Simpson Scott; Williams PotoHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker. It's a pleasure to take a call in this first reading of this historic piece of legislation introduced into the House today. It's vaguely ironic to be following the chair of the select committee who commenced her speech by saying that we had to as a Parliament and as a nation move beyond the fine words and then proceeded to give us 9½ minutes of fine words and no detail.Actually it's the detail in this legislation that counts. It's the detail that is important and it's the detail that New Zealanders want to know about. At select committee we're going to get a lot of detail and I hope that New Zealanders—organisations communities and people interested in this subject of climate change—will take up the invitation of my colleague Todd Muller and make representations and submissions to the select committee in their hundreds if not their thousands because this is important legislation.It was the Bluegreens who about four years ago brought over to New Zealand to address our Bluegreen forum held in Waimauku in Auckland that year the chair of the British climate committee Lord Deben. He came over because we were interested in what the UK model looked like and the establishment of a structure a format an institution that was based largely on the model that the UK had implemented some 10 years prior. He gave us a very good insight into how that model had been working and members of the Environment Committee were fortunate to meet briefly with him when we visited London a year or so ago.If I can just pause for a moment to continue that story I want to acknowledge in the Chamber today Dr Kennedy Graham who in the previous Parliament chaired the GLOBE-NZ organisation—a genuinely cross-party organisation representing members of Parliament from all sides of this House and every party in the last Parliament was represented in that. We worked together collaboratively on a very good piece of work that resulted in a Vivid Economics report that focused on options for a carbon-zero New Zealand and this bill has its genesis in some of that work and I'm very pleased that Kennedy is with us today.When we had Lord Deben here we looked at the UK model and we thought about the benefits of an independent science-based informed impartial expert panel to create a pathway towards a zero-carbon economy for New Zealand and New Zealanders. When we looked at the UK model we were I think impressed to a person that the independence of that model had received almost unanimous support in their Parliament and that the budgets that had been set by the United Kingdom climate committee were then being implemented by the elected politicians of the day.It was James Shaw in his introductory speech today that told us actually this is legislation that if it's really going to work has to endure the changes of multiple Governments over its history and knowing as we do that there will be a change very soon in Government we on this side are determined to work collaboratively with the current Government in order to try and make this work but we have some very serious reservations. It's around the setting of targets within this legislation that is the core problem and the core concern for us on this side. In the UK what's been effective is—it's been the committee. It's been their equivalent of what we are going to establish in terms of a commission that has been responsible for setting those targets people who actually know an awful lot more about this area than any one of us in this Parliament. The UK Parliament the House of Commons has deferred to those experts in a way that I think is exemplary and cause for reflection in terms of comparing their model to what we have before us today.When we went as an Environment Committee to London and also to Brussels to have a look at the European Union's methodology for coping with climate change legislation what we found out was of course that in Europe agriculture is so far down their list of priorities in terms of adaptation and mitigation that they're not even looking at it most of them. Their footprints are completely different to ours. They're focused on transport on heating on industrial emissions—a completely different focus. In fact when we asked them the hard questions about What do you think should be done about agriculture?" inevitably they came back to us and said "Well boy we were hoping that New Zealand will sort that out for us. We are hoping that by the time we get to having to address our subsidised agricultural sector New Zealand will have provided answers for us." They're looking to us to provide answers and right at this minute this piece of legislation asks questions to which there are no answers in the world. Not only are there just no answers in Europe; there are no answers in the world.We are being asked as a Parliament to inflict upon the economy of New Zealand a target that has been set to meet the political narrative of the coalition Government particularly the Green Party because this is a bill that is actually misnamed. This is not a Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill; it's actually more appropriately and correctly named a "Climate Change Commission Bill" because that's what it does. It sets up a climate change commission. That's really what it does. Then it seeks to put in place some targets that as I said have been put in the legislation to meet the convenient narrative essentially of the Green Party to try and appease their frustrated angry and very upset base who have felt now for 18 months that they've done almost nothing on the environment that they promised so much about. This was a piece of legislation that we were already supposed to have enacted by now. Such are the complicated perverse goings-on within the coalition Government that it's taken this long for a bill to be introduced.Surprisingly some of this country's harshest critics of this piece of legislation have in fact been environmental NGOs former Green Party members of Parliament former leaders of the Green Party. Listen to what one Russel Norman had to say when this bill was first made public. The headline from him was "Toothless zero carbon bill has bark but no bite" and the reason he said that was because the zero carbon bill has no ability to enforce its climate change targets. There is nothing binding about the targets that are proposed in this bill as challenging and as scary and as economically frustrating as they are. Norman went on to say that "the Bill will have little … effect because it has specifically written out any mechanism that would hold any person or body to account for not adhering to it." "There's bark but … no bite" he said. "There is no remedy or relief for failure to meet the 2050 target meaning there is no legal compulsion for anyone to take any notice."Therein lies the rub because if this bill is to be an effective piece of legislation and is to take us along what I think now is the broadly accepted pathway towards a zero carbon future for New Zealand then this bill actually doesn't do that. This bill just sets up the commission—and we support that the establishment of that framework the establishment of the institution the establishment of a group of experts to give advice to this Parliament and future Parliaments about what actions should be taken. But ultimately the actions remain the sovereignty of elected representatives sitting in this Chamber and future representatives sitting in this Chamber and to think that this bill will solve all those problems is as Russel Norman says really just to acknowledge that there is bark but no bite in this legislation.So on this side of the House we support the bill to select committee. We look forward to the select committee proceedings. We invite New Zealanders to participate in their hundreds if not thousands on this bill to pick it to pieces so that it could be a better bill so that it could be a bill that New Zealanders could get behind and could get behind in a way that is not going to throw our economy under a bus. Thank you Madam Assistant Speaker.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Poto Williams): I understand this is a split call. Angie Warren-Clark you have five minutes."