Woods MeganDr MEGAN WOODS (Labour—Wigram): It is my pleasure to take a call in this debate. I would like to acknowledge the people who have already been acknowledged. I would like to acknowledge Dr Kennedy Graham for his work. I would also like to acknowledge Catherine Leining who is in the gallery today for this debate and also our former climate change ambassador Adrian Macey who is in the gallery and who is also doing a great deal of work to bring around good conversations around climate and our response to it in New Zealand.It has been a pleasure to be a member of the GLOBE-NZ executive and to work with members of Parliament from across the House to draw this report together. I am not taking one of the 5-minute calls as a member of the executive because I want to allow further members of our caucus who have an interest in climate to take calls on this.It is now that we get into the substantive debate around this report and what it says. I think this report has done something very important in the climate debate in New Zealand in that it has allowed political consensus around the problem. We have in one place a document that states very clearly what the challenge is and what we need to address. We know that the current path we are on is not a course for us either to meet our commitments under international agreements or to stop the rate of temperature increase below 2 degrees let alone 1.5 degrees. I think something that everybody can agree on is that that is where we should be aiming for.I am always wary of talking about weather and climate in the same paragraph. But what we cannot ignore any longer is the frequency of extreme weather events that are occurring. Climate change is not something abstract. Climate change is not something we can ignore. This afternoon more than ever we can see climate change on our doorstep and it is something that we have to take action on.This report has a number of key findings and it recommends some policies for the future. The key findings are around the ways in which we need to transform our economy to put us on a path towards carbon neutrality and to drastically reduce our carbon emissions which is not the path we are currently on. This is about structural transformation of our economy and how we can achieve that.What the report does make clear and where it is very optimistic is that this is entirely possible for New Zealand. We have a set of circumstances around our resources that mean we can do this should we turn our minds to it. We have the ability to produce renewable energy unlike many other countries in the volume that we require to truly complete the transition from fossil to renewable energy. That is incredibly important. We have the opportunity around afforestation and we have the ability to make sensible decisions about land use in this country and about what is fit for the future.What the report also does—and I would like to acknowledge the report writers from Vivid Economics who spent time in New Zealand talking to people and I think got to terms with what was happening across our economy and the different places where change needs to be made in a remarkable way to synthesise a lot of the work that has happened in New Zealand. They made some key recommendations in terms of policy: that we need to apply a shadow emission price consistent with the Paris Agreement and that we need to make sure the way in which we price carbon sets us on a track to achieving the targets that we have signed up to internationally. This is something that the Labour Party has long agreed on and some other parties across the House will too I am sure around the need to carbon-budget. We need to say Where do we need to get to and what are the changes we need to make to get there?" just like you would with any form of budgeting. You have to have a sense of what you need to save and where you can spend.We also need a robust and predictable emission price within our emissions trading scheme. This has to be robust and predictable but the report also does not ignore the cow in the room. The report makes it very clear that in order to have an effective way of pricing carbon within our economy we must bring agriculture within our emissions trading scheme. It is always somewhat daunting as Labour's climate change spokesperson to sit next to the man who brought together New Zealand's emissions trading scheme the Hon David Parker. When the emissions trading scheme was put in place in New Zealand the intent was never to leave agriculture out for this long. We are creating a situation where we will face shocks in our economy unless we plan a transition towards that and that is something we need. Let us always remember that the emissions trading scheme is a tool one of many alongside regulatory instruments we have; it is not a climate strategy. That is something that we always need to be cognisant of.We need to support further research and development and we need to make sure that we are bringing cross-party approaches to this but let us be clear: there are still political differences within this House—and so there should be. We have not overnight become a one-party State when it comes to climate policy. There still needs to be robust debate about the types of changes we need to make within our economy in order for us to reach the targets we need to.One of the passages in the report that I was especially pleased to see is the portion of the report that talks about the transition and how we need to ensure that this is a fair transition. As Labour's climate spokesperson I am the person who has to front up to coal mining delegates on a regular basis. We simply cannot close our eyes and not put in place the kinds of long-term planning we need to across our economy and that includes workforce planning and skills planning to ensure that we have a workforce that is ready and equipped for the needs of a low-carbon economy. We need to ensure that our education policy is aligned with where we need to go and that is why I was so pleased to see when Labour launched its 3 years' free tertiary education policy that Andrew Little talked specifically about the need for the retraining of the workforce in the face of climate change. This is the kind of long-term and future-focused thinking that we simply must be doing because I am not prepared to not make the changes that we need to make without a long-term plan and put the future of individuals and communities at risk. We have to be putting that thinking into place now.But there is much in this report to be excited about. Do we have to make changes in our economy? Yes. Do these changes create opportunities for New Zealand? Of course they do. What we have in this report is in many ways a vision for a 21st century economy. It is an economy that talks about the need not just to add commodity agricultural products to the basket but to really think about how we can make the best use of them. This is the future of value-added agricultural products for New Zealand and this is exciting. This is the kind of New Zealand that I want. This is a New Zealand that puts in place the right incentives for us to be afforesting our country and making sure that we are doing that. This is a report that puts in place the kinds of thinking we need for low-carbon industries. Not only do we need to transition our vehicle fleet from fossil to electricity and the kind of increase in generation we will need to do that but we also need to think about our industrial heat.Other countries are doing this and we cannot be left behind. Iceland for example at the moment is putting together an economic development plan that is about it being the world's best producer of aluminium because it can be made solely from renewable energy. We have strategic advantage in this country; we need to ensure that we tap into that.It has been a pleasure to work with colleagues from across the House in bringing this report. It is now the basis for us to pick up the pace to quicken the debate and to ensure that New Zealand is on the path towards a low-carbon future. We simply cannot delay this; it is too important."