Ardern Shane: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
Ardern Shane: Climate Change (Emissions Trading and Renewable Preference) Bill — In Committee 
[Volume:649;Page:18141] 
SHANE ARDERN (National—Taranaki-King Country) 
: 
 In following on from a Minister who I know has a legal background and who was also involved in one of the biggest corporate farms in New Zealand I say that he does himself and this Parliament no good whatsoever by making comments like that. This has been a shonky process and there is no doubt about it. How the Minister can say that 785 amendments by way of Supplementary Order Paper do not constitute a mess I do not know given the number of submissions he talked about and the fact that the legislation was the subject of a select committee process. The Minister cannot stand in this House and say that they are only minor amendments changing a word from plural to singular. Some of them may be but one cannot have 785 amendments fitting into that category. 
I will speak about the forestry sector because the forestry sector holds the key to New Zealand’s Kyoto Protocol commitments. The forestry sector is the one that has been the most affected. Before Madam Chair tells me that I should speak to Part 1 I refer members to clause 6 in Part 1 which talks about forestry land and about how we define “forest land”. I put this notion to the House tonight. When I stand in the middle of my dairy farm where I have personally spent thousands of dollars planting riparian margins which are the trees described in Part 1 I am asked to believe that they are not carbon sinks but the trees I planted in one-hectare blocks on the same dairy farm are. The Green Party particularly asks me to believe this. I would just ask a simple scientific question: why? Maybe the Minister can answer that. 
I challenge the Greens further on this. When I am standing in the middle of that dairy farm where I have beautiful green dairy pasture as far as I can see streams with nitrate levels that are the world’s best in developed dairy areas and soil conditions that are improving based on science and where I have no scientific evidence to demonstrate that the methane emissions from the animals represent 50 percent of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions I am expected to believe that I am standing at the site of a bigger environmental devastation than I am when I am standing on Queen Street. And I do not buy it. I just simply do not buy it. The science does not back it up; it is not a fact. I would like the Greens to explain why that has become such a major polarising debating point in this legislation. 
I also say to the Minister that when I go back to the forestry sector and look at the biggest opportunity we have to address this issue I see that it is one of land change. It is one whereby one area where trees are currently planted is more suitable for one type of land activity than another—for example dairy farming or any other type of agricultural activity or viticulture for that matter. Why is it more devastating to the environment to cut down those trees and plant trees somewhere else? In this bill that activity is penalised. 
I will also talk about some of the disincentives to the forestry sector in this legislation. For example there is the inconsistency of treatment between forests planted after 1990 and those planted before then. I am sure that those who planted forests before 1990 had never heard of the Kyoto Protocol—I accept that—and that those who planted forests afterwards probably had some idea that something would happen. I ask the Minister to explain to me then the inconsistency of treatment for those who sell or purchase forests post-2002 that are pre-1990 forests. 
I ask why Parliament cannot see the amount of uncertainty and disincentive to investment in the forestry sector that this legislation and all the work that has gone on before it has brought about. What has it led to? It has led to deforestation in this country on a scale that we have not seen since the 1950s. Instead of planting more trees instead of having a growing forest sector we have a declining forest sector and we have declining carbon sequestration because of that. It is all a result of the mess that this Government has made.