Hughes GarethGARETH HUGHES (Green): Kia ora. Ngā mihi nui ki a koutou. Kia ora. This bill draws a line in the sand and starts the transition away from polluting fossil fuels towards clean energy. The Green Party is incredibly proud to see this legislation. After years of campaigning against that side's drill it frack it mine it" agenda for New Zealand we're finally starting to see the end of offshore oil and gas exploration. This bill shines like a beacon of hope in a world darkened by the threat of climate change. This Government's finally listening to people who want action on climate change who want us to begin the transition now. This is urgent—the time is already running out. If we want to move to a gradual sustainable system of energy production we should have started decades ago so we absolutely need to start now. The planet depends upon it and those workers in the industries deserve the certainty of a transition. We saw a huge number of submissions. An overwhelming majority of them support this legislation—in fact they want it to go further—and then there were the oil and gas companies. At a time when islands are literally being washed away by rising seas when super-storms are smashing into countries and killing thousands and when vast swaths of the Earth are literally burning big oil and gas came and talked to us about revenue royalties and attractiveness to foreign investors. They focused on their balance sheet risk when the rest of the country was talking about planetary risk. Economics is a question about resource allocation and negotiating how you do it but you can't negotiate with physics. Over the course of the submissions we heard of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and their wake-up call report which said that we have to reduce emissions by 45 percent by 2030 if we want to avoid 1.5 degrees Celsius and the tipping point of catastrophic climate change. We've got to be clear and honest and I wish National members were honest—there's no sustainable way to burn fossil fuels. The science says we can't afford to burn more than two-thirds to 75 percent of all the fossil fuels we've already found let alone spending the next decades out exploring for more that we can't afford to burn. The oil and gas companies came and said "We need to burn the gas because it's slightly less polluting than the coal." Hon Member: Half.GARETH HUGHES: That's like a tobacco company coming and saying "You should switch to mild cigarettes."—and you very well know that the science isn't clear and it's not as low as that. I don't know why on earth we would trust the oil and gas companies when it comes to the science of climate change. This is the industry that has known about the science of climate change for decades and has actively worked and funded to stop action on climate change for their own profit. Their arguments are hollow and absolutely self-interested. We've got a wealth of better options in New Zealand than fossil fuels and more gas. We've got a wealth of clean renewable energy. Over the course of the submissions we heard that a new 100 megawatt wind farm is being built in Taranaki because it's cheaper than fossil fuels. Across my lifetime the price of solar has dropped by 99 percent and it keeps getting cheaper every year. Ever since 2011 there has been a global tipping point and there's more net international capital invested in renewables than fossil fuels. In the last year we had figures that twice as much was invested in clean energy than fossil fuels. I mean look at New Zealand. We're already 84 percent renewable. We've got more than 3000 megawatts of already consented renewables ready to be built. The Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority says we have a $2 billion opportunity to use energy more efficiently and we've got more ready and waiting. The gas industry says we need it for storage but Transpower's report Te Mauri Hiko shows we can use battery storage in the renewables scenario. When you look across the Ditch they've got giant 129-megawatt lithium-ion batteries. When you look at the price of batteries they're actually following what Moore's law did for computing which is a halving in price every 18 months. We're seeing record sales of electric vehicles and other countries are actually banning the sale of petrol and diesel vehicles—such as Norway by 2025. It seems that the only people who are pessimistic about renewables are the National Party and the oil companies. The fact is that oil and gas is a sunset industry. The truth is we need it to be a sunset industry. This sunset industry came to the select committee and portrayed renewable energy as some sort of unaffordable pipedream but the only fantasy is the belief that we can have fossil fuels and a safe climate. Burning fossil fuels is what got us into the mess. It's the reason why our consumers are paying such high prices. It's the problem; it's not the solution. Then the lobbyists came and complained about the process. The very same industry that supported and the very same party that passed the egregious Anadarko amendment a bill passed under urgency on Easter Sunday with absolutely zero select committee process to criminalise protest activity at sea; the very same industry that used the navy as private security when Te Whānau-a-Apanui got in the oil industry's way; the very same industry that lobbied the previous Government and former Governments to get the fourth-lowest tax plus royalty rate in the world and $88 million a year in estimated fossil fuel subsidies; the very industry that's left a trail of oil spills broken promises and divided communities—they came and complained about the process. Lobbyists from the oil and gas industry are trying to paint this as some sort of sudden change which is completely false. For years I have challenged this industry to nominate a date when the transition should start—a transition that they said was inevitable but that they never showed leadership on and the previous Government didn't either. This Government has decided to start the transition but under this bill oil and gas permits will continue for decades following. All existing rights are protected under this bill—that's existing permits for prospecting exploration and mining—as well as the right to upgrade an exploration permit to become a mining permit if oil and gas is found. This bill is extremely generous to the oil and gas industry yet they're trying to mischaracterise it as a sudden change. I mean look there's 100000 square kilometres of existing permits. That's the size of Iceland. All this bill does is stop future permits from being granted for offshore oil and gas exploration. Current exploration permits have a wide variety of end dates with some going even into the 2040s and they can still be upgraded to mining permits which means we could see mining for decades post that. The country is moving to net zero emissions by 2050 because the science demands it but under this bill we could still be drilling past 2050 and then the National Party and the oil and gas industry still want even more time to drill for fossil fuels we can't afford to drill. And then existing permits can still be extended on a case by case basis. Now we did see the OMV permit get an extension which I strongly disagree with. I believe having permits being extended at the Minister's discretion risks undermining the policy intention of this bill and it promotes uncertainty for the industry. It promotes bad behaviour by permit holders who can take their time and then spend their efforts lobbying for extensions. From the over 6500 people who submitted on this bill an overwhelming 72 percent wanted it strengthened with many wanting this extension to end and this loophole to be closed and that's exactly what I intend to do. I'm going to be putting forward an amendment at the next stage of this bill to strengthen it by removing this loophole that allows existing permits to be extended. This would be a new clause 6A to insert that an exploration permit for petroleum or any other mining permit may not be extended. So in summary this bill is already a compromise between the environmental imperative of planetary survival and the interests of a fair clear and predictable transition for those workers that protects existing jobs and permits and provides certainty. In my opinion deep-sea oil drilling and fracking should already be a prohibited activity and these exploration permits should have stopped being offered decades ago because that's what the science was urging. But still this bill is a strong step forward and a necessary one so that we can look our grandkids in the eye and say "When we knew about the threat of climate change we did something about it." This bill isn't rushed; it's overdue. My message to those who have submitted and to all those hundreds of thousands of Kiwis who have taken action for climate change is: thank you we are winning and we have more to do. We still need to encourage more clean energy in Aotearoa. We still need to pass the zero carbon Act. We still need to implement the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment's recommendations. We still need to get rid of the egregious Anadarko amendment. We still need to change the Crown Minerals Act's purpose. We still need to end National's $88 million in fossil fuel subsidies. We need to stop more fracking and coalmining. I'm proud to support this legislation and to start the transition to a clean-energy future. I'm proud of our Prime Minister who's leading on the world stage and who's said that this is our nuclear-free moment. I want to thank the parties supporting it—the parties who are prepared to show leadership who are prepared to show vision and who are prepared to back a clean-energy future not a polluting past."