Genter Julie AnneHon JULIE ANNE GENTER (Green): It's wonderful to have legislation in front of the House that means that parties are all acknowledging the extreme urgency and need to respond to climate change; something the Green Party has been talking about for 30 or 40 years now—as long as we've existed.So it's really good that everyone's come on board and I actually heard the Hon Gerry Brownlee saying that we need a lot of serious work to respond to climate change. That is true and I would love to see the National Party or the ACT Party proposing any viable options to respond to climate change. Unfortunately I haven't seen any.So the debate from Labour I have to agree with: that National doesn't have a plan and that we can't do everything through the emissions trading scheme (ETS). Any academic or scientist or serious analysis of this situation has concluded that we can't just rely on the ETS to get the outcomes we want; we need serious coordinated Government leadership and coordinated action between Government and the private sector in order to respond to the climate crisis and to develop the solutions that will help us radically reduce emissions in a short space of time.With the Clean Car Discount and the Clean Car Standard there has been quite a significant reduction in the average emissions of new vehicles being imported into New Zealand and that's a huge benefit. But we still have 4 million vehicles on the road that were brought over before the Clean Car Standard and the Clean Car Discount existed and people are still using those. So we need some way to reduce the emissions that are caused by those vehicles—and also by heavy vehicles because heavy vehicles are even further away from having the electrification solution.So on that basis—because in the Green Party policy we had reservations about biofuels back when this policy was first mooted in around 2006 2007—we did support the bill to select committee and founding co-leader of the Green Party Jeanette Fitzsimons had a member's bill at the time to bring in very strict sustainability criteria. In theory there is scope for second-generation wood-waste biofuel sustainably produced in New Zealand but there's no question that the quantity we could produce would probably be less than the quantity of fossil fuels we're currently using to move heavy vehicles in particular.It would also probably cost more than fossil fuels but the cost of fossil fuels is—continuing to use them—completely unaffordable because it's leading to climate breakdown which is going to affect food supply it's going to affect the ability for humans to live sustainably and to have stability in their lives that enable us to thrive and to trade and to do other things that we all have spent the last centuries doing.So the Green Party has serious concerns about whether there truly can be the quantity of truly sustainable biofuel that would be needed to meet the mandate as it has been proposed in this legislation and the regulations. We have serious concerns that while there might be a very small role that biofuel can play in reducing emissions from heavy transport in the short term I don't believe that this bill as drafted can guarantee that we wouldn't have biofuels brought in to meet the mandate that do result in deforestation in other parts of the world or higher carbon emissions than even fossil fuels. So the Green Party has decided to support this bill to select committee only but we'll be looking very very closely at the submissions and the evidence presented throughout that process. What I understand at this point is that it simply will not be possible that it becomes a way of greenwashing transport that there is an industry that has been able to produce biofuels and some of the categorisation of the ingredients in those biofuels is fuzzy—it's not necessarily from waste products. So the idea that you could just take products that are purely waste products that otherwise would not be used and turn them into a sustainable biofuel is very attractive. But there is a problem with mandating that we meet a certain supply of that because there's a risk that we're not able to meet the supply.I do understand that we need coordinated Government action—some of that will be regulatory some of that will be policy some of that will be funding—in order to create potential solutions. But I think in this case unfortunately the transport emissions reduction plan is leaning too heavily on biofuel without crunching the numbers on the quantity of sustainable biofuel that we would actually be able to source in this decade.So the Minister did put the challenge to those parties that weren't going to support this bill to say how they would reduce emissions from transport and I do think that's really important. I think it's a very clear message from the Green Party about how we can reduce emissions from transport in a way that is hugely beneficial to our towns and cities that actually costs less money than what we're currently spending on transport.Our current transport system is so heavily reliant on private cars not because all the people using them have chosen it but because they have no real alternative. And that is a consequence of Government decisions over decades. So local government and central government working together could create communities where it's very convenient and enticing to use clean reliable frequent public transport buses and trains to have the planning for bikes and other small vehicles that are fully electric like e-scooters—even mobility scooters can use those sort of separated lanes. If we designed our communities in this smarter way which many parts of the world do people get these huge benefits. They have to spend less time commuting households have to own fewer cars and that is a direct productivity gain to New Zealand. Because right now the drag on the total economic cost of high car ownership to New Zealand is an absurd proportion of GDP. We're talking many tens of billions of dollars annually for households and businesses to own multiple vehicles to park them in places and to—Simon Court: What's the value of mobility though? Surely there's a benefit of personal mobility.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Now I'm being interrupted by Simon Court. Because he's very close to me it's very difficult for me to not get sidetracked by his interjections. So I will say Simon Court says What's the value of mobility?" And I would say "Exactly that; exactly that Simon." We can provide low-carbon affordable mobility to people. We can do that as Government and local government can—working together can provide far greater benefits to people than forcing them into high car ownership. And the difference between—ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Order! Can I just ask the member to come back to biofuels? I'm allowing a breadth of discussion across the House but I would appreciate if the member could—notwithstanding the member has been sidetracked by another member—come back to biofuels.Hon Eugenie Sage: Point of order.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): Point of order Hon Eugenie Sage.Hon Eugenie Sage: Thank you Madam Speaker. My colleague was explaining the concept and responding to the Minister's comment about parties that have concerns about the bill setting out their alternative. And that was exactly what she was doing. So it was centred on the debate.ASSISTANT SPEAKER (Hon Jacqui Dean): All right thank you for that. Thank you. I will accept and apologise to the member. I will say that when I'm in my office and not in the chair I'm not necessarily following the debate but thank you for your intervention. With apologies to the member. The Hon Julie Anne Genter—although it would be great if she said "biofuels" just every now and again.Hon JULIE ANNE GENTER: Yes yes. Thank you Madam Speaker. So the reason we need sustainable biofuels at this point in time is because our transport system is very heavily reliant on cars but cars are an inherently energy-inefficient way to move short distances around a city and they take up lots of land. So there really is an opportunity—and I've always thought this—right across the House for us all to agree that a more economically and financially efficient transport system that enables people to get around both with a car and without a car should be something that New Zealand could aspire to and most other countries have in fact delivered.So that would be one way of reducing the reliance on sustainable biofuels to reduce our emissions in this decade: to go really really hard on maximising the opportunities for active and public transport in our towns and cities. And more medium and long term we must invest in high-quality passenger rail and other services. There will be a role for electric buses of course for passenger services in some parts of the country.But all these opportunities to reduce the energy inefficiency of our current transport system is a direct economic and productivity gain to New Zealand—and actually a gain of quality of life because while there is a proportion of people who quite love driving and want to own cars it's not the proportion that currently are forced to do so because there are no viable alternatives. Ultimately that is a consequence of Government policy and planning rules—something I thought the ACT Party would agree with that planning rules have forced car-oriented development. So that was unnecessary Government regulation that has resulted in inefficient outcomes. Anyway the Green Party has an alternative. We will support this to select committee but it will take I think a lot of really compelling information and some changes to the bill for us to support it past select committee."