van de Molen TimTIM VAN DE MOLEN (National—Waikato): Thank you Mr Speaker and happy to take a call on this bill; my excitement to leap up before just about pre-empting the previous speaker's contribution. But look ultimately what we've got here is a pretty straightforward response. We've heard from most of the speakers now on some of the ins and outs of why it's important. I do just want to touch on a couple of aspects.As we've heard it's unchanged from the select committee but effectively what we've got here is a pragmatic solution which is refreshing to a challenge that was coming at a rate of knots—quite quickly as it were—1 January 2023 being only some six weeks away. And of course the need to have to comply for those owners of small forestry holdings—not necessarily themselves small but the holdings of which they have some forestry being relatively small in scale—being able to then have a bit more flexibility around working out how they may comply if they do find themselves in the position where they have this liability being imposed on them through the legislation now have a further two years in which to work through what a solution might look like for them.I'm sure that will be a massive weight off their shoulders because indeed it could be a quite significant obligation. As we've heard the threshold here is that small forestry participants are considered to be below 25000 units per year—of course anywhere within that—but potentially if they were at the upper end based on that current unit price in the $80-odd range you're talking a $2.2 million liability. At a three to one penalty regime of course that blows out to $6.5-odd million pretty quickly. That's quite a large sum of money for someone to come up with particularly if they are a smaller business and looking at that sort of contribution would be daunting to say the least I'm sure. Even if they were able to borrow to fund that you're still looking then at a debt-servicing cost of several hundred thousand dollars. And when you look at that in the scheme of what may be a small to medium farming business or growing business that could potentially be significantly damaging for their business such that they are no longer viable.I think particularly when we look at the current environment—and we've seen interest rates moving significantly through the last year in particular—that potential liability from a debt-servicing perspective of someone looking at the upper end under this threshold would have shifted from somewhere around the low $300000 mark as the annual interest bill to now north of half a million dollars off the back of interest rate changes that we've seen. So that is a significant shift—an additional $200000-odd of interest costs for business if they were borrowing and in this instance to try and repay that potential liability.So anything we can do to relieve some of the pressure from this cost of living crisis we're finding ourselves in across the board here in New Zealand is certainly welcome whether that's in a private capacity or for businesses. And of course we're seeing them again across the country facing unprecedentedly high costs at a time when revenue streams can be somewhat variable and that is leading to a lot of pressure in a whole range of industries but certainly in the food and fibre space as well. [Cellphone rings] And I suspect that may be my time up or some sort of acknowledgment of my wonderful contribution today! But I will give it another minute or so just to check that that wasn't actually an aberration—DEPUTY SPEAKER: We'll take something between the two. Carry on Mr van de Molen.TIM VAN DE MOLEN: Thank you Mr Speaker. So as I say you know this is potentially a very big obligation for anyone who finds themselves in the position where they have a liability occurring under this legislation and having that flexibility of a further two years to try and come up with a solution is certainly going to help. Of course I gave that example of the debt-servicing scenario; I'm not entirely sure that there would be too many banks who would be willing just to provide an additional $6-odd million of debt to fund a liability under this legislation. And as I mentioned the ongoing viability impact that would come from the half a million dollar - odd interest bill would of course be challenging for the business as well.But ultimately it does give them that capacity and I'm interested—and not having been on the select committee or involved in this previously—around whether there are implications not just in some of the scenarios we've heard earlier throughout this debate of people who came into or perhaps bought a block of land and found that they then inadvertently had a liability that went alongside that which may or may not have been a result of you know due diligence not being as thorough as it could have or it was perhaps just a genuine situation where it may have changed hands several times and none of those parties knew and now suddenly somehow it's come up. I'm stretching it a little bit here but the reality is you could find yourself with this liability and those situations. But quite aside from that too if you were to perhaps inherit a property—and therefore there was no risk of someone saying Well hey you perhaps should have just done better due diligence and worked this out."—actually in that situation I suspect you'd still be facing a significant liability under this legislation. You wouldn't be exempt and so you would have to work through a solution as well.So on the face of it a further two years to manage through that challenge is appropriate given that we are talking in the overall scheme of the emissions trading scheme and what we're trying to achieve: a relatively low impact a negligible impact from these small holders or holders of small forestry blocks as it were—not small in the people themselves or necessarily bonsai-sized trees—but I think we're all aware of the context of generally a small block of land compared to a large forestry parcel. And so on that basis I think I've outdone my time and I will commend this bill to the House."