Stanford EricaERICA STANFORD (National—East Coast Bays): Thank you Mr Speaker. I'm pleased to take a call on the second reading of the Climate Change Response (Zero Carbon) Amendment Bill. Contrary to the views on the other side of the House and that they would have everyone believe National are concerned about climate change. I am concerned about climate change. We understand the consequences of inaction. We understand the urgency of the world to come together to combat what is probably one of the if not the most significant issues of our time. National signed up to the Paris accord an acknowledgment of the need for us to play our part as a good global citizen. Hon Shane Jones: Sold out the cockies. Sold out the farmers. Went to Paris.ERICA STANFORD: That member continually bellowing nonsense from the other side of the House should perhaps consider the amount of carbon dioxide spewing out of his mouth with every single obnoxious comment and perhaps consider the effect of his own global warming and perhaps shut it for five minutes and listen to this young woman who has something to say. In 2017 we brought Lord Deben from the UK to speak about the experiences of the UK in setting up their own Climate Change Commission and to see how we could perhaps do that here in New Zealand to similar good effect. We have acknowledged for some time that the establishment of a climate commission a body of independent dispassionate experts to provide advice on how best New Zealand can wrestle down our emissions and decarbonise our economy is broadly the right direction of travel the right proposal.We worked on this bill in a cross-party collaborative manner for the good part of a year. National spokesperson Todd Muller to my right here worked very closely with James Shaw on this—as I say for a good part of a year—to articulate National's five key principles that our leader Simon Bridges articulated at Fieldays: that the approach must be science-based that it must be technology-driven that our response must be in keeping with our global trading partners that we must offer long-term incentives to businesses and to consumers and that we want to ensure that the economic impact is of course minimised so Kiwis who are already doing it tough are not overly burdened by this bill. Up until James Shaw went radio silence on us up to around six weeks prior to dropping the bill in the House we had a good working relationship to get these principles embedded into the bill.We broadly support the idea of a Climate Change Commission outlined in the bill as reported back from the Environment Committee. I'm not sure that there are many who would vehemently oppose the setting up of a panel of experts to provide dispassionate advice to advise successive Governments on how we can best reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. But the problem in our view is that this Government keep trying to forestall the work of the Climate Change Commission. Here they are in this very bill setting up a panel of independent dispassionate experts to advise on some very meaty technical issues and yet the Government are pre-empting that work firstly by banning oil and gas on the one hand—a decision that would have been perfectly handled by an independent Climate Change Commission. They've got taxes on cars. Here in this bill as reported back from select committee they are proposing a methane reduction target by 2050 of 24 percent to 48 percent a figure which was an indicative target in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report and which was not to be used as a guide for individual countries' reductions. Yet here we are having it baked into the bill. This Government can't help themselves but do the work of the Climate Change Commission—and very poorly I might add. If they truly believed in a Climate Change Commission and the emissions budget process they wouldn't have been pre-empting all of the work of the Climate Change Commission.There are some very complex issues to be taken into account and we heard this from numerous submitters to the bill. Methane has a very different effect because while it is a very potent gas—unlike carbon dioxide which has thousands of years of a lifespan in our atmosphere—it has a lifespan of about 12 years. While methane from our agricultural sector does make up 50 percent of our total greenhouse gas emissions in this country it would make sense for the Climate Change Commission a panel of dispassionate independent experts to advise successive Governments on how to reduce emissions from the sector. The commission would need to take into account the unique way the short-lived gas acts in our atmosphere and the ability of our agricultural sector to mitigate their emissions. They could investigate and advise on farmers' ability to actually accurately measure emissions at the farm gate the availability of technology to reduce their methane emissions and the effect that any reduction would have on the sector on our rural communities and on our economy as a whole.There were a number of submitters both in support and opposing the bill who when asked by me on many occasions and my colleagues Would it be better to have the Climate Change Commission set the methane target?" for the most part they all agreed. So in light of these comments by submitters and with our firm view around the role of the commission in setting these targets we will be proposing a Supplementary Order Paper an amendment that would propose the target for biological methane reduction be recommended by the independent Climate Change Commission. This is pragmatic fair and reasonable solution to what has been one of the most contentious parts of this bill and an idea that was very well received by submitters as a way to move forward.We can see from earlier examples of this Government trying to make climate change decisions on the hoof for purposes of image rather than actual climate change mitigation—these decisions end up quite often having the opposite effect. The Government's own eventual advice suggested the oil and gas ban would in fact increase global emissions. The car tax wouldn't have the desired effect. Here we are burning more coal backing down on our promises to electrify the Government fleet. The Minister himself James Shaw is telling us that our greenhouse gas emissions will continue to rise through to the mid-2020s. It has been a complete shambles the way that this Government has had very little effect on reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. So here we have the perfect opportunity for this Government to make better decisions. Despite National's position on the select committee they are sticking to their guns with that position that they know best when it comes to the methane targets but we will be making the very strong argument at committee stage to have this target set by the independent Climate Change Commission. The second thing I want to focus on in my contribution is the number of submitters that we saw who spoke to our select committee about their fears around the afforestation of our fertile farming land. They talked about the number of farms that have recently been bought up and converted into pine plantations. They spoke about the decimation of rural communities. They talked about the loss of teachers. They talked about the loss of their communities. They were emotional when they spoke. In some cases they broke down in tears. They spoke about the mental health of farmers and the pressure that these sales were having on farmers and their communities and it's something that we need to listen to—Hon Shane Jones: You don't know.ERICA STANFORD: —despite Mr Jones' continual bellowing.One comment in particular stayed with me: she said "Why should the polluters continue to pollute and transfer their dirty problem to the agricultural sector by having rural communities destroyed by mass-planting of farms in pines?" National members on the committee were very concerned to hear that the level of planting required to reach our zero carbon goal was 1.7 million hectares by 2050 and by 2070 we'd have to double that—another 1.7 million hectares just to maintain our zero carbon goal.The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment shared our concerns preparing a number of papers for us. He noted that his key concern was the absence of any effective mechanism for managing the risks of forestry offsets and in particular he said that they in fact may be overused at the expense of achieving reductions in gross emissions and that there was a real risk that their relative impermanence means that they will not actually provide the climate mitigation hoped for. He went on to say that in his opinion these risks were serious and would fundamentally compromise the purpose of the new framework. To this end we will be proposing a Supplementary Order Paper at committee stage to ensure that the commission consider the appropriate use for forestry offsets.As I said at the beginning National broadly supports the idea of an independent Climate Change Commission to advise successive Governments so that we may set budgets to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions wrestle down those emissions and move towards a zero carbon economy. We have some quite major concerns about this bill and we will set these concerns out in a number of Supplementary Order Papers that we will argue passionately for at committee stage. But in the meantime I commend this bill to the House."