Genter Julie Anne: Climate Change Response (Removal of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill — First Reading Second Reading In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeGenter Julie Anne: 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:11397. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): I thought one of the interesting admissions from the National Government today in reference to the Climate Change Response (Removing of Transitional Measure) Amendment Bill was when the Minister of Finance Bill English admitted in his speech that closing this loophole in the emissions trading scheme is going to have an impact on the Crown’s operating surplus to the tune of about $300 million over 4 years. Effectively what we are learning from this is that any deferral of payment that we grant to industries that are polluting—whatever they are—so that they do not have to pay the full price means that taxpayers are picking up their tab.So now taxpayers are going to benefit from the closing of this loophole which is great. I thank the Minister for Climate Change Issues for bringing this small change to the House today—we absolutely support it—but we need to go further than that and we need to be honest about the fact that there is a cost involved in this pollution and that if the polluters themselves are not facing that cost there will be more pollution than there would optimally be. It is taxpayers but not just taxpayers here in New Zealand; it is actually all of us as inhabitants of planet Earth who are paying this cost particularly future generations.What I notice in the regulatory impact statement work on this bill which we have not had much time to look at—I regret that this legislation is having a shortened process because it would have been interesting to see whetherin going through a more full select committee process we could have made additional improvements to this bill—what I see in here is this fundamental tension that I think the National Government is facing which is how to make the emissions trading scheme work when it is supposed to put a price on pollution and how to make it work without making polluters face the cost of their pollution. That seems to be embedded—the risk and cost associated with actually putting a price on pollution. That has been the fundamental problem with the whole approach.If we want to truly take action on climate change and if we want to reduce carbon pollution and transition to an economy that is not reliant on increasing carbon pollution polluters are going to have to face the cost and that is what is going to drive the innovation. Yes the Government can supplement that with investment in low-carbon infrastructure that gives businesses and households more choices and ability to avoid paying the cost—which unfortunately I do not think this Government is doing enough of. Yes the Government can help smooth the transition but we should have started sooner. We have to be more ambitious now because we are running out of time for this transition to take place and the longer we put it off the more expensive and difficult it is going to be.It is wonderful that we have this tiny move in the right direction by closing the subsidy. I personally think phasing it in over 3 years is too long. It is too slow and it is too much of a concession to polluting industries which have fought paying the true cost of their activities for over a decade now. They will continue to do so and they will continue to say they are going to be disadvantaged but just because they are disadvantaged does not mean the economy is disadvantaged because there will be new jobs created in clean industries and that is what every piece of environmental regulation and legislation that has been put into place has shown. Everybody screams bloody murder and says that there are going to be job losses left and right that it is going to be the end of the world as we know it and that it is going to be the end of the economy.No. What happens? People in business adapt and they innovate. If we really backed New Zealanders to innovate then we would not be deferring a price on pollution for industries that are polluting. We would be putting it there and saying: “How are we going to now fix this problem and reduce our pollution and provide real options to consumers?”. That is the real world—that is how it works. That is entirely in line with economic theory but it does not work I think for this National Government because ultimately it is defending the status quo and it does not believe in change and transition enough. It does not back New Zealand enough to say: “We will rise to the challenge of climate change and come up with better solutions.”As my colleague James Shaw said earlier a better way to deal with trade-exposed industries is border tariff adjustments but another thing to do is to be leading in our international trading negotiations and making a fair price for carbon pollution a priority in any international trade negotiations because the fate of the world rests in our hands. If we are sitting around talking about the future of trade the future of the economy and negotiating deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and other trade agreements the Government needs to be responding to climate change first.