Chauvel Charles: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — In Committee Speaker Recalled In Committee 
[Sitting date: 06 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6288. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 I want to just mention at the outset of this contribution that my colleague Moana Mackey is unable to speak in the Committee today. She is our spokesperson on climate change issues and she is ill. But I am very pleased to rise and make a contribution as a former spokesperson on the issue. 
I want to make just a couple of points about Part 1. It is the major part of the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill by a country mile. Of the 103 clauses and the schedule in this bill fully 102 apart from clauses 1 2 and 3 appear in Part 1. So it is to be expected that the bulk of the debate will be concentrated on this part. As was said in the earlier stages of this debate and also by many submitters to the Finance and Expenditure Committee whose submissions I have had the opportunity to read the bill is a great disappointment to those who would see progress on the issue of climate change in New Zealand. 
The legislation is fundamentally flawed. It is rushed and it will do nothing to curb the growth in New Zealand’s gross greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed the provisions of Part 1 simply reflect the delusion that seems to have seized the Government that the environment and the economy are contrary forces to be balanced against each other when actually they are two sides of the same coin and need to be seen properly as dependent upon one another. The weakening of the emissions trading scheme which this part will substantially accomplish if it is passed will make New Zealand absolutely struggle to meet even the Government’s target of a 50 percent reduction in emissions by the year 2050. 
It is instructive to compare what the provisions of this part would do with what the Government promised when it campaigned for election in 2008 once Labour had actually legislated for an emissions trading scheme for New Zealand. These were the promises. The changes National said it would bring in would be fiscally neutral. Well that promise is already broken and this part will ensure that it is further broken. The Government itself has estimated that this legislation will cost some $328 million. That is the size of the subsidy that this Parliament will be enacting if it passes Part 1. The Sustainability Council thinks that the subsidy is about four times that number—$1.3 billion. That is what Part 1 will accomplish if it passes in its current form. And this is on top of the 51 million tonne deficit that the emissions trading scheme now contains which is also estimated to cost around $1.3 billion at the current carbon cap price. This is simply a continuation of National’s approach of passing costs on to New Zealand taxpayers to reduce costs for polluters. 
This Government’s tinkering is doing more harm than good. There is no certainty in the business environment. We all I think agree that certainty to businesses is a fundamental thing that we ought to be providing so that they can get on and plan and they can get on and order their affairs. If the rules change every year if the commitments just go on to the never-never every year if the promises are postponed every year then there is certainly no certainty for business or for any other actors in this particular part of the economy. 
This bill fails to target some of the crucial issues within the emissions trading scheme—for example the influx of cheap international units making the price of carbon in New Zealand lower than in other schemes and making for a large deficit in our emissions trading scheme. What the part shows is that National is happy to manage the slow decline of New Zealand rather than moving forwards to a clean and clever low-carbon economy. That was the intention of the original emissions trading scheme and this part of the bill simply takes us further and further away from that original intention. Labour is not content to fall behind the rest of the world and we will be voting against this part of the bill. 
My colleague Moana Mackey has put forward a number of amendments that would go some way to fixing some of the damage that this part would cause. There is Supplementary Order Paper 144 where Moana Mackey’s amendments would provide for a transitional phase-out of the two-for-one surrender of units and a transitional carbon cap price. That is a very good Supplementary Order Paper and I want to commend it to the Committee. She also has on the Table Supplementary Order Paper 142 which would require 50 percent of units surrendered to be New Zealand units. That would help to deal with the problem which I mentioned earlier of the influx of units that is so undermining the scheme and the price in New Zealand. 
She also in Supplementary Order Paper 146 has amendments to clauses 42 and 71 that would provide for some transparency. I remember when Dr Nick Smith was the Minister responsible. He always said that the most transparent regime that we could achieve in this area would be the best one from the point of view of the public. Well I agree and so does Moana Mackey and what she has done is put forward an amendment that would provide for that by ensuring that the costs that are actually faced by consumers and taxpayers would have to be published by the Government so that the public could actually have an idea of what this massive wealth transfer this massive subsidy scheme which is what the emissions trading scheme has become is actually costing consumers and taxpayers. It is a very good amendment and I commend it to the Committee of the whole House. 
Moana Mackey also has an amendment on Supplementary Order Paper 141 which would delete clause 96 relating to the application of the emissions trading scheme to the agriculture sector. I said earlier that there can be no certainty in a scheme where there are constant reviews being undertaken where deadlines are continually being put out and where in New Zealand’s case the largest source of emissions the primary sector is simply being given the message that it will never be— 
Shane Ardern 
: Where’s the science? Back it up with science. 
CHARLES CHAUVEL 
: —bound by the emissions trading scheme. Mr Ardern asks: “Where’s the science?”. Well the fact that a member of this Parliament would ask that question so far into the debate the fact that the National Party still contains climate change deniers who would say that agriculture and primary production simply do not contribute to the problem is a sad testimony to what a lack of progress we have made in this country on this question—if that contribution can seriously be made in this Committee. 
There are other amendments before the Committee in the name of Kennedy Graham. He has put forward a comprehensive Supplementary Order Paper 147. I think there are a number of measures in that Supplementary Order Paper that the Committee should pay close attention to and give careful consideration to. Many of them at least on my first blush reading of them seem to make a lot of sense and I want to commend Dr Graham for having put those amendments in front of the Committee. I hope that we will see some careful consideration of them because as we have heard in previous contributions the scrutiny that this legislation got in the select committee was not the sort of detailed look at this sort of complex economic question that it merits. There was a very truncated select committee process and that is not what this question deserves. 
Dr Graham and Moana Mackey are both trying to remedy that at this stage of the debate by ensuring that there is material before the Committee that allows an alternative view to be considered and I hope that that will be what happens in this debate. I hope we hear detailed contributions on it and that we hear a response from the Minister for Climate Change Issues both to the issues I have highlighted which Moana Mackey’s Supplementary Order Papers would deal with and to the scheme that is put up in Dr Graham’s Supplementary Order Paper. It deserves I think at least that courtesy both because of the importance of the issue and because these are clearly bona fide attempts to address in good faith the major problems we face in this area.