approach to reducing emissions from the transport sector is to use the New Zealand emissions trading scheme which will expose transport fuel to a price on carbon from July 2010. We have invested $36 million into a bio-diesel grants programme to promote bio-diesel production and kickstart the biofuels industry and it started on 1 July. The new policy provides the sustainable bio-diesel and ethanol industry with the same incentives and encourages it to maximise that opportunity. We have also moved to exempt electric vehicles from road-user charges as of 1 October 2009 in order to encourage their uptake. We are also—wait for this bit—investing in rail with $39.2 million allocated to upgrading passenger carriages on the Tranz Scenic route. As one who has the wonderful experience of that train passing my house in Moana twice a day I can say that the carriages certainly need upgrading in order to reach the level of scenic beauty that the train travels through. That work is being done at the Hillside workshops in Dunedin so it is providing a local benefit. Another $75 million is being spent on 20 locomotives that are being built in China. A major upgrade of the Auckland rail network including double tracking and electrification is costing $1.6 billion and we are providing more than $258 million for the Wellington commuter network. 
We on this side of the House believe that people change their environmental practices for the better when there are sensible incentives to do so. We are quite determined that this is the way that Government policy will work. The explanatory note states that: “The cost and emissions savings obtainable from the Government fleet are worthwhile but the real value of a Government commitment to purchasing fuel efficient vehicles is the potential influence on purchasing decisions for company fleets and in due course vehicles owned by private individuals.” and although we respect that we feel that incentives can do that rather than legislation. This legislation would restrict State sector organisations to purchasing or leasing passenger vehicles with an emissions performance better than 170 grams per kilometre of carbon dioxide unless those vehicles are wholly or partly used for certain law enforcement conservation or emergency purposes. As discussed before the dinner break that does not take into account the topography of certain parts of the country notably West Coast - Tasman. All sorts of unforeseen circumstances could occur as a consequence of this legislation so from that point of view alone National will not support this bill. We oppose it. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I am delighted to speak in support of the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill. I offer my congratulations to Dr Kennedy Graham and Russel Norman on putting forward this measure. 
Given the size of the wider State sector proportionate to the New Zealand economy—it is about one-third in overall terms—it is a very good move for the Government and the State sector to show some leadership across areas of society. Transport is an excellent place to start. We need to decrease the emission of greenhouse gases and requiring the State sector to purchase or lease only energy-efficient passenger vehicles is an excellent way to start that. It is good to see a bill that would require such vehicles to have a better than average emissions performance of 170 grams per kilometre of carbon dioxide which is basically as we heard from Dr Norman the same efficiency standard set out in the New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy 2007 for the New Zealand vehicle fleet as a whole. 
The reality is that emissions from the transport sector are our second-largest contributor to the greenhouse gas problem and they are growing—20 percent of our total emissions come from this sector. In 2007-08 the Labour Government came up with a suite of measures to deal with our emissions problem. I will take a moment to reiterate those measures because we regularly hear from members opposite the Crosby/Textor spin that Labour did nothing in this area. Well let us remember the facts for a change. The New Zealand Energy Strategy set out a very clear pathway towards a 90 percent renewable energy generation target for baseload generation by 2025. It set out a very clear pathway over a number of years to get to that goal. 
Shane Ardern 
: How well were we going on it? 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: We were going very well on it. Well we would be going really well if Mr Ardern’s Government had not under urgency last year repealed the strategy and got rid of the target which was a key part of getting to where we need to go in respect of energy emissions. We had the  
New Zealand Transport Strategy 
 on which I will speak more in a moment. Then we had the New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy. And of course the emissions trading scheme was legislated into being in September last year. Unlike the scheme we are seeing emerge from the interesting negotiations between National and the Maori Party that scheme actually would have been fit for purpose. 
What has happened since? As I said in response to an interjection from Mr Ardern the New Zealand Energy Strategy was effectively repealed in respect of the 90 percent renewables target. The emissions trading scheme has been gutted. What has happened to the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy? It was just scrapped one day. There was a notice in the  
New Zealand Herald  
from Mr Brownlee the Minister of Energy and Resources. We do not have an Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy any longer. 
All that is left of that suite of measures is the  
New Zealand Transport Strategy 
. It is useful to recall the elements of that strategy. It sets out an overall target of reducing transport emissions—which as I said before cause 20 percent of our emissions and are growing—by 50 percent by 2040. How would we to do this? Firstly we would invest in rail and secondly we would invest in coastal shipping. Those two areas are absolutely key in terms of getting big amounts of freight off roads; we know how destructive it is to roads to transport huge amounts of freight on them. We would have had the biofuels obligation but that has been repealed and instead $36 million of our scarce resources is to be spent promoting biofuels. We would have had a massive increase in public transport investment—ten times what was being spent in 1999—and would have supported electric vehicles. That is how we would have got there. 
This bill contains the sort of complementary measure that we ought to see being put in place under the  
New Zealand Transport Strategy 
. The criticisms of it that we have heard from members opposite are completely invalid. It is a pleasure to express the Labour Party’s support of this measure. What a shame that the comprehensive and sensible suite of policies that was put in place by the last Government is not still in place! 
NICKY WAGNER (National) 
: 
 I really support the principles behind the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill. I absolutely agree that transport is a major contributor to New Zealand greenhouse gas emissions. That is an area of focus for all of us. 
The problem with this bill is that it is just another layer of legislation another layer of expensive bureaucracy and another layer of red tape. It is a classic Green Party response to any problem: legislate legislate and legislate again—add some more rules add some more red tape and add some bureaucracy. I have a lot more faith in the people of New Zealand to make intelligent choices about transport and to do the right thing than the Green Party does. 
I will give members some examples to prove my case—examples of people making carbon-saving transport changes because they want to do the right thing and want to be environmentally sensitive and not because we have legislated it. Of course the new emissions trading scheme will reward their low-carbon behaviours. A couple of months ago a taxi driver from a luxury taxi company visited my electorate office in central Christchurch. He was complaining that the Government had instructed the public sector not to use his company because the cars were too big and too carbon intensive. It was ruining his business. I had to explain to him that the National Government would never make arbitrary rules to ruin his business but we were certainly encouraging better environmental practice and that the public was very keen to do the right thing. 
We need to look just at the growth of the Green Cabs taxi company to illustrate that people really want to respond and make good environmental choices. I also explained to the taxi driver and his luxury taxi company that to compete he needs to understand that many New Zealanders have moved past gas-guzzling luxury cars. Since then he has faced the music he has recognised the need to be more environmentally sensitive and his company has created a carbon-mitigation tree-planting scheme. Similarly right across the country other taxi companies are doing the same thing. Members will have noticed the cooperative of Wellington Combined Taxis has gone carbon neutral. It has gone in with Landcare Research New Zealand and the taxis have the little tui on their cars to tell us that they are doing the right thing. 
We also need to note that the sale of hybrid cars has gone through the roof. There has been no legislation no expensive bureaucracy and no stifling red tape. I will give members another example. Last week I visited Progressive Enterprises the company behind Woolworths Countdown and Foodtown. I spent a morning with its representatives talking about its environmental initiatives. The representatives showed me their new methods of handling food which gets rid of tonnes of polystyrene cardboard and plastic wrapping. They talked about their upgrading of refrigerant technology to cut emissions and their strategies to cut energy use. But the initiatives that are particularly relevant to this bill are those actions that are focusing on cutting the emissions of their transport. Their latest transport contract uses the newest Euro 5 energy-efficient and emission-efficient trucks and computer scheduling to ensure the most effective loading and routeing which are dramatically cutting costs and emissions. 
The most telling change at Progressive Enterprises and the signal that its company wants to walk the best environmental practice talk is that the members of its management team have traded in their big corporate cars for energy-efficient small-engined car alternatives with a resulting 30 percent drop in emissions. 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 It is a pleasure to rise in this debate and further Labour’s support for the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill. As Dr Norman said when he spoke at the bill’s introduction it represents a small practical step to meet our obligations. No one is pretending that it is the answer the silver bullet but it is a small practical step that could help New Zealand move towards meeting its obligations. It really does feel in this debate listening to the National members’ contributions that they think New Zealand will be able to meet its obligations without really having to do anything—that we will not actually have to change anything about the way we live our lives. 
National speakers said that they do not see the need for any legislation. Well here we are talking about the way that Government purchasers obtain vehicles. We all know that in order for Government departments to go ahead and know with confidence that this is the direction they should be going in we need legislation. Mrs Wagner can stand up and tell us all the examples of private sector companies that do this kind of thing—and good on them; good on them for doing it—but when it comes to giving direction to Government agencies and Government departments this bill is the appropriate mechanism to put forward. I congratulate Dr Norman on doing so. 
Labour supports this bill because under Labour we made great strides towards the goal of halving New Zealand’s per capita transport emissions. Mr Chauvel already spoke about that. What I find amazing is that National from the very first day that I entered Parliament has set about undermining New Zealand’s place in the world on the environmental stage. National is undermining it. The very first things we saw in this House were National rejecting the biofuel obligation and removing the thermal energy ban. National thought those things were priorities to address under urgency before Christmas. Since then we have seen a shambolic performance from National on climate change a shambolic performance led by Nick Smith. I know that the Prime Minister said that he gave Nick Smith the job of handling climate change because he had “a brain the size of the South Island”. The problem is that his brain seems to be about as populated as the South Island is as well. We have seen from Dr Smith a shambolic handling of this process the latest example of which is his $110 billion blunder. 
The Prime Minister said to Federated Farmers today that they need to support the emissions trading scheme because New Zealand needs people across the world to buy our products and if we do not have a robust scheme they will not do that. Well what about all of the other things that National has done—or has not done—to make sure that we look good on the world stage? We have to live the brand. We have to stand up and say that if New Zealand wants to be 100 percent pure we have to set an ambitious target for reducing our emissions. If New Zealand wants to be 100 percent pure we have to set an ambitious target for renewable energy. It was an outrage to see John Key stand up on the Letterman show and proudly talk about our renewable energy when National has no commitment whatsoever to meet the 90 percent goal. 
Nicky Wagner 
: You might not. 
GRANT ROBERTSON 
: I ask Ms Wagner whether that is National’s policy. Are we going to see a 90 percent renewable energy target by 2025? Are we going to see that? She nods; we are. So what will National do to get us there? We do not see any positive action. This bill is one very small practical step National could actually take to say “We take some responsibility. We are currently in Government. We take some responsibility for how the Government procures its vehicles.” It is a very simple small practical step. But no National will not take it. 
We have seen it time and time again. We saw it in the very early days of the Government when National walked away from the Govt³ programme. That is another example of how the Government could have showed leadership in improving environmental performance but instead walked away from that strategy. We have seen shambolic handling—a fiasco some might say—of climate change. This bill is one opportunity for National to do something about climate change but it has failed to take the opportunity tonight. Its members should be ashamed. 
RAHUI KATENE (Maori Party—Te Tai Tonga) 
: 
 The Maori Party has supported all previous legislation that seeks to address the duel crises of peak oil and climate change. Within this the Maori Party is committed to ensuring tangible outcomes in the national interest in respect of four areas. First and foremost we want to relieve the burdens placed on whanau and assist whanau to adapt to climate change. Secondly we seek to enhance environmental outcomes consistent with the kaitiakitanga that our people are responsible for discharging over their whenua. Thirdly we want to give effect to the Treaty relationship between the Crown and iwi/hapu. Fourthly we want to take actions that support the Maori economy. We apply these four principles to any interventions that seek to make changes that more broadly contribute to positive responses to climate change. 
So we come to the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill recognising its very specific focus on targeting State sector organisations to decrease their greenhouse gas emissions by ensuring that when purchasing or leasing cars they meet the efficiency standard set out in the New Zealand Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy 2007. It is a very specific technical requirement that will demand that Government vehicles emit no more than 170 grams per kilometre of carbon dioxide and that they are among the top 10 percent in terms of fuel efficiency in their size class. 
The Maori Party has consistently argued the case for a host of fuel efficiency measures. We have made the commitment that we will investigate the case for reducing the speed limit to maximise fuel efficiency for fuel rationing systems and for the bulk purchasing of fuel-efficient vehicles to lease or sell to low-income earners at prices they can afford. These policy goals of the Maori Party are a specific and targeted approach to reduce the overall energy use and greenhouse gas emissions from New Zealand’s transport system. 
This bill makes good sense. How many of us have had the misfortune to drive behind an old inefficient clapped-out vehicle as it emits huge clouds of paru into the environment? Older vehicles tend to have higher exhaust emissions of harmful pollutants such as carbon monoxide hydrocarbons and the oxides of nitrogen. This is partly due to deterioration in the engine’s efficiency but is also due to the older technology used in earlier engine designs. As an example I say that an air quality study that sampled the emissions of 40000 vehicles in the Auckland region found that carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide emissions from a 2003 vehicle were approximately five times lower than the emissions from a similar vehicle 8 years older. That is pretty good proof to us that if we can do something about vehicle emissions then we should. Older vehicles may also have poorer fuel efficiency and therefore create more greenhouse gas emissions for each kilometre travelled than similar newer vehicles do. 
The justification for this bill is clear. Although the Maori Party firmly believes that collective responsibility for environmental and social outcomes is the only way to respond to climate change we say that legislation plays a big part in that. Sure we need to have education programmes in place and we need to encourage private enterprise to lower its greenhouse gas emissions profile but we also need to have the example set by the State sector. The State sector is governed by legislation. We have heard Ministers say time after time in this House that they cannot require this or that to be done because it is an operational matter which they cannot interfere in. In order to get State sector vehicles that have better fuel efficiency Ministers need to have legislation because they cannot tell their departments to purchase the more fuel-efficient vehicles. 
No one piece of legislation can ever be the whole answer to New Zealand’s response to climate change. The real answers can only come from people as whanau communities and enterprises deciding to change how we live and interact with the environment. This bill is only a small part of the change that is needed. But if we are really committed to focusing on the real challenge of addressing our collective responsibility for carbon emissions then what better place is there to start than with the State sector? If we want to set ourselves standards to live by and expectations to aspire towards then the Government through the means of the State sector example is the most appropriate place to start. Thank you. 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki - King Country) 
: 
 Along with my colleagues I rise in opposition to the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill and there is a range of reasons why we oppose it. 
First of all I will start with a personal story of what happened on our farm in the mid-1970s when we were hit with two oil shocks. At that time the mode of transport on the farm was a Holden Ute with about 400000 miles on the clock and a 3-litre engine. Petrol consumption used to get down to about 18 miles to the gallon when we were towing farm trailers and other such things with it. Because of the price of petrol going up to $1 a gallon our employer decided that we should get rid of the big gas-guzzling old Holden Ute and trade up to a new Mazda B1600 flat-deck ute with a 1600cc engine which was described as being much more suitable than the old Holden that it replaced. Guess what? This brand new Mazda utility did 5 miles less to the gallon than the old Holden Ute in the same application. Why would that be? We went from a 3-litre engine that was worn out down to a 1600cc modern efficient engine that was in perfect tip-top order and the fuel consumption went up. How did that happen? How could that be possible? The reason was simple. The application it was being used for the amount of weight we were pulling with it the trailers we were towing with it meant that that little B1600 was going at full revs the whole time and it used more petrol than the old Holden did lumbering along at lower revs per minute. That is an example of why the one-size-fits-all approach prescribed by the socialists and the Greens cannot fit and will not fit. 
Landcorp which is one of our Government departments is the biggest corporate farm in the country. Why do we not change all of the Landcorp vehicles from the big gas-guzzling Nissans or whatever they might have now with their 3-litre engines to vehicles with 1200cc engines and expect them to pull the same hay-balers farm trailers tractors and goodness knows what else that are pulled around by those vehicles and double their fuel consumption as well? I bet that is what would happen. Not only did the good old Mazda add substantially to the fuel consumption—it did not double it; I do not want to exaggerate—but it lasted about a third of the time that the old Holden did. By the time it had done 100000 miles equivalent it was worn out; it was shot. It was absolutely unroadworthy in fact and it was dangerous throughout most of its life because for most of its life it was overloaded. That is an example of why it does not make sense to prescribe by legislation a one-size-fits-all approach for Government departments or any other department or any other person for that matter. 
Let us look at some of the things that National has done since it has been in Government. We have heard a bit about what Labour proposed to do in its 9 years in office and never quite got around to. We also know that during that time our carbon emissions went up substantially across most sectors except the agricultural sector of course which is the sector the previous Government wanted to hit the hardest. I had a little bit of a personal campaign against that as most people will remember. What has National done? The first thing National did was to put $36 million into the biofuels grant programme promoting bio-diesel production. In my own electorate we have the Holden family who are very entrepreneurial. They are the custodians and managers of the Ruakuri Cave which is a great tourism venture. They could not get their bio-diesel plant off the ground under the previous Labour Government. Guess what? That plant is now thriving and prosperous in the small town of Te Kuiti. It is producing bio-diesel from waste material oils fats from cooking etc. and it looks as though it will grow and continue to thrive. The family came to me many times when they were trying to get the business off the ground under the previous Labour Government and they were not successful. 
National opposes this bill. There are a lot of other things I could talk about but I understand there is not time for that. That is my contribution. National opposes the bill. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 It gives me great pleasure to rise to support the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill and to congratulate my colleague and co-leader Russel Norman on bringing it to the House. I thank the Labour Party and the Maori Party for their support of the bill. We would gain no inkling from the debate tonight that people in this House understand that New Zealand has the fourth-highest climate change emissions per capita in the whole developed world; nor would we have any inkling that people understand that peak oil is very close and oil will become enormously more expensive in the near future as well as becoming scarce. 
With those two crises vehicles are our Achilles heel. Our vehicle fleet is hugely inefficient. But it also means in a positive sense that this is our lowest-hanging fruit. If we want to reduce our dependence on oil and our climate change emissions then vehicles are the place to start because it is with them that we can make a lot of progress. That is why the National Energy Efficiency and Conservation Strategy proposed to set a standard of 170 grams per kilometre. I looked up the Automobile Association’s magazine and found that 129 models are on the market in New Zealand now that meet that standard which is the same one we proposed for Government vehicles in this bill. Certainly there is plenty of choice there. 
That strategy is still the law. It is still in force despite what Charles Chauvel said because under the law it is in force until it is replaced. The Minister cannot repeal it; he can only replace it. God knows what he will replace it with! Last year Labour was on the way to setting fuel efficiency standards for the whole country but it did not quite get there in time. The officials were opposing it. Holden and Ford were lobbying very hard so no legislation was brought to the House. I thank them for their support tonight but they could have actually made this happen last year. Now Steven Joyce has announced publicly that there will be no fuel efficiency standards for vehicles. 
I want to look at some of the arguments put forward tonight—some very pathetic arguments. Nicky Wagner used a number of individual cases to show that people will do the right thing—we do not need to legislate. But they are patently not doing the right thing. The EU vehicles coming into the EU are at 130 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre. Ours are at 210 grams. The fleet fuel use appears to be trending down for the new vehicles until one realises that the Government has removed diesels out of the tables so that it looks better than the old tables used to look. The vehicles coming into New Zealand are more wasteful each year than they have been in the past. So if regulation is such a bad thing if all we need is a bit of education and guidance and we do not want to tie down the country with red tape why do we not replace the law on murder and fraud with education and guidelines? That makes perfect sense as well; people will simply do the right thing if we tell them to! That is what the Government’s argument leads us to. 
Shane Ardern made an excellent point that energy efficiency is not necessarily related to the size of the vehicle and that is why we do not talk about vehicle size in the bill. That is why we talk about fuel efficiency measured in grams of carbon dioxide. He did not tell us anything about the fuel efficiency of his tractor which we had occasion to see at Parliament some years ago but we sympathise with him getting conned over the Mazda. It is not about engine size it is about fuel efficiency. 
Clearly some of the speakers tonight have simply not read the bill. It is a constant frustration that people come down here and speak on members’ bills without having read them. If they had read them they would discover that the bill makes specific provision for vehicles to be fit for purpose. If one is on a Landcorp farm then different rules apply compared with someone in a health board running the district nurse around a city. 
This is a very sensible bill. It would not just benefit the Government and its fuel use. It would not just show leadership. It would bring into the country a better set of vehicles that would save the future drivers—who would be ordinary New Zealanders after the Government spins them off—a lot of money on their fuel bills in the future. I commend this bill to the House. 
CHRIS HIPKINS (Labour—Rimutaka) 
: 
 I am very happy to take a call on the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill. I congratulate the Greens on bringing another excellent bill to the House. I notice there is another ballot for members’ bills tomorrow; no doubt there will be some more Green bills coming out of the ballot given their recent run of very very good luck. 
I will pick up on a number of the points that other people have made in this debate. It is hard to look at the particular issues of this bill in isolation from the wider issues around climate change and energy efficiency that the Government is currently dealing with—or should I say not dealing with as the case may be. I pick up the point that my colleague and friend Grant Robertson raised. He said this Government appeared to be taking the approach that we can reduce our emissions without doing anything at all; that we can do absolutely nothing and somehow miraculously New Zealand’s carbon emissions will diminish and will decrease. We know that will not happen. 
This fairly small bill a realistic bill and quite a practical measure is just a small thing that we can do that would make some difference. Even if the Government is opposed to the bill why does it not at least send it to a select committee so that it can get a hearing so that the debate can be had and arguments can be put forward? If the Government decides to vote against it when it comes back into the House for its second reading it can do that. But why is it afraid of the debate? Why will it not even listen to the evidence and allow people to have a say on the bill? I tell members why that is the case: the Government simply has no idea of what it is doing about climate change. 
Shane Ardern talked earlier about his farm vehicles being inefficient because they were carrying loads that were beyond their capabilities. That sounds a lot like the Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith. He is overloaded much like Shane Ardern’s farm vehicles and he is completely losing the plot. The way the Government is dealing with climate change is a total debacle. It is an absolute fiasco. 
Let us go back to the very beginning to the very first things that this Government did when it came into the House after the last election. The first thing the Government did was to repeal the obligation on the fuel companies to use biofuels. It repealed the obligation and replaced it with a form of corporate welfare—a subsidy. It thought that rather than having the cost of biofuel development put on to the oil companies which were making massive profits it would be better for hard-working Kiwi taxpayers to pay a subsidy to the fuel companies. That is what the National Government thought. When Gerry Brownlee finally gets around to answering the questions I put to him—the answers are now several weeks overdue—it will be interesting to see whether any of the oil and gas companies have taken up the subsidy or whether it has turned out to be yet another fiasco on the part of the National Government. 
The second thing that the Government did—and this is quite relevant when we talk about the potential future of electric vehicles—relates to the thermal moratorium or thermal restriction that was put in place by the last Government. It was removed immediately upon National taking office as well. If we are going to move towards more electric vehicles we need to think about where the electricity comes from. If the electricity is coming from non-renewable resources from burning more coal or burning more gas will we end up any better off at all? Actually we probably will not. Why is the Government so opposed to renewable energy? Why is it so opposed to this bill which will require State sector vehicles—21000 State sector vehicles I believe—to be fuel efficient? This bill is a very practical measure. It needs to fit in with other measures that the previous Labour Government had in place with support from the Greens—for example the two that I have just mentioned the biofuels and the thermal restriction. 
Then there was the transport strategy. Significant investment was made in repurchasing what is now KiwiRail to get some of those big trucks off the road to get more freight on to rail and to get more passengers on to rail. Instead the Government seems to have wound back the clock on that; it would rather see the rail system run down as it was in the 9 years National was in Government in the 1990s when the private sector simply ran the rail network into the ground. 
I commend the Greens for bringing this bill to the House. I think it is a practical measure a small step but a positive step none the less. I urge the National Government to consider sending this bill to a select committee so that it can be properly debated. 
Dr RUSSEL NORMAN (Co-Leader—Green) 
: 
 This Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill is a practical bill that makes a small but significant improvement in the energy efficiency of our vehicle fleet by setting certain basic standards for the amount of greenhouse gas emitted per kilometre by the Government fuel fleet. It is a very simple measure. If we are to make the transition that our children and great-grandchildren demand of us towards an economy with low dependence on carbon and oil then we need to use all of the levers that are available to us. One of those levers is the use of prices and markets and that is a fine lever to use. Another lever is the use of education and individual consciousness to change behaviour and that is also a fine lever to use to make change. However there is a third lever as well which is the use of State regulation. This is an essential component in any transition towards a low-carbon economy. All three levers need to be used and all three levers are necessarily part of the transition that we need to make. 
I will address a few arguments that were put up by National. The first is the suggestion that this bill would put high costs on the State sector. One of the paradoxes is that the Govt3 programme which this National Government abolished saved the Government money. The Inland Revenue Department reported to us that it saved many hundreds of thousands of dollars because it implemented Govt3. That was what the department told us. This measure would save the Government many hundreds of thousands of dollars if not millions of dollars in fuel because we would use the most fuel-efficient vehicles that were fit for the purpose. It does not cost money; it saves money. But for some reason this Government would rather spend money than save money just so that it does not have to regulate. Another argument raised was that the emissions trading scheme will do it all. Well I am afraid that the emissions trading scheme be it the old one or the new one will never do all of the heavy lifting on reducing greenhouse gas emissions. That simply is not possible. 
In terms of this bill being some kind of terrible burden on Government procurement there is already a set of rules and regulations around Government procurement and this bill would simply add one further dimension. It would not be a huge problem. 
In terms of the allergy that certain National members seem to have towards regulation I have a two-word answer to anyone who opposes regulation. Those two words are leaky houses. This country currently faces an $11 billion bill because in 1991 the National Government passed the Building Act which said that people can build whatever they damned well pleased and that we did not have to have rules around how people build houses. Now taxpayers households and councils have to pick up an $11 billion bill because National does not like regulation. 
Regulation works. I tell members to talk to the people in California. I was in California recently and I asked people how they had had such phenomenal growth in energy efficiency that the electricity use per capita has remained stable for 30 years even though they have more computers in Silicon Valley and all the rest of it. They said they did it by having energy-efficient regulation. Every year they improved the regulations around energy efficiency and they drove innovation. They made industry in their sector the most competitive industry on the planet because they drove innovation in energy efficiency through the use of energy efficiency regulations. 
This is a very simple measure. It is something that our children demand of us—that we actually confront the fact that New Zealand per capita has one of the highest emissions of greenhouse gases on the planet. If we do not resolve this issue then people born today who will be alive in 2100 will live to curse the people now in this Parliament who vote this measure down. I say to every single member of Parliament in the National Party and the ACT Party who votes against this bill that their children and grandchildren will curse them for not making progress on climate change. They will curse them for allowing them to inherit a world that has out-of-control climate change because people like those members in parliaments like this all round the planet knew the evidence could read the science and did not do what they knew had to be done. That is a disgrace. 
A party vote was called for on the question  
That the Climate Change (Government Vehicle Procurement) Bill be now read a first time. 
Ayes 58 
New Zealand Labour 43; Green Party 9; Maori Party 5; Progressive 1. 
Noes 64 
New Zealand National 58; ACT New Zealand 5; United Future 1. 
Motion not agreed to. 
Reports 
Briefing on Finance Company Failures—Consideration of Report of Commerce Committee 
No member having risen members’ order of the day No. 3 for consideration of the report of the Commerce Committee on the briefing on finance company failures was discharged. 
Complaint Regarding SR 2008/319 Marine Safety Charges Amendment Regulations 2008—Consideration of Interim Report of Regulations Review Committee 
No member having risen members’ order of the day No. 4 for consideration of the interim report of the Regulations Review Committee on the complaint regarding SR 2008/319 Marine Safety Charges Amendment Regulations 2008 was discharged. 
Review of the Emissions Trading Scheme and Related Matters—Consideration of Report of Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the report of the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee on the review of the emissions trading scheme and related matters be noted 
. The select committee that was appointed at the beginning of this year and which sat for many months to review the emissions trading scheme was one of the greatest wastes of Parliament’s time and resources that I have seen in my 13 years in this House. The budget for select committees was exceeded several times and further resources had to be sought for three very good specialist advisers who worked very hard to advise the committee. But the committee in the end had no real time in which to discuss their advice or to reach any conclusions on it. 
The special committee was set up from the start as a sop to the ACT Party which did not believe the climate science and was trying to slow down any action on climate change. The terms of reference were written by the ACT Party as part of its election campaign and they were simply adopted by the Government. The special committee was constantly called the committee to review the emissions trading scheme yet its terms of reference never included the instruction to review the emissions trading scheme. Instead it meandered all over the place with questions about whether we should have a carbon tax or emissions trading questions about whether we should just adapt to climate change instead of trying to mitigate it questions about trade and questions about whether the science was real. All the way through we had to pretend that we were reviewing the emissions trading scheme but at no point in all of those months that the committee sat did we ever have a copy of the emissions trading law in front of us and at no point did we ever debate any of the provisions of the existing law. This was Alice-in-Wonderland stuff and the House should be ashamed that it allowed such a thing to occur. 
We heard a succession of submitters the same submitters whom some of us had heard in the previous year saying exactly the same things that they had said when they submitted on the legislation that led to the emissions trading scheme that is currently in our law. There was a lot of special pleading. Submitters tended to start off by saying they accepted that climate change is important but they should not have to pay anything. They said as long as they did not have to pay anything then it was fine to have an emissions trading scheme but they should be exempt from it—or if they could not be made exempt then they said emissions trading should not happen for a long time. Their attitude was “not us not now not really and maybe not ever”. So it was a rather onerous duty for those of us who had put a great deal of work into the emissions trading law the year before to hear the same special pleading all over again from a lot of people whose position had not changed and who had nothing new to offer. 
But we did submitters the courtesy of holding hearings for I think some 60 hours and of taking their comments seriously unlike the Finance and Expenditure Committee which has just finished hearing submissions on the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill and which dispatched the lot of them in I think 3 days of hearings—or was it 5? 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Barely. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Barely that and with so little notice that submitters did not even have time to prepare before coming to speak to the committee. If it had not been for the motion that I moved in the committee which was supported by all other parties except for National we would not have heard even as many submitters as we did. We would have done the whole thing in 1 day. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Who seconded that motion? 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Of course my friend Charles Chauvel very nobly supported the motion and that was very much appreciated. 
Since 1992 when the then Government first signed an international commitment to reduce emissions and protect forest sinks successive Governments have dithered and done nothing about climate change. Right through the 1990s the National Government anguished over whether to have a carbon charge or emissions trading and ended up doing neither. In the 2000s Labour worked up a policy on a carbon charge—not a bad policy; it would have been a great deal better than nothing—and set it for 5 years into the future. It announced the policy in 2002 with the carbon charge to come into effect in 2007. Then that policy was abolished after the election in 2005 supposedly because there was not a majority in the House for it. But actually the Maori Party was never even asked for its support. We believe there could have been a majority in the House for it. Certainly during 2005 I tried to persuade the Minister of the time that he should pass the legislation then when there was clearly a good majority for it but that did not happen either. 
Then a lot of work was put into the emissions trading scheme and that legislation was passed last year. It is in force now and it is the law now. The provisions on energy are supposed to come into effect on 1 January but the new Government came in and decided to review the whole thing. But it was not a review. It was a holding pattern a time-wasting measure while the Government made up its mind what it wanted to do. The Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith did not seem to have a plan after the election. All he knew was that he wanted to change things so obviously he had to do a lot of work with officials on just how he wanted to change things. The Prime Minister announced that he was putting the emissions trading scheme on hold. It was only during question time in the House that I managed to get him to confess that he had no power to put an existing law on hold without going to Parliament. One cannot unilaterally abolish legislation even if one is the Prime Minister. So it sat there on the books as law while this committee pretended it was doing something. 
The committee often sat for only 2 hours a week—I am talking now about the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee which this motion is about—and in some weeks it did not sit at all for quite long periods especially when the officials were not ready to bring us their departmental report. We all know why they were not ready to bring us their departmental report: because the Minister had not yet decided what he wanted to do. Finally the departmental report did appear and suddenly it became extremely urgent that the committee finish its business and there was no time to discuss what was in the departmental report. There were a number of important issues of principle that we needed to debate but the committee did not ever get the chance to properly engage with them. On the day of deliberation on this select committee report we started with 50 percent of the draft report still not dealt with in any way by the committee. So on the day of deliberation we discussed the last 50 percent of this very long report and deliberated on it. It was a shocking experience. I hope I never have to go through one like it again in this House. 
But the really tragic thing about this is that we still do not have a proper climate change policy. The one we have is about to be changed and it is to be replaced by something that will do absolutely nothing to reduce New Zealand’s emissions at all. It became clear only on the last day of deliberation that the Government was totally committed to an intensity-based approach to reallocations which means that the more that emitters increase their pollution the more free credits they will get. That is the worst thing we can do with regard to climate change policy and that is what is about to come to the House next week. 
JOHN BOSCAWEN (ACT) 
: 
 Parliament is an interesting place. I came down to the House at 20 to 8 this evening to do 50 minutes in the House before taking leave of the House at 8.30 to walk across the road and appear on the  
Back Benches 
 television programme. 
Hon Simon Power 
: Name-dropper! 
JOHN BOSCAWEN 
: In demand I say to Mr Justice Minister. I have appeared on it three times in about 7 weeks. No sooner had I arrived in the House than I was told that it would not be rising early but would be going on to debate the report of the Commerce Committee on finance company failures. I sat down to start to prepare a speech on the inquiry into finance company failures. I am a new person in this House and I understood that the Government was going to move a motion that the House defer the debate on the finance company collapses until a later time. That motion was not moved and I missed my chance to speak—and there is much that I could have said. 
However I was then informed that if we did not debate the finance company failures we would debate the emissions trading scheme. That is also an issue of real concern to the ACT Party. I intend to use my remaining time to debate that issue and to respond to some of the comments that have just been made by Jeanette Fitzsimons. Unfortunately because of my other commitments I will not be able to stay in the House to hear the continuation of that debate and to those speakers who follow me I apologise. 
But let us come to the comments made by Jeanette Fitzsimons. She quite correctly said that the Government had reviewed the emissions trading scheme. She said that the review had been instigated by the ACT Party. Well why was that? There are several reasons. First of all the National Party campaigned on amending the emissions trading scheme which was passed into law late last year. The ACT Party—very much a minor party compared with National a smaller party in terms of the confidence and supply agreement—campaigned on scrapping the emissions trading scheme. One of the concessions that we negotiated in our confidence and supply agreement was for a full review of the emissions trading scheme. The Government agreed to a review and it established the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee which Jeanette Fitzsimons referred to. 
But why was it necessary to review the scheme? Let us look at the reasons. It was necessary because the emissions trading scheme was a massive tax on all consumers all businesses and all taxpayers in New Zealand. It was a massive tax and I will explain that. When the New Zealand Government signed the Kyoto Protocol it agreed to limit our emissions during the period 2008 to 2012 to the levels that prevailed in 1990. It is called the “first commitment period”. For that 5-year period between 2008 and 2012 it agreed that we New Zealanders would emit no more than our 1990 level of carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide equivalents. It further agreed that if we exceeded that level it would be prepared to pay some money to those who managed to limit their emissions. In actual fact in the calculation of that figure we were allowed to take into account what we call the extra absorption of carbon dioxide—the absorption of carbon dioxide by plants and forests. At this stage it looks as though New Zealand will have no net liability for the period up until 2012. 
The question then becomes what we will have to pay after 2012. Well we do not know because we have not signed a commitment to do so. It would seem that National is hell-bent on recklessly pushing ahead with its amendments to the scheme with the intention that its proposal should be made law before the Copenhagen conference next month. It has become very obvious in recent weeks that no agreement will be reached in Copenhagen—not next December not next year and probably not even before the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of 2012. 
But let us say that we did reach agreement and we reached agreement to reduce our emissions to this theoretical mystical figure of a 50 percent reduction by 2050—a 50 percent reduction. Let us assume that we were to commit to that; there are many reasons why we should not and I will come back to those shortly but let us say that we do. It would mean that New Zealand would essentially have to pay for its excess emissions on a sliding scale. So we start in 2013 and in the following 37 to 38 years—by 2050—we would have to reduce our emissions by 50 percent. 
What did the Labour scheme state? The Labour scheme stated that Labour would give industry a short time to adapt but it would expect industry to then achieve massive reductions such that it would reduce its carbon emissions to zero by 2030—to zero. That means that once industry’s allowance was reduced to zero by 2030 it would have to pay for extra emissions above zero even though the Government would not have to pay that money offshore. If we agree to that target of a 50 percent reduction by 2050 we will still be allowed half of that carbon discharge. That means the reductions that companies industries and emitters are required to achieve are very excessive. They will be paying huge amounts for those emissions despite the fact that New Zealand is not liable for them. It has been calculated by Treasury that on the basis of Labour’s existing scheme those businesses will be paying in excess of $2 billion a year extra every year from 2030 onwards. 
National wishes to reduce that massive overtaxation. Labour has made much of the fact that Treasury acknowledged to the select committee last Wednesday that the cost of what is being given back is $105 billion. That is a massive figure. The reason it is being given back is that Labour’s scheme took it in the first place. What National is trying to achieve—I would imagine—with its legislation is to make the costs on higher-intensity emitters and medium-intensity emitters more akin to what the taxpayer has to pay. 
I would like to come back to that 50 percent target. Jeannette Fitzsimons said that New Zealand was the fourth-highest emitter in the world on a per capita basis. Shock horror! We are the fourth-highest emitter. One would think that is pretty bad. Jeanette Fitzsimons did not tell the House that half of those emissions result from agriculture. Half of those emissions result from growing food for the rest of the world. So they are not emissions that are generated by New Zealanders for New Zealanders’ use. It is not as though they are generated by New Zealanders driving around in Hummers and 5-litre cars or using coal-fired power stations that puff emissions and soot into the air. We have some very efficient industry; we have some very efficient agriculture. Our emissions profile is unique because half of our emissions are generated as we feed the world. And we feed the world very efficiently. If we close down our agriculture or we substantially reduce the output of our farmers that food will have to be grown somewhere else in the world and I suspect that the carbon emissions of those outputs or that production will be far greater than they would have been if the food had been grown in New Zealand. 
That has a big bearing on that 50 percent target. The reality is that if our farmers on the basis of current science were to do everything humanly possible—nitrogen fixation and schemes that are available right now—they could reduce their emissions by just 13 percent. To achieve that 50 percent target by 2050 means the other half of the economy has to reduce its emissions by 87 percent. That shows us what an unrealistic target it is for New Zealand to try to achieve a 50 percent reduction by 2050. 
It is all very well having targets of 2015 2020 2030 if our scientists can develop technology if they can breed grasses if they can genetically re-engineer sheep and cattle so that they do not burp and discharge methane. If they can do that well fair enough. But in my view our country would be very very foolish to sign up to a commitment that we know we cannot meet and to incur huge costs for all New Zealand taxpayers. Thank you. 
Motion agreed to. 
Report from the Controller and Auditor-General on Local Government: Results of the 2007-08 Audits—Consideration of Report of Local Government and Environment Committee 
No member having risen members’ order of the day No. 6 for consideration of the report of the Local Government and Environment Committee on the report from the Controller and Auditor-General on local government: results of the 2007-08 audits was discharged. 
Report from the Controller and Auditor-General on Inland Revenue Department: Managing Tax Debts—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee 
No member having risen members’ order of the day No. 7 for consideration of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the report from the Controller and Auditor-General on the Inland Revenue Department: managing tax debts was discharged. 
Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Monetary Policy Statement September 2009—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee 
No member having risen members’ order of the day No. 8 for consideration of the report of the Finance and Expenditure Committee on the Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Monetary Policy Statement September 2009 was discharged. 
Inquiries 
Inquiry into the 2008 General Election—Consideration of Report of Justice and Electoral Committee 
No member having risen members’ order of the day No. 9 for consideration of the report of the Justice and Electoral Committee on the inquiry into the 2008 general election was discharged. 
Sittings of the House 
GRANT ROBERTSON (Labour—Wellington Central) 
: 
 I seek leave for the House to rise at this point. 
The ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Eric Roy) 
: Leave is sought for that purpose. Is anyone opposed to that course of action? It appears not. 
The House adjourned at 8.36 p.m.