Brooking RachelHon RACHEL BROOKING (Labour—Dunedin): Thank you Mr Speaker—a lot to respond to from that last speech. But I want to acknowledge the role of my parents in my thinking about both the rural economy and the environment. Because I have a mother who grew up in many rural areas throughout both islands—sorry to Stewart Island; both the main islands—and tells me all the time Rachel make sure you're not being mean to farmers." That is one side of my growing up.The other side I have my father who is a historian and a rural historian who gets very excited about different types of grass that have grown over many years in this country and the type of sheep that feed on that grass and where we export to on refrigerated boats. So I am not from a rural upbringing at all but I do come from this place. And of course most people in the House will know that I care very deeply about the environment and the very privileged position to be Labour's environmental spokesperson.Also I care very deeply about our climate. Because of course if we have all of the terrible things that we know can happen with climate change if we do not reduce our emissions we know that we get more of the storm events but we also know there comes sea-level rise there comes changes to our climate of where different crops and the like can grow as well—so it's extraordinarily important. It's also extraordinarily important for our biodiversity. If we have a climate that changes too drastically then our native indigenous species will go extinct and that is not something that I want to happen.So in that context why is that relevant to talking about this bill removing the backstop for agricultural emissions? It's very clear. This bill amends the Climate Change Response Act and that Climate Change Response Act happened before I was a member of this House and parties agreed that we need to reduce our climate emissions. Not only do we have to adapt but we also have to decrease emissions. That is decarbonisation and those emissions are across gases. So we say "decarbonisation" but we are not just talking about carbon; we are also talking about methane and nitrous oxide and some fluorides and other gases as well.So we've all agreed that that has to happen. There's a difference in opinion of how half of those emissions being agricultural emissions are reduced. We know that the last Government worked very hard—and I'm sitting next to the Hon Damien O'Connor who worked very hard with the rural sector to try and work out a way through so that we can reduce those agricultural emissions. What happened is that there was a backstop in the Act so that if that hard work and progress did not result in an agreement for a change then there was a backstop so that the emissions were in the emissions trading scheme (ETS).Now what this bill does of course is remove that backstop. And we've heard from the members opposite that they have a plan. They have a plan to revise methane science. That is not a plan. They have a plan that maybe they're going to have a pricing system by 2030. And if that is the case—that there is going to be work towards a pricing system—then what is the problem with including a backstop in this ETS? They could amend the backstop they could change the date but that's not here.And this is all in the context of the $3 billion of cuts to climate emission reducing projects. This is in the context of the CERF being gone the Climate Emergency Reduction Fund. This is in the context of the Spatial Planning Act being repealed and the Natural and Built Environments Act being repealed—all pieces of legislation that try to do much better planning to reduce those emissions. But that's not happening and agricultural emissions are not being reduced either. This is a shameful thing to be happening. This Government has no plan and I condemn this bill."