Prosser Richard: General DebateText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeProsser Richard: General Debate[Sitting date: 04 November 2015. Volume:709;Page:7702. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]RICHARD PROSSER (NZ First): They say that bad news comes in threes and for New Zealand’s farmers—actually for our agricultural sector as a whole—it seems that under this Government there is no end of threes to work through. What farmers cannot do anything about are the things that affect all of us. They cannot do anything about international commodity prices they cannot do anything about the exchange rate or the cost of imported feed and the cost of imported machinery and they cannot do anything about the weather which is the single most important variable affecting farming. So they cannot do anything about the weather but apparently they can do something about the climate—or so Minister Nick Smith seems to think.Nick Smith wants to bring agriculture in from the rain and bring it under the umbrella of the emissions trading scheme. Well that is clever is it not Dr Smith—on the back of a drought on the doorstep of what is apparently going to be the worst El Nino since El Nino records began and after an absolute shocker of a year for dairy prices. Only just last night while we were sleeping—while all of New Zealand apart from the farmers who cannot sleep with worry were sleeping—the global dairy trade auction was taking place and dairy prices were taking another tumble. On the back of all that Minister Nick Smith wants to hit our farmers with yet another whammy—he wants to bring agriculture into the emissions trading scheme and the beleaguered farming sector gets hit with yet another stack of costs. Well done Dr Smith. Prices are down returns are down farm incomes are down the rain is drying up farmer suicides are at record levels and Dr Smith thinks this is just a perfect time to hit the farmers and the provinces that depend on them with yet another tax.You know this might be what Dr Smith is ordering but it is certainly not what the doctor ordered. Why? Why is Nick Smith calling for this? What is he hoping to achieve? Well it is all about being seen to be doing our bit. It is about looking good in front of other countries. We have to slash our emissions because everyone else is doing it—supposedly—and we do not want to be left out. We do not want to look like we are not doing our bit or pulling our weight. Nick Smith wants to be able go to Paris and hobnob it with the rest of the world’s climate change jet set. My word there is an oxymoron if ever there was one—all these people being terribly concerned about their carbon footprints but they are flying all around the world in huge fossil fuel - burning aeroplanes to tell each other about it to express all their concerns about the environment. Dr Smith wants to be able to crow to the rest of the world that little old New Zealand is right up there on the moral high ground slashing and burning our emissions.Except that we really do not have any—apart from agriculture of course. And so we are going to include agriculture in our emissions trading scheme because we have to have something in there and we really have not got anything else. No one else in the world has agriculture or food production in their part of the climate change game because they have other industries that they can pick on. Countries that produce far more than we do in terms of agricultural output and countries that have far larger dairy production and many times as many livestock do not have agriculture as part of their carbon tax schemes. They are not carbon taxing food production. Other countries have factories they have mills and foundries and refineries and shipyards and other things that produce lots and lots of emissions and they can play the game of climate mitigation using those. But we do not and so back in 2008 Helen Clark decided that agriculture should go in the emissions trading scheme because she had to be seen to be doing something and there was not anything else she could do.Then the next Government the incoming National Government decided to put it on hold because back then National was still paying lip service to the idea that it was the party of the farmers that it was the party of the provinces that it was the party that reflected and upheld the values of the heartland. Well not any more. Today National is the Queen Street party. It is the party of bankers and financiers and overseas ownership. National members are perfectly happy to chuck the farming sector and provincial New Zealand under the bus for the sake of looking good in the eyes of the international climate change jet set. It is a status symbol. Putting agriculture into the emissions trading scheme is nothing more than tokenism and it is nothing more than a status symbol for Nick Smith just as it was for Helen Clark.What is a status symbol? A status symbol is something that you do not need and do not want bought with money you have not got in order to impress people you do not like. Nick Smith wants this status symbol and he wants New Zealand’s farmers to pay for it: $863 million—that is 50 times more than what this Government spends on research into reducing emissions. No one else is doing it. Other countries do not have agriculture in their emissions and they are waiting like everybody else—like New Zealand should be—for somebody else to be the first cab off the rank. The big producers—the United States China—have all set targets but they are not doing anything about just yet and Nick Smith wants us to be first. He wants the farmers to pay for it.Well we say enough. New Zealand First says that New Zealand should be a follower here and not a leader. We produce less than 0.2 percent of the world’s emissions and we should be the last cab off the rank. So we challenge Dr Smith. We challenge him to come out and guarantee that he will not dump this new additional tax on an already struggling agricultural sector at the worst possible time for the most pointless of reasons. Thank you.