English Bill: General Debate 
English Bill: General Debate 
[Volume:635;Page:6304] 
Hon BILL ENGLISH (National—Clutha-Southland) 
: 
 I can recall a question time in this House a few years back when I watched Helen Clark go through the contortions of pulling her Government back from an economic target that she had set and that was to put New Zealand into the top half of the OECD for economic growth. It was one of those long complicated processes where she started by saying: “Well I put it in my speech but it wasn’t formal. The officials put it in all the documents but it wasn’t me who signed them. It was aspirational. It wasn’t something that we ever took seriously.” In the end of course she had to abandon it because even under reasonable economic conditions she had absolutely no hope under her policies of getting New Zealand into the top half of the economic ladder of the OECD. 
I sat here during question time yesterday and today and I felt it all happening again. Again we have heard an aspirational target. Helen Clark got up at the Labour Party conference and said that New Zealand would become carbon neutral. That is a very very tough target. In fact it is so tough that she will certainly not be able to achieve it. Helen Clark has been asked just what she means by carbon neutrality and she will not say. Does she mean stabilising emissions where they are? Does she mean no growth in emissions? Does she mean that New Zealand will eliminate all emissions? The Stern report states that emissions will have to be cut by 60 to 80 percent. Does she mean that New Zealand will eliminate carbon emissions? That is what most people who use the term “carbon neutral” think it means. 
Steve Chadwick 
: Offset. 
Hon BILL ENGLISH 
: Offset or whatever it is Helen Clark has not been able to tell this House what she means by her target. 
National members of course are deeply sceptical and I will tell members why. Every single policy that Labour has brought in except for the bill that is currently before the House has been a failure. The levy for research into methane emissions otherwise known as the “fart tax” was announced and abandoned. The carbon tax was announced and abandoned. The tendering of renewable energy projects was stopped. The negotiated greenhouse agreements were announced then abandoned. [ 
Interruption 
] Now we are hearing the other Helen Clark gambit—that it is all National’s fault. The Government takes the ministerial salaries and the limos and all the credit for everything but if something does not work it is because the National Party did not support it. So now it is National’s fault. 
Well it is not National’s fault; it is Labour’s fault. It is Labour’s fault because although those members know how to articulate their objectives how to publish the pamphlets how to get the civil service pushing the Government’s political message at the cost of tens of millions of dollars to the taxpayer all over the country every day they simply lack the competence to deal with this major issue. How do we know that they lack the competence? Because every single major policy initiative has turned into a debacle. 
Even the things that are not initiatives have ended up a mess. The Government was meant to be producing more energy in New Zealand from renewable sources and we have less. The Government decided to build an oil-fired power station at Whirinaki and to stop a hydro project down on the West Coast because even though that project was going to be in a gorse-filled gully the gully was owned by the Department of Conservation. Those are the decisions the Government made. It could not have made any worse decisions in terms of pushing up carbon emissions. If the Government had set out to raise carbon emissions those policies would have been a success. Imagine if Government members had got up and said that! They would have been ridiculed. 
Now National members are going to expose step by step Labour’s record on environmental policy and climate change in particular to show that the most reckless leader of any Government in the developed world in respect of the global climate is not George Bush and is not John Howard; it is Helen Clark. 
Debate interrupted.