Roy Eric: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — In Committee 
Roy Eric: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — In Committee 
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ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 As this debate draws to a conclusion in terms of the Committee stage it is probably fitting to note that about now at Flemington in Melbourne horses are lining up and the nations of Australia and New Zealand may well not be listening to this debate. The matter we are debating is absolutely crucial in respect of our future responsibilities on this planet and we do take those seriously. 
I want to address an issue we have raised a couple of times which is that this legislation is really very narrow. Firstly in looking at the title and commencement clauses I say to the Minister in the chair the Hon David Parker that the process continues to give us mixed messages. This bill went to the Commerce Committee some considerable time ago. It was rushed relatively quickly through the select committee then it sat on the Order Paper for 15 months. I have to ask if this is a crucial piece of business that the Government wants to enact why the lethargy in the process? I will be very interested in the response of the Minister in the chair the Hon David Parker as to why the bill has been sitting on the Order Paper for so long. 
I also commend the Minister for saying that agriculture was not evil. We know that it is not evil but the Minister did not respond to the point I raised about the scientific element of that argument. As my colleague Mark Blumsky said if photosynthesis locks up carbon in trees why does it not work with other plant material such as grass? The science around where one gets the 49 percent figure for good farming activity in New Zealand is an issue that is degrading us in the eyes of the world. Whenever Labour members say that we are the worst contributors in the world in terms of agriculture and that the figure is 49 percent or 50 percent I want them to get to the science behind that comment to find out exactly where those figures come from because I cannot find them. I have challenged officials at the select committee and I have challenged the Minister before on those figures. I have challenged anybody who makes that statement and asked them to give us the detail and the science of where those figures come from. I look forward to the Minister’s response to that in a minute and I may want to respond again depending on how he responds as it is an important point. 
Our team on this side of the Chamber has been clear that yes we support this but it is a minuscule element of what we need to do to address the problem. We do not support the Kyoto Protocol in its current form but that does not mean to say that as a party we are not concerned about climate change. We do not support Kyoto because we do not see it fixing the problem. I will address that point quickly because I do not want it to be misunderstood. 
The 1990 model of category 1 countries will make so little difference to climate change that it is virtually immeasurable. It may make a 2 percent to 4 percent difference in delaying the 100-year result—that is about what the scientists say. But in actual fact it will not do that because those countries that are category 2 and category 3 continue to grow at an astronomical rate. When I read that in China alone a new thermal power station is commissioned every week and in the last decade it has commissioned I think 14 aluminium smelters then one has to say: “Well hang on if we and the countries in category 1 tidy up our act we actually are not solving the problem.” 
So this is not about a placebo. This is not about saying: “Yeah we really care about planet Earth and climate change is real so we will just sign up to something that is not going to work.” It is actually much more important than that. Yes it is about us taking our responsibility and being engaged in a process that will mitigate the problem—that will actually solve it. Carbon sequestration in trees is a very very small part of that. While we may have a semantic debate over the figures that are produced today in Nairobi about whether New Zealand is the worst nearly the worst or even halfway down our response has been to rely on thermal electricity when we have sustainables that we could be advancing. I commend the Minister as we have done some stuff on wind turbines but it is minuscule in terms of our power needs. 
I have just a few more points. I raised earlier in the debate the point that if we are going to rely on carbon sinks then it is more than just fixing up the registry about who owns the carbon. I am not planting trees simply because the returns are not there; the returns are not there because the processing is not there; the processors are not there because of the Resource Management Act and because no processor can now get a long-term contract on electricity. Those are issues that we have to address. We have to address the electricity issue in a sustainable way and if we really believe that sequestration and trees are the answer then we have to deal with those. 
This bill falls short of doing that. Maybe it is not the vehicle to fix those things but I say to the Minister that I want to hear how he will address those things as well because they are crucial.