Cullen Michael: Urgent Debates — Greenhouse Gas Emissions—Release of Report 
Cullen Michael: Urgent Debates — Greenhouse Gas Emissions—Release of Report 
[Volume:627;Page:21761] 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN (Deputy Prime Minister) 
: 
 Ha ha! Oh dear oh dear! That is what the courts said about Dr Nick Smith of course. 
The first question we have to ask ourselves is what that stream of greenhouse gas emissions added to the sum of human knowledge accompanied by all the agricultural emissions from around Dr Brash from the National Party benches. We have learnt two things. Firstly the member opposite cannot see more than about 2 or 3 years into the future. He is a myopic politician with no ambitions for the long term at all. He merely wants to get into power no matter what the cost. 
Secondly every time an issue comes up now the National Party’s answer is to go back to the past or to have a review. The big announcement on climate change—to really frighten the Chinese and the Indians into joining up to the Kyoto Protocol—was that we should have a review of our emissions from 2008 to 2012. 
Thirdly—let us bring the short fat one from Tamaki back to life and let us have National Party policy from the 1970s—it is the forestry encouragement grant scheme. Let us pay people to plant trees in places that can never be reached for harvest as we already have throughout some areas in the East Coast of the North Island. 
By himself Dr Brash cannot judge global warming. He has sort of admitted now that the science says it is there. He has sort of admitted that it is done by humans. But of course he is a bit like Bill Birch in that respect. He is one of those people for whom when he walks into a room the temperature goes down hence his scepticism about global warming and the future of where we are going. 
So why is there a change in the numbers? The first reason why we moved from a net surplus to a net deficit is simple. The economy has grown faster than it was predicted to do on the basis of National Party experience. The forecasts at the time were made on the basis of growth being around 2.5 to 3 percent probably because under National and even with it coming off a very low base in 1991-92 it averaged 3.1 percent. But we have now averaged 4-plus percent and that will be shown as the figures move forward over the next few months. That will mean more emissions because economic growth tends to create greenhouse gas emissions. Dr Nick Smith can do it all by himself of course. 
Secondly we have not been planting forests at the same rate as predicted. Why? 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Because you destroyed the market in the sector? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: No!—because wood prices have been low over the last 2 or 3 or 4 years. It is called markets I tell Dr Smith and his party is supposed to believe in them. His leader believes that they are the gods of economic life—that they are all that rules in terms of the economy. People have not been planting trees because they judge they will not make a profit out of those trees over the long term. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Why are your numbers wrong? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: But Dr Smith says: “Don’t worry. We’ll give you the pills and you can plant trees and they’ll pay some money at some point in the future.” 
The third reason I will admit is that officials got wrong a range of technical assumptions. What that also tells us—and the National Party might care to take note of this—is that when one is trying to work out the difference between two large numbers between emissions on one side and offsets on the other quite small changes can lead to quite big differences in terms of the delta between the two. Mr Williamson is nodding his head. I will just dwell for a moment on the fact that that is precisely true of fiscal numbers where to base all one’s spending on the assumption of getting that precisely right is very very dangerous indeed—particularly when a party insists on getting the numbers wrong in the first place as National does. 
Why does the Kyoto Protocol remain important? Because the overwhelming view of scientists is that there is global warming. 
Hon Ken Shirley 
: No not true. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Oh yes it is. The Royal Society of the United Kingdom made a specific report that is a word-for-word answer to the idiocy of the ACT party—thank God that party will be disappearing from the face of this earth come the next general election! There is sign-up from the heads of the institutes of science of all the G8 countries plus the three largest non-G8 Third World economies—that is China India and Brazil—which all say that there is global warming and all say in fact that it is primarily caused by human activity. I say to Mr Shirley that for people to deny that is to be like those—there are a few in this House—who believe that trade restrictions and tariff protections are good because they can find one or two economies that believe in them. The overwhelming majority of economists of every hue believe that that is nonsense and that free and fair trade is the way the world should be going in the future. 
An overwhelming majority of scientists who are expert in the climate area say that there is global warming and that it is caused by human activity. Dr Brash of course thinks that that is still debatable. What on earth would he know about that? He has an ancient rusty PhD on protection and foreign investment into New Zealand written sometime back in about the early 1960s. 
He is the man who said as a reason for why we should not sign up that our carbon dioxide emissions were half of those of the US and Australia on a per capita basis. The problem is that nearly half of our emissions are methane—and who triumphantly made sure that methane was part of the Kyoto agreement? It was Simon Upton the then National Party Minister for the Environment who of course was the Minister who negotiated the Kyoto agreement on behalf of New Zealand. National actually signed up to the agreement in 1997 but did not get round to ratifying it. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Alongside Australia and the United States. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: And Australia and the United States—indeed the United States had a change of Government and withdrew from almost every international agreement it could find to withdraw from sadly I have to say. Bill Clinton’s Government helped negotiate the Kyoto agreement. I say good on the Clinton Government but it is a shame the United States is not a signatory and a ratifier of the Kyoto agreement at the present time. 
The science therefore is clear: the Kyoto Protocol is only a first step; much more will be required. We hear all this stuff about its cost but what are we told is the cost to New Zealand? Well I thought it might be about $500 million over 5 years—not an insignificant sum. But the National Party which has promised tax cuts for everybody—and people are expecting about $30 a week more on the average wage and around there as a result as well as a lowering of the top tax rate and a cut of the corporate tax rate a shift of all the money from the current account into the Land Transport Fund an abolition of the carbon charge and a subsidy of the racing industry through the taxation system all at a cost of $4 billion to $5 billion a year—suddenly cannot afford $100 million a year for climate change policy. That sum is only a third of the anticipated revenue from the carbon charge that National has promised to abolish. 
Where is the credibility of the National Party in arguing that this country cannot afford that when suddenly it says we can afford massive tax cuts and increased spending in health and education police and defence corrections and roads and whatever little itch there is all the way around the country right the way down to subsidising the Montecillo Veteran’s Home and Hospital in south Dunedin. No promise is too small or too large for the National Party to make as it goes forward into the election. The cost is not enormous in terms of the Kyoto agreement to this country. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Just a billion dollars! 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Just a billion dollars! The member’s colleagues are promising $700 million a year just on prisons alone if we remove parole. The abolition of parole would cost $3 billion in capital and $700 million in operating expenditure in a year—more than the costs of the Kyoto Protocol in 5 years—to this country. No wonder National is waiting to produce its policy on everything in detail. No wonder it is not going to produce a proper alternative budget; National knows it will not add up. No wonder it is enjoying its brief moment in the sun before the facts come out and the common sense of the people reasserts itself. 
There will be no point in standing here in New Zealand in the year 2050 with our tax rate marginally lower than it would otherwise have been if we are standing in 2 feet of seawater at the same time. It will simply not add up as a future for this country. National members know their tax talk is rubbish but any rubbish is good enough. 
This is like 1990 for National. We remember the promises made that year. It was going to abolish the surcharge: “no ifs no buts no maybes”. It said it would not cut people’s working conditions: “no ifs no buts no maybes”; and so on. 
National members face a disaster in fact as they try to explain what it is they intend to do. What they intend to do is try to two-word their way into Government and hope people do not notice the fallacies of what they are putting forward. And on this one the fallacies are very strong indeed 
Do they really really want the world to undergo increased global warming? Do they want this country which is exposed in terms of being a temperate-climate agricultural producer to undergo increased global warming? In this year alone we have spent on flood relief through central government roughly twice what the Kyoto agreement will cost. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Floods and global warming? 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: If Dr Nick Smith does not think there may be a connection between our increased incidence of extreme climatic events and global warming he should go back and continue to play with his Meccano set which led him to an illiterate PhD in engineering somewhere down the track in the past. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Get out of the gutter. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: Well that member is illiterate; I have seen his press statements. He is always illiterate in everything he puts out. 
The reality is that we face a major world issue. The reality is that of all developed world economies we stand to suffer more from moderate global warming than any other developed economy because we are more dependent upon temperate-zone land-based industries than any other. Dr Brash says we are the only developed-world Southern Hemisphere country but there are two such countries—us and Australia. If the sheriff was not in the deputy sheriff was not going to be either when it came to the Kyoto Protocol. The Australians of course are highly dependent upon greenhouse gas emission industries for their welfare and wealth. I still hope that they have the sense at some point in the future to join in the Kyoto agreement so they can influence it. 
But National has to say what its alternative is—I hear nothing! That was a really clear alternative we heard from the National Party. What is the alternative to the Kyoto agreement? Again I hear nothing. Well that was pretty clear too; National does not have an alternative to the Kyoto agreement. Its alternative is tax cuts because as we all know if everybody gets a tax cut global warming will drop. Why? Dr Brash’s version of science is this: if we have a tax cut we can all afford air-conditioning and if we have air-conditioning we will lower the temperature everywhere. We will not worry about all the stuff that goes on in terms of producing electricity for the air-conditioning along the way because he does not have much regard for generally agreed positions in science. 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: Tell us about the bungle. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: I invite Dr Nick Smith not just to tell us the fact that the numbers were got wrong by the officials; we know that. I want him to tell us the alternative. The alternative given that in 2001 Dr Nick Smith said: “Scientists have good evidence that the emission of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane into our atmosphere is irreversibly changing the global climate.”— 
Hon Dr Nick Smith 
: That’s right. 
Hon Dr MICHAEL CULLEN 
: He says: “That’s right.” That is Dr Nick Smith’s position so I now invite him to tell us what he is going to do about it apart from tax cuts and taking away parole from prisoners.