McClay Todd: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
McClay Todd: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Third Reading 
[Sitting date: 08 November 2012. Volume:685;Page:6454. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
TODD McCLAY (National—Rotorua) 
: 
 This Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill is important legislation for New Zealand and it is New Zealand doing its part as part of international climate change action. The great travesty is in the last speech from that last speaker Charles Chauvel. It was full of bunkum across the board. You see New Zealand is not leading nor are we lagging behind other countries but we are doing our fair share. We are adding integrity to a New Zealand system and futureproofing it. Members opposite are saying that there is a great challenge at the moment because of the price of carbon. Well last year it was sitting at around $20 and before that $25. As the Minister for Climate Change Issues has said the price during the course of this year has gone down significantly. 
This piece of legislation is not about the price today; it is about making sure that the Government current and future has the tools to make sure that our emissions trading scheme can be robust so that New Zealand is doing its fair share—not lagging behind and certainly not out the front of other countries. I say to the Minister who spoke earlier Tim Groser that this is a pragmatic approach to climate change. The amendments to our emissions trading scheme will make it future-protected while supporting jobs in this country and not increasing costs on New Zealanders who are vulnerable. 
The last speaker in the debate Charles Chauvel said that there are companies in New Zealand that are profiteering because they are charging much more for carbon than the actual cost today. Well it will interest that speaker to know that we asked officials to go and get us proof of this and they said they could not find any. Indeed I have done a little bit of research myself and I have spoken widely outside of this. Just a couple of weeks ago I had a chance to talk to a carbon farming company which creates credits through growing trees leasing land and buying land and planting on it and then it enters into contracts with New Zealand companies to provide them with those credits. Although the company is saying at the moment that it wants the cost of the carbon units in the New Zealand scheme to be higher it also admits that in some of its contracts—forward contracts it had entered into—it is getting paid $18 to $19 for those. So it is not a simple case of saying the cost of carbon in New Zealand is low and therefore it can be passed on straight away. The reason for that is that climate change is extremely complicated and the New Zealand emissions trading scheme is extremely complicated at the same time. 
What this legislation does is ensure that the tools are there for a robust system. I want to mention a couple of those tools. The first one is the regulation power to deal with the quality of international units. Already this Government has banned some international units that we viewed as not being environmentally robust. Research was done some good scientific basis was found and they were excluded. So already we have taken action in this area because we are concerned about the veracity of the New Zealand scheme. Secondly there is a regulation-making power in the legislation over the quantity of international units. It is already possible under this legislation for the Government to ban a quantity of international units that enters into our scheme. Indeed when these international units are due to expire internationally in the next couple of years in the absence of any second commitment period—because there is no second commitment period on the table at the moment because the Kyoto Protocol is running out—it means that there is no great certainty that they will be available to the New Zealand scheme but the Government has the tool to deal with it. Also we have set up an auction scheme under this legislation to allow certainty for the Government industry and households. 
Again I challenge Opposition members. If they think that this has been done purely because we want the price to stay where it is today rather than be a fair market price then they are fooling themselves. It is not about the challenges on a day-to-day basis that we have around us. It is about what is happening for the scheme overall and making sure the tools are there. We have allowed the offset of pre-1990 forests to allow better productivity on land and that is important for jobs and our economy. But at the same time we have said to others that if they want to remain in the scheme and not offset their land they too can get credits for that. And finally there is a levy rate for synthetic gases that can be adjusted in the future—not set in stone but adjusted in the future—as it needs to be. Those are tools for a robust emissions trading scheme that are in place for the Government to use and act upon. 
What is needed here is international momentum to deal with climate change. New Zealand certainly has a role to play and this legislation is our part of that. But for the sake of jobs and income in New Zealand we must do only our part and all countries of the world must reach agreement. It does not matter actually for the sake of the world’s climate what we do in New Zealand; unless other large developing countries also play their part then the world’s environment will continue in the direction it has been going. 
I want to touch on two last points before I finish my intervention and they concern agriculture. We have heard from the Opposition that unless agriculture is put into this scheme consumers of the world will turn their backs on New Zealand and New Zealand produce. That is absolute rubbish because there is no country in the world that has included agriculture. So I challenge Opposition members to tell us where these consumers are going to go to see any country taking their concerns around climate change more seriously. Just in the last week or so the  
Daily Mail 
 in the United Kingdom printed this: “Buy New Zealand lamb to save the planet”. The UN has come out with a report that says the carbon footprint of New Zealand agricultural produce is lower than all produce in the UK except onions. So we are doing our part. Our farmers are doing our part and the United Nations is recognising that. 
To finish here I say that these changes will give increased certainty to participants by extending the way the scheme fundamentally operates until such time as comprehensive agreement is reached on a global scale. The Government has indicated that the emissions trading scheme should be reviewed in 2015 following the development of a new global agreement. I say to the members opposite that they should be supporting this legislation supporting new businesses and focusing on international agreement so that all countries can do their fair share rather than saying we should be doing more than others and putting jobs and industry at risk to the detriment of our economy. I commend this bill to the House.