Woods Megan: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeWoods Megan: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 26 May 2016. Volume:714;Page:11390. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]Dr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): As is the custom when we are under urgency the Committee stage is an important part of the legislative process in which to ask some of the questions that may have otherwise been asked in the select committee stage. I would like to put on the record that although Labour is supporting this legislation it is committed to cross-party approaches to climate change to produce enduring political solutions. I think all of us in this House understand that our response to climate change is going to outlast any Government. These are plans that we have to put in place that will take decades and I do think it would be preferable that we could do this kind of legislation in a way other than under urgency which is without a proper way for us to have good cross-party discussions about what good plans and good legislation would look like. That is something that we do hold dearly—to put in play our commitment to those enduring cross-party solutions.Some of the questions that I have for the Minister in the chair Paula Bennett and which I would appreciate some answers to are around the $25 cap that has been signalled with this legislation. The $25 price ceiling that was in the principal legislation is going to remain under this legislation. I would ask the Minister whether there is a time frame around that cap whether there is a time frame around lifting that cap and whether you have a plan in play for that to rise because we know that industry and business are planning for a far greater and higher price on carbon than that. We know Business New Zealand’s energy report that came out showed that it was modelling on a $60 to $115 price of carbon per tonne by 2050. So this is certainly not what industry is banking on—a $25 cap. I would be interested to hear from the Minister the kind of time frame that she has around that.I would also be interested to hear from the Minister whether or not there was any consideration of a price floor to be put in place to sit alongside the price ceiling because if we want to avoid a situation such as we got into with the hot air credits—with the dodgy credits that made their way into our emissions trading scheme (ETS) in an earlier part of our history which could have been avoided—a further protection we could put in place is by enacting a price floor. I would like to know whether the Minister received any advice on that and whether that was a consideration that she took on board.I would also like to now turn my attention to clause 7 of this legislation which is repealing the temporary suspension of allocation entitlement for eligible agricultural activities. I ask the Minister what the time line is for the anomalies that exist within the ETS. Forty-nine percent of the emissions in New Zealand come from agriculture and yet clause 7 is entrenching the idea that we have eligible and ineligible agricultural activities. If New Zealand wants to address its greenhouse gases then we have to address nitrous oxide and we have to address methane. There is very very sophisticated work going on around the world about how it is that we might account for different gases. Under the Kyoto Protocol it was one gas one price but we know that there is significant scientific work happening around the world about how the short-run and the long-run gases behave and how we may account for those differently.I would like to know the advice and the thinking from the Minister around when we are finally going to grasp the nettle of agriculture in our ETS because this legislation entrenches the giant subsidy that industry is handing out to agriculture. We are continuing to subsidise agriculture through our other productive industrial sectors in New Zealand. That is not something that can continue if New Zealand is ever going to meet its emissions reduction targets. To claim that we have a unique profile is not a “get out of jail free” card. Our unique profile means that we must act quickly. Waiting for the silver bullet of science and technology to develop some way where when you put carbohydrate through a ruminant it is not going to somehow produce methane or nitrous oxide is sheer folly. The science is not going to solve this—we simply have to put in place some other measures—and clause 7 is a further entrenchment of that. Those are some of my initial questions for the Minister in the chair.The CHAIRPERSON (Hon Trevor Mallard): Before I call the next member I think it is probably appropriate to inform the Committee that it is my intention to rule out one of James Shaw’s amendments and that is the one to insert a new clause 4AA. It is—and I think the member is probably aware of this fact—outside the scope of the bill. All other amendments so far received are in fact within scope.