Chauvel Charles: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Chauvel Charles: Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 25 October 2012. Volume:685;Page:6230. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
CHARLES CHAUVEL (Labour) 
: 
 There have been some interesting contributions in this debate on the Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading and Other Matters) Amendment Bill. I think it would be useful if we just reminded ourselves of where we have been in this topic before. What we should do is go back and remember what we were told by the experts about what the evidence actually is. 
Way back in 2007 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is the body that Governments from across the world appointed and which was filled with experts met and was then asked to report back to the Governments about what the issues were. This is what it said: “… world temperatures will rise between 1.1 and 6.4oC [during this century] … sea levels will rise between 18 and 59 cm …”. There will be more frequent warm spells heatwaves and heavy rainfall and probably an increase in droughts tropical cyclones and extreme high tides. Those are big ranges in those numbers but that is what the evidence says is likely to happen. That is the challenge that we are asked to meet. 
How have we tried to meet this challenge? First there was the Kyoto Protocol which preceded the intergovernmental panel. It recognised that there was an extremely important issue here that needed to be met and 191 countries came together to seek to do so. New Zealand signed the protocol in 1998 when the Rt Hon Jenny Shipley was the Prime Minister and New Zealand ratified it some years later under the leadership of the Rt Hon Helen Clark. If the protocol is not replaced by an international agreement this year there will be a lapse in international obligations and that lapse could be permanent despite the challenges of the science that we were told about only 5 short years ago. 
 My colleague David Cunliffe when he made his contribution spoke a bit about the sorts of challenges that New Zealand will face if climate change of the scale predicted by the expert scientists becomes a reality. I know he did not mean to downplay the issue—he talked about First World problems—but we actually have some serious issues that we do need to concern ourselves with. There will be higher temperatures in the North Island; the risk of new pests and diseases for plants animals and humans; more frequent droughts and floods more rain in the west and much less in the east and that will affect our farming; and retreating snow lines in glaciers and changing river flows in the South Island which will have an effect on hydro generation. 
There will be concerns that we need to very much worry about in New Zealand and in our region in our neighbourhood the Pacific there will be major problems such as rising salinity in the water table rising sea levels—issues in an area where already there are major issues around the economic viability of the nation States of the region. Guess who is going to have to pick up both the tab and the responsibility if we are going to be good neighbours as we like to say that we are in this region? New Zealand and Australia and our friends and allies. These are the problems that we are going to have to face. 
How did New Zealand begin its legal response? After a number of attempts to forge cross-party consensus Labour in 2008 passed the emissions trading scheme. We nearly got to consensus between the two major parties but in the end—and I chaired the Finance and Expenditure Committee that heard the evidence on this bill—the National Party decided to stand apart from the 2008 legislation. But that was I think a genuine attempt to bring about an emissions trading scheme to create an economic instrument that would cover the major causes of greenhouse gas emissions in New Zealand. It was an attempt to extend an economic mechanism to all those gases in all the sectors that mattered. Polluting industries would basically pay one carbon credit per tonne of carbon equivalent gas produced. De-polluting industries like forestry would get carbon credits that they could sell on the international market to polluters and as we hoped the international market would assist us to provide a mechanism where we could start to reduce New Zealand’s carbon position over time. 
We said that we would get sectors in over time. Forestry went in from January 2008. Agriculture our single biggest emitter would come in in January 2013. The big trade-exposed industries were given 90 percent subsidies by what we termed a free allocation of New Zealand Units that they could rely on instead of having to buy carbon credits. We said we would phase that out at 8 percent a year—a very very gentle phase-out ending in 2030. 
So that was the world-leading emissions trading scheme that Labour brought into being. It was actually a pretty moderate measure and yet it could not survive the onslaught of the incoming National Government in 2008-09. Again there was an attempt to get some consensus across the House. National came in having campaigned on—as it put it—moderating the scheme. We sought to negotiate with National so that it could achieve its aim but in a way that did not completely wreck the emissions trading scheme. Despite that and despite discussing with Nick Smith in good faith ways in which the scheme could be moderated National ended up relying on the Maori Party on that occasion and managed to introduce some changes that diminished yet did not completely gut the scheme. It did things like postpone agriculture’s entry until 2015 water down the carbon price on what was called a one-for-two deal basically bring in subsidies for New Zealand Units at either 60 or 90 percent and bring in an intensity-based allocation model. 
What the experts said at the time was that the emissions trading scheme would certainly fail on the basis of those emission reduction targets that would be brought into place as a result of those modifications. But just when we thought nothing could get worse we now see the present bill. 
I just want to put on record what the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said about what this legislation will do if it manages to pass but before I do that I actually want to praise the Maori Party for pulling its support from the bill. Those members made a big political mistake back in 2009 by writing a blank cheque for National and allowing it to do the first gutting of the emissions trading scheme. But they are not making that mistake now and good on them. And this is why. The Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment said: “The ETS is the main system New Zealand has for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Hollowing it out like this makes a farce of our climate change commitments.” 
If the best that we can do now is trade slogans the way we heard in question time when Simon Bridges talked about lowering petrol and electricity costs at a time when the carbon price is at an all-time low and the emissions trading scheme is simply irrelevant to that exercise—if the best we can do is hear that Acting Minister perform his audition for the front bench in the mid - next year post - John Key reshuffle—if that is going to be climate change policy in New Zealand and if we are going to have to rely on Peter Dunne to do the right thing and not vote for this legislation then this Parliament deserves an absolute F for meaningful action on climate change.