Simpson ScottHon SCOTT SIMPSON (National—Coromandel): Well as the member who has just resumed his seat Mr Shanan Halbert shakes the dirty coal dust from his hands and blows it away in the notes that he's been prepared the reality is that Labour's dirty little secret about climate change and this particular policy area that they want to muck around with again is that coal imports are at record levels under this Labour Government—and they're burning it to make electricity. We used to use good New Zealand natural gas but now they use imported Indonesian coal so that's Labour's dirty little secret: that emissions continue to go up under this Government.So here we are under urgency discussing a bill that is a Labour Party stuff-up. It wouldn't have been so bad if the Minister who aspires to be Prime Minister before the next election and to take over from the leadership of the Labour Party and he wants to make fewer mistakes—he's the Minister of Immigration he's the Minister of Transport and he is the Minister for Labour Party stuff-ups.Here we are trying to amend a mistake—several mistakes in fact—that were made during rushed not-well-thought-through legislation presented by this current Government. They were warned at the time—not only by us in the Opposition—that there were flaws and unintended consequences of their rushed legislation around this piece of legislation. They were warned more importantly by the car sector the car industry themselves who had made it very clear that the New Zealand Transport Agency would not be able to meet the time frame deadlines that the original legislation had put in place that they were too ambitious that they were largely put in to provide some speaking bullet points for the Minister without any thought about the practical reality of the implications.Well now we are here in urgency making amends for the Minister's mistake. The Minister didn't even have the good grace to come to this House and apologise not even the good grace to acknowledge that the mistake was his that it was his arrogance and his inability to understand the practical reality of his portfolio area and he did not even have the good grace to come to this House and apologise—not only to the members of this Parliament but to the people of New Zealand—for his egregious errors and just another one in a series of egregious errors that that Minister has been making. In fact what he did do was come to this House and just insult members of the National Party and particularly my colleague the Hon David Bennett who for some reason seems to have incurred the ire of the Minister. He told the truth about the Minister and the Minister didn't like it; the Minister didn't like hearing the truth. Well in the Labour Party they don't like hearing the truth they don't like hearing reality and they just like to stay in their own little echo chamber of self-aggrandisement self-affirmation and they don't stay in touch with the real people these days.Simeon Brown made the point What happened to the Labour Party of the working people? What happened to that Labour Party of Michael Joseph Savage?" Michael Joseph Savage would be rolling in his grave if he could see the impacts of this piece of legislation that has promoted thousands of rich Tesla buyers able to purchase cars using free money that has been collected from people who have little choice and by and large often do not have an ability to pay. Those are the people—it's a reverse Robin Hood scheme as my colleague Simeon Brown has mentioned on many occasions. It's a reverse Robin Hood scheme and we will put it right.On this side of the House we actually do believe in equity of outcome; we do believe that if the State is to be involved in people's lives then it needs to be on an equitable basis. That the current Government has no clue how to do that is an embarrassing shame upon them. If they spent a little bit more time actually listening to ordinary New Zealanders they wouldn't be in the electoral trouble they are in now. If they spent a little bit more time listening to trade sectors and the industry sector who give them good advice they would not be in the electoral trouble that they are now.Notwithstanding all those matters we are supporting this piece of legislation. As Simeon Brown has said it is a small incremental beneficial change to a flawed piece of legislation—but it does make it slightly better. On that basis and that basis alone we are supporting this legislation notwithstanding that it's here being rushed through the Parliament under urgency without any prospect of a full select committee scrutiny and hearings where people could make submissions where the Minister would have to be accountable for his egregious errors and where members of the Labour Party backbench—actually some of their last actions as parliamentarians should have been to sit in a select committee and hear about the mistakes that they've made. Well they have avoided that neatly by rushing this legislation through Parliament under urgency without that kind of scrutiny and without that kind of feedback that they actually do need to hear.So on that note we will support the bill but by crikey it would have been very very helpful if the Minister had come to the House and apologised to the members of this Parliament and to the people of New Zealand for his very gross and obvious mistakes."