Hughes Gareth: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Hughes Gareth: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6467. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
GARETH HUGHES (Green) 
: 
 Kia ora Mr Speaker. Nga mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. I rise to oppose the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. With the Arctic melting super-storms droughts floods heat waves killing people right now and the global temperature inexorably increasing here in New Zealand our Parliament is passing a bill to gut our country’s main response to climate change. Climate change is real. Climate change is happening and climate change is hitting us faster and worse than scientists predicted only a few years back. 
In my previous speeches I talked about my motivations for opposing this bill. I talked about my children and my desire to leave them a safe climate. In the last call I talked about how a carbon price signal through a strong emissions trading scheme was the main economic opposition to opposing this bill. What we are doing by gutting the emissions trading scheme our main mechanism to reduce emissions is going to cost us all. It is going to cost taxpayers who are subsidising it. It is going to cost the country with the increase in fuel bills and sham credit imports. But we are also missing the boat. We are missing the biggest economic opportunity of our century which is to invest in and transition to a clean economy. 
But in this speech I do not want to talk a great deal about the detail in this bad bill this bill that significantly weakens the emissions trading scheme removes agriculture from it and entrenches those sham credits and those State subsidies for polluters. I mean we all know it is bad for the environment and the economy. The Government benches know it is bad for the environment and the economy. That is why we have seen such a rushed shoddy process. Everyone in the country knows it is a bad bill for the environment and the economy. With this bill and the weakening of the emissions trading scheme that we have seen before—the removal of other measures to tackle climate change in New Zealand—the public are hearing the message loud and clear that this Government does not take the climate seriously. 
Where do we go from here? That is what I would rather talk about in this speech. The Government has clearly shown it will not act on this fundamental environmental economic and most of all moral challenge. If the Government will not act it is up to the people. The challenge for Kiwis and communities now is to build a movement to make it impossible for any Government of any hue not to act on the climate. We need to hit the streets we need to organise. We need to speak loudly the scientific truth about climate change and what it means. It is that 6 degrees that the International Energy Agency is warning us about. It is about just saying no to new coal and to risky oil. We need to give people hope that we can act and we can rise to the biggest challenge of our time. 
In 4 weeks’ time a thousand young Kiwis are gathering in Auckland for Power Shift and this is where I take my inspiration from. This is where the leadership the passion and the honesty to address this great challenge comes from. I hope that we can triumph over this challenge. I believe we can put our global long-term interests based on the science first over the narrow short-term thinking partisan politics and vested corporate interests. I believe we can do that. I believe New Zealand does matter to the world. I believe our emissions do matter. The fact is per capita we have got one of the highest emissions per person on the planet. We can also show leadership. 
The answers are obvious. They are available right now and they will benefit our economy because what we are talking about—tackling climate change—is about jobs. It is about new jobs in clean energy. It is new jobs in energy efficiency new jobs in forestry new jobs in transport and new jobs in smart farming. It is about farmers and city dwellers working together coming together for localised food production. It is about people installing insulation in their homes. It is about communities coming together and investing in a wind turbine. It is about Kiwis being able to put sustainable biofuels in their fuel tanks. It is about Kiwi firms putting solar panels on people’s homes. It is about Kiwi businesses innovating exporting and manufacturing. It is about measuring the things that really matter. It is about tackling climate change to give our kids a safe future. 
Tackling climate change is not the cost you hear about from those Government benches; it is the biggest economic opportunity of the century. This bill just leaves a bigger bill for the taxpayer but it misses that opportunity. We can rise. I believe we can rise to this big economic environmental and moral challenge. We are not going to do it with the leadership we see there so it is up to the people. It is up to the people. We can do this. I do have hope. After all what is at stake is our future—our planet. Kia ora.