Shaw JamesHon JAMES SHAW (Minister for Climate Change): I thought given that the member David Seymour has specifically asked for a response and I haven't yet had a chance to do a response to his earlier Supplementary Order Paper (SOP) 406 I'll do that and then also just refer to his SOP 407 as well.So in relation to SOP 406 what he's concerned about is that placing limits on the use of international units will drive up the cost of domestic emissions reduction. I just wanted to say that the existing legislation actually already has provisions for the commission to make recommendations considering the economic impact when it uses its emissions budgets and in making its recommendations about any limit to offshore units. So in clause 8 new section 5L matters that the commission must consider includes (f) responses to climate change taken or planned by parties to the Paris Agreement"—so that's a sense of what other countries are doing—but also under (c) "the likely economic effects;". And so that's a mandatory consideration that it has to take in account. In addition new section 5X provides—and I think this is the clause he was referring to—for the Climate Change Commission to advise the Minister on "(e) the appropriate limit on offshore mitigation that may be used to meet an emissions budget and an explanation of the [unforeseen] circumstances that justify the use".So the point is to try and drive change in the domestic economy and in order to do that you have to prioritise that in some way. But those clauses do actually provide for the kind of advice which would say that actually the use of offshore units should be different because we think that the—you know he was sort of catastrophising about that that it could be catastrophic. So I don't think that SOP 406 is necessary. I think that the concern is provided for already in the legislation.In relation to SOP 407 giving the Minister untold power to destroy industries one by one in New Zealand I also read the Rodney Hide column in the National Business Review where he said that this bill would make me the most powerful person in New Zealand with that kind of godlike ability. Frankly I wish! But it just doesn't do that. And so what he's doing in suggesting that we remove those clauses is actually to gut probably the most important part of the bill which is the plan to reduce emissions production. Without it it's just a target and a commission with no plan to actually reduce emissions. I would just invite the member to reflect on the UK legislation upon which this piece of legislation is modelled. Actually it is the presence of the plan that has driven change in the UK economy. They have seen over a 40 percent reduction in emissions and at the same time their economy has grown faster than any G20 country. So the idea that having an emissions reduction plan will somehow destroy industries and so on I think is a real fallacy.The other thing is that he is conflating having a plan with emissions trading scheme (ETS) unit supply. It is not the same thing. So for example if you look at the UK plans the commission recommended early on in its first two emissions budgets that the kind of low-hanging fruit where the technology was available at lowest cost was to essentially get rid of the coal-fired power plants and replace them with renewables. They were going to get huge gains at the lowest cost in the economy; the Government then developed a plan to do that. They then did that. Emissions fell and the economy grew. Whereas what he was saying in his speech in relation to that SOP is that those clauses give the Minister the power to assign ETS units to particular industries or even particular companies. It doesn't.But I would invite the member to engage again as thoughtfully as he has in this process with the ETS reform amendment bill that we introduced into the House yesterday because that does discuss ETS unit supply and how that could be set in the future once that scheme has been reformed."