Bennett PaulaHon PAULA BENNETT (Minister for Climate Change Issues): Those few people who are watching or listening in may think they have entered an alternate universe. Here on a Thursday afternoon in Parliament we are having a debate where we all kind of agree with each other on a cross-party piece of work. I just want to say that I fully endorse and support the cross-party nature of GLOBE-NZ and certainly the introduction of this Vivid Economics report on climate change. But yes there must be the odd person out there who is checking the dial on their radio and wondering what is going on. Grant Robertson you will be thrilled to know that I am the last speaker in this debate and Parliament does get to rise straight after. If you want to seek leave so I can do an extra hour or something you know feel free. I am sure I could channel Hekia Parata in her last day as a Minister and get a bit more in. I joke but not on the subject of climate change actually. I like the fact that we have got a cross-party piece of work. I admire and respect the work that Vivid has done. As a consequence of that I think that even as a Minister in the Government it can help feed into the work that we are doing. I certainly acknowledge it as a piece of work that is owned by Parliament and is ours and is owned by Vivid. But you cannot blame me for wanting to read it and take some bits out of it and think about how that kind of shapes the work that I am doing as a Minister.I have been listening to this debate and I thank everyone for their contributions and their insightfulness. There are a few things that interest me. Julie Anne Genter was just talking about getting on with it and now is kind of the moment and a few others have picked up on that theme.Tim Groser when he was the Minister for Climate Change Issues used to say: I think I have got it about right because my correspondence is 50 percent you're going too far and 50 percent you're not going far enough." I can tell you that I no longer—well I should not say "no longer". It is now rare for me to receive correspondence from people telling me that climate change is not real and that we are barking mad. I reckon I sense it in the speeches that I give. I sense it in the audiences I am with. Just last week I think it was or the adjournment week I gave two speeches to large audiences of farmers. I always talk climate change. One was with my colleague Ian McKelvie. I can tell you that they do not now debate whether it is real or not.We might debate the different aspects of what is impacting the most but actually New Zealand has moved on. Our own caucus has moved on to be quite blunt with you. We have a number of members who have been here in the last 6 years who probably think differently from some who were here 20 years ago and I think that is healthy. It is a healthy sign for New Zealand in terms of a topic a subject that is as important as this.I argue to people that we are already changing so do not freak out. The climate is changing but so are we as New Zealanders as to how we live and what we do. What we need is the mapped-out plan for what those changes are going forward.The biggest call that I get from businesses—they have all got opinions but what they say to me is: "Give us the plan and give us some certainty." so that they can make some decisions within that. Quite a lot have been approaching me of late and saying that they want to invest literally hundreds of millions of dollars in new plant and different ways of doing things. What they need from Parliament is some certainty on some ground rules around the emissions trading scheme (ETS) and I think we have got some challenges there as a Parliament as to whether or not we can all agree that it is going to be a foundation. It is entirely up to other parties as to where they move the levers within it but if we want businesses to be investing literally hundreds of millions of dollars into cleaner plants that are better for the environment they need certainty not just in the next 5 years but actually as we know for at least the next 10 or 15 years. In terms of making that kind of an investment their boards are not deciding in the next 6 months and building 6 months later—those are years-long kinds of investments. I think that that is a challenge for us as to how we address that.I have said many times that we have got a whole lot of pieces of work that are going on at the moment. The one that is probably coming up for us quite quickly is phase two of the ETS. We have done the consultation phase and officials are currently working on their advice to me. I honestly do not know what that is because it is their job to go through all of the technical nature of it to work their way through it. But I have to say it will be tackling some big issues. Today in question time in the House I touched on the cap so that is on the table for discussion.There is the big question around allocation for businesses after 2020. Certainly a lot of them are asking really big questions around that. There are also questions around units and auctioning and what that means. So these are really significant and big subjects that we have to work our way through and fairly soon. As I say I am not sure—I think that is one that we need to make sure we are looking at in the right space and time.In the other work that is going on I reckon there are some other areas that we can agree on. The one that is pretty obvious and that stands out in the Vivid report is planting more trees and talking about land use. We can have the big arguments about land use and I am sure we will and we should continue to. They are not unhealthy. They are not unhealthy for our farming sector. They are not unhealthy for our foresters. They are not unhealthy for us as a country. We make no bones about it—we support farmers and how they do it and actually there is no point in cutting them off at the knees here in New Zealand. The world still needs what they produce and there are more inefficient farmers in other parts of the world who would pick up the slack and the world would be worse off from an emissions profile point of view. So we should be backing our New Zealand farmers and looking more I think at how we get more consistency of sustainable and efficient farming across the agricultural sector because there are still pockets that could pick up and take some better practice.But when it comes to what those next steps are and how we map out that longer-term plan—yes I have got a focus on 2030. You would expect me to. Without actually looking at that and getting that right then we have got huge expenses. But looking forward to 2050 is something that I think this Parliament should continue to tackle.Happy Easter everyone and take care out there on the roads.The debate having concluded the motion lapsed.The House adjourned at 4.43 p.m."