Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green—Rongotai): Tēnā koe Mr Speaker. Tēnā koutou e te Whare. Before I get into the weeds of the Land Transport (Clean Vehicle Standard) Amendment Bill and the difficulties that I see with it I just want to put it in the larger context of why we need an effective Clean Car Standard and an effective price incentive like the Clean Car Discount and why New Zealand benefits from those policies. Everyone in New Zealand benefits from those policies and that's because we are in a climate crisis.Putting fossil fuels into the atmosphere is changing the atmosphere it's trapping more heat it's creating more extreme weather events and we've known about this for decades. I appreciate that maybe not everyone in the House has known about it for decades but there are climate scientists and certainly people in the Green Party have known about it for decades. We've been saying it because a whole bunch of countries got together and signed up to the Kyoto Protocol in the early 1990s and around that time—and I know because I was growing up in the United States at that time—there started to be a kind of organised lobby against climate action and the organised lobby was funded by fossil fuel companies because they didn't want the world to take action; they wanted to sell more oil and gas not because it's good for all of us but because it was good for them because they were making money out of it. But they knew that it was going to make life more difficult and impossible in some parts of the planet if we carried on doing it. Of course it's more than just fossil fuels but that's the big driving one.In other countries where they took climate change seriously and they didn't have so many lobbyists from car manufacturers who didn't want to change what they were doing because they wanted to carry on making big profits they brought in policies like fuel economy standards and they brought in policies like feebates. And what happened? Their vehicle fleets became more efficient. That efficiency is good for everyone because it means we spend less money to drive a certain distance and to move our goods a certain distance. But the thing is that without those policies in place the car manufacturers—and the American car manufacturers in particular kept lobbying to not have those standards—found it more profitable in the short term because the higher-emissions vehicles were less costly for them to make and they could sell them for more. People don't really take into account the ongoing operating costs of the vehicle when they purchase their vehicle so they'll pay more for a vehicle that actually costs them more in the long run.Now this is a very easy problem for a country like New Zealand to solve because we don't have an oil industry that actually powers our cars. All of our oil is exported. All of our oil has always been exported because it's not the kind of oil that you refine into petrol and put in your cars and trucks. So we do import oil and we could still have the benefit of exporting the oil that we produce while having the benefit of not spending money importing oil. For those who really care about farming and dairy and its contribution for New Zealand they might be interested to know that all of our dairy exports do not pay for all of our car and fuel imports on an annual basis. So if we can do the same amount of business with spending less money on imported petrol and diesel and spending less money on imported cars that's a direct productivity gain to New Zealand something the Government parties should be interested in. But they are not because the truth is the Government parties are the parties of the status quo and they are the parties of the big corporate lobbyists. They've been lobbied for this bill by the car industries that import the highest-emitting vehicles.I welcome the Government parties to listen to reason on this because the cost-benefit analysis of the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount together was positive and it mainly benefited all New Zealanders who would then be spending less money on petrol to drive around. If Government parties actually cared about climate change which they clearly don't and making some sort of contribution they would take seriously the evidence around the policies that are going to lead to more efficient vehicles in New Zealand and lower-emissions vehicles. They've already demonstrated they have no interest in making our cities more efficient for transport. They don't want to make it easier for kids to walk and cycle. They're actually going to make it more dangerous for kids to walk and cycle to school. They're going to make it more difficult for people to take public transport. They're trying to kill rail freight in this country by cancelling a contract with an overseas ally in South Korea—shocking shocking for New Zealand's reputation.Here we are; we've got the data right in front of us. Before the Clean Car Discount and Standard were brought in the average emissions of vehicles coming into New Zealand was 189g per kilometre. The car industry said We can't change that. We can't possibly change that." But then when we brought in the Clean Car Discount it dropped quite rapidly to 165g per kilometre decreasing 30g per kilometre per year.Grant McCallum: The ute tax you mean.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: And when we had the Clean Car Discount and Clean Car Standard operating it dropped to 136g per kilometre. Now I hear members opposite bringing up a kind of pejorative description of that policy and I invite those members to reflect what is really important here. We all need to work together in order to solve the climate crisis. We have an opportunity to work together to have a more efficient vehicle fleet a more efficient transport system that is good for New Zealand's productivity. The members opposite say no. They turn it into a culture war that is not based on any evidence whatsoever and then they blame it on me. Mr Speaker?SPEAKER: Yeah talk to the Chair not engage across the House in conversation like that. Carry on.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Mr Speaker I welcome you to notice the level of interjections and perhaps tell members opposite—SPEAKER: And I just commented on it.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Thank you. So if we want an effective policy to reduce emissions from our vehicle fleet which everyone in New Zealand benefits from except the very small number of people who happen to be selling high-emitting vehicles and they can switch to selling low-emitting vehicles—that's the purpose of the policy. It's not just about changing the consumer's choice; it's about changing the option that is even available for consumers to make. When we didn't have fuel economy standards—and we were one of only three countries in the developed world to not have fuel economy standards along with Russia and Australia which is now bringing in some sort of standards—we were a dumping ground for the most polluting inefficient vehicles in the world. How is that good for New Zealand? How? Can any member opposite explain to me how it's good for New Zealand to be a dumping ground for high-polluting vehicles? Is there any rationale for that? No.So that's why we have the Clean Car Standard and what this bill is doing is actually introducing a whole lot of uncertainty because it is taking away standards and targets that were set in legislation years ago after a thorough consultation process and a full select committee process in which everybody was able to make their voices heard. Those have been known by the industry for years now. It's taking away that certainty and it's saying "We don't know what the targets are going to be two years from now. We don't know. The Government is going to make it up. It's not going to go through a select committee process." It's going through this bill under urgency and they are clearly being lobbied by the highly polluting vehicle importers who don't want to have to meet the standard.I welcome members opposite to show us how it is that they are introducing certainty by taking away already agreed and consulted upon targets that have been known for years and replacing it with nothing tonight or tomorrow and then saying the Cabinet is going to make up its own decision about what those targets are and just pass them without going through a consultation process. Clearly we're getting closer to those years of 2025 2026 2027 and what everybody has known would be the targets is no longer going to be the targets. And there's this totally uncertain scheme for recovering the cost from the vehicle importers themselves. So I don't see how anyone can say this bill is increasing certainty for the vehicle industry or for anyone when it's clearly intruding a whole lot of uncertainty and an unknown cost recovery scheme unknown targets for the next three years.Clearly combined with the removal of the Clean Car Discount we have seen the average emissions of vehicles coming into the country jump up to 161g per kilometre and there's simply no way to practically achieve the outcome that we all know we have to achieve which is reducing carbon emissions. There are huge benefits to reducing carbon emissions. There's almost no losers in New Zealand from these sorts of policies. So it is a real shame that the Government parties in Opposition opposed these policies when they are policies that could have been supported across party and would be effective at getting a wide range of benefits for New Zealand."