Grigg NicolaNICOLA GRIGG (National—Selwyn): Thank you Madam Speaker. I'm just going to make a short contribution to the Climate Change Response (Extension of Penalty Transition for Forestry Activities with Low Volume Emissions Liabilities) Amendment Bill. Ian McKelvie: That's a minute gone!NICOLA GRIGG: That took up 15 seconds—I'm well on the way. This bill realistically shouldn't have come up. As usual we find ourselves in this House fixing bad bills that the Labour Government seem to have passed into law but it does seek to rectify what should have been reconsidered and resolved back in 2020. We think this deferral is a quite necessary band-aid or a cover-up to try and compensate for the severe limitations of the original Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Reform) Amendment Act 2020. I would have thought anyone sitting in the climate change portfolio seat might start to work on some snappier titles for bills that they do bring to this House because they're all long and meandering.The reason we are going to support this bill is because it does start to reduce or mitigate a real risk of hardship for small-forestry owners—which we know do tend to either be mum and dad owners—or for farm owners Māori land owners or Māori forestry owners. We do think that they are at risk of some fairly onerous penalty regimes. The deferral of course will allow forest owners a bit more of a chance—12 months I think—to prepare themselves for the necessary steps that they're going to need to take to ensure compliance with this piece of law. I think a lot of other people have commented this evening that it is a very complex and complicated piece of law so I would imagine many will need to take external advice on that just to understand and just to ensure that they are complying. We do support these much-needed time extensions. They will come just in time given the original date was due to roll around on 1 January next year which I think is just over about 2½ months away. As I've already noted this is to impact and try to cover and try to protect some of those really small owners. I understand that about two-thirds of the post-1989 forestry participants own less than 50 hectares of registered forests in that emissions trading scheme and as I've said they are usually small players. So this rigid penalty regime that is in existence will have quite a real possibility of disproportionately impacting these particular owners particularly I understand given the linkages between the penalties and the carbon prices which as we all know are heading to the zenith at a great rate of knots and are likely to increase in the coming years.We do think that meeting these obligations is going to be seriously onerous on these owners. I'm drawing a lot of parallels and similarities here between the pressures and requirements being put on the forestry sector along with the agricultural sector. Funnily enough they are one and the same at times and it's just another layer of complexity and compliance that these businesses which are often small to medium sized enterprises are having to deal with—Hon Member: Oh save it.NICOLA GRIGG: —and it's really interesting when you hear the bellows of derision from across the House because it just goes to show how very very out of touch the Labour Party and the Green Party particularly are with business. They just don't seem to realise that these things cost money and they cost time and they cause stress and they cause anxiety. The Government of kindness" seems to forget at times the anxiety-inducing terror that compliance and regulation often causes people. We do also note that in a cost of living crisis—that this Government's still refusing any responsibility for—adding more complexity and more paperwork just adds to the cost of doing business which we all know is passed on to consumers.So look I'll just wrap up now. We've said that we would support this bill primarily because it does seek to resolve some issues. It allows the Government and small industry a bit of a reprieve to try and establish a more equitable regulatory system and there will be a new extension to that surrender period. We will support it to select committee but there's certainly some questions we have that we look forward to that committee thrashing out on our behalf."