Hobbs Marian: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — First Reading 
Hobbs Marian: Climate Change Response Amendment Bill — First Reading 
[Volume:625;Page:20397] 
Hon MARIAN HOBBS (Minister for the Environment) 
: 
 I rise to support the Climate Change Response Amendment Bill and I am very much aware that the previous speaker has just said that the Government is in a pickle. No the Government is not in a pickle; the earth is in a pickle. For too long we have had people like Don Brash actually saying in October last year: “I am one who thinks the science is still debatable on this issue.” That really concerns me because I have just been over in New York listening while scientists going up in the lift in the same hotel that I was in brought out even newer more recent evidence about how serious the situation is with regard to climate change and the fact that the issue is man-made climate change. 
The member asked what the bill will do. The bill will allow individuals to hold registry accounts and to trade in emission units. Several domestic climate change policies award emission units to individuals in recognition of activities undertaken to mitigate climate change. Yes that is creative. Yes we are out there leading but is that wrong? I suggest that members of the House would be well advised to take up the most recent—probably 2 weeks’ old—copy of  
The Economist 
. I was reading it on the plane and it actually discussed the fact that several party leaders—and I apologise to one of the other parties in this House—of Green parties throughout the world were relooking at how they actually managed behavioural change and change of attitude on things like nitrates as well as on carbon.  
The Economist 
 raised the question in the article that it had been the line of most parties to talk about rules and regulations to change people’s way of behaviour when in actual fact there are market policies as we are looking at around Lake Taupo where one actually sets nitrate caps and says that one trades in the use of nitrate within that cap. That is what this bill is about. It is a creative way of trying to change people’s behaviour. I think that if members read  
The Economist 
 article on that they will find it is a very worthwhile way of thinking. That is what this bill is about. 
I think this bill is a way forward for us as a country. It is clever; it is innovative. However I do not think there is terribly much innovation in saying we should wait until others do things. That has not been the New Zealand way. It is not the New Zealand way on things like nuclear policy and it has not been the New Zealand way on disarmament policies. It has not been the New Zealand way on many issues when we have gone out there and stated quite clearly where it is that we want to be. But the trouble is that the National Party must be a very broad church party because there is Dr Brash saying: “I am one who thinks the science is still debatable …” and then we have Guy Salmon saying: “Pete Hodgson remains on track with a consistent vision of a sustainable energy future. His Kyoto policy is being implemented. King coal has been held at bay. Electricity crises have been effectively managed without a loss of credibility and wind farms are going ahead at an encouraging pace.” That is what we are about. We are actually trying to manage the process not standing there without any leadership at all and trying to say the issue does not matter so we will wait to see what the Europeans or somebody else do. 
This bill is about trying to change behaviour in our own country and for that reason I strongly support it.