Fitzsimons Jeanette: Reports — Briefing on Finance Company Failures—Consideration of Report of Commerce Committee Complaint Regarding SR 2008/319 Marine Safety Charges Amendment Regulations 2008—Consideration of Interim Report of Regulations Review Committee Review of the Emissions Trading Scheme and Related Matters—Consideration of Report of Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee Report from the Controller and Auditor-General on Local Government: Results of the 2007-08 Audits—Consideration of Report of Local Government and Environment Committee Report from the Controller and Auditor-General on Inland Revenue Department: Managing Tax Debts—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Monetary Policy Statement September 2009—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Fitzsimons Jeanette: Reports — Briefing on Finance Company Failures—Consideration of Report of Commerce Committee Complaint Regarding SR 2008/319 Marine Safety Charges Amendment Regulations 2008—Consideration of Interim Report of Regulations Review Committee Review of the Emissions Trading Scheme and Related Matters—Consideration of Report of Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee Report from the Controller and Auditor-General on Local Government: Results of the 2007-08 Audits—Consideration of Report of Local Government and Environment Committee Report from the Controller and Auditor-General on Inland Revenue Department: Managing Tax Debts—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee Reserve Bank of New Zealand’s Monetary Policy Statement September 2009—Consideration of Report of Finance and Expenditure Committee 
[Sitting date: 18 November 2009. Volume:659;Page:7821. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS (Green) 
: 
 I move  
That the report of the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee on the review of the emissions trading scheme and related matters be noted 
. The select committee that was appointed at the beginning of this year and which sat for many months to review the emissions trading scheme was one of the greatest wastes of Parliament’s time and resources that I have seen in my 13 years in this House. The budget for select committees was exceeded several times and further resources had to be sought for three very good specialist advisers who worked very hard to advise the committee. But the committee in the end had no real time in which to discuss their advice or to reach any conclusions on it. 
The special committee was set up from the start as a sop to the ACT Party which did not believe the climate science and was trying to slow down any action on climate change. The terms of reference were written by the ACT Party as part of its election campaign and they were simply adopted by the Government. The special committee was constantly called the committee to review the emissions trading scheme yet its terms of reference never included the instruction to review the emissions trading scheme. Instead it meandered all over the place with questions about whether we should have a carbon tax or emissions trading questions about whether we should just adapt to climate change instead of trying to mitigate it questions about trade and questions about whether the science was real. All the way through we had to pretend that we were reviewing the emissions trading scheme but at no point in all of those months that the committee sat did we ever have a copy of the emissions trading law in front of us and at no point did we ever debate any of the provisions of the existing law. This was Alice-in-Wonderland stuff and the House should be ashamed that it allowed such a thing to occur. 
We heard a succession of submitters the same submitters whom some of us had heard in the previous year saying exactly the same things that they had said when they submitted on the legislation that led to the emissions trading scheme that is currently in our law. There was a lot of special pleading. Submitters tended to start off by saying they accepted that climate change is important but they should not have to pay anything. They said as long as they did not have to pay anything then it was fine to have an emissions trading scheme but they should be exempt from it—or if they could not be made exempt then they said emissions trading should not happen for a long time. Their attitude was “not us not now not really and maybe not ever”. So it was a rather onerous duty for those of us who had put a great deal of work into the emissions trading law the year before to hear the same special pleading all over again from a lot of people whose position had not changed and who had nothing new to offer. 
But we did submitters the courtesy of holding hearings for I think some 60 hours and of taking their comments seriously unlike the Finance and Expenditure Committee which has just finished hearing submissions on the Climate Change Response (Moderated Emissions Trading) Amendment Bill and which dispatched the lot of them in I think 3 days of hearings—or was it 5? 
Dr Russel Norman 
: Barely. 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Barely that and with so little notice that submitters did not even have time to prepare before coming to speak to the committee. If it had not been for the motion that I moved in the committee which was supported by all other parties except for National we would not have heard even as many submitters as we did. We would have done the whole thing in 1 day. 
Charles Chauvel 
: Who seconded that motion? 
JEANETTE FITZSIMONS 
: Of course my friend Charles Chauvel very nobly supported the motion and that was very much appreciated. 
Since 1992 when the then Government first signed an international commitment to reduce emissions and protect forest sinks successive Governments have dithered and done nothing about climate change. Right through the 1990s the National Government anguished over whether to have a carbon charge or emissions trading and ended up doing neither. In the 2000s Labour worked up a policy on a carbon charge—not a bad policy; it would have been a great deal better than nothing—and set it for 5 years into the future. It announced the policy in 2002 with the carbon charge to come into effect in 2007. Then that policy was abolished after the election in 2005 supposedly because there was not a majority in the House for it. But actually the Maori Party was never even asked for its support. We believe there could have been a majority in the House for it. Certainly during 2005 I tried to persuade the Minister of the time that he should pass the legislation then when there was clearly a good majority for it but that did not happen either. 
Then a lot of work was put into the emissions trading scheme and that legislation was passed last year. It is in force now and it is the law now. The provisions on energy are supposed to come into effect on 1 January but the new Government came in and decided to review the whole thing. But it was not a review. It was a holding pattern a time-wasting measure while the Government made up its mind what it wanted to do. The Minister for Climate Change Issues Nick Smith did not seem to have a plan after the election. All he knew was that he wanted to change things so obviously he had to do a lot of work with officials on just how he wanted to change things. The Prime Minister announced that he was putting the emissions trading scheme on hold. It was only during question time in the House that I managed to get him to confess that he had no power to put an existing law on hold without going to Parliament. One cannot unilaterally abolish legislation even if one is the Prime Minister. So it sat there on the books as law while this committee pretended it was doing something. 
The committee often sat for only 2 hours a week—I am talking now about the Emissions Trading Scheme Review Committee which this motion is about—and in some weeks it did not sit at all for quite long periods especially when the officials were not ready to bring us their departmental report. We all know why they were not ready to bring us their departmental report: because the Minister had not yet decided what he wanted to do. Finally the departmental report did appear and suddenly it became extremely urgent that the committee finish its business and there was no time to discuss what was in the departmental report. There were a number of important issues of principle that we needed to debate but the committee did not ever get the chance to properly engage with them. On the day of deliberation on this select committee report we started with 50 percent of the draft report still not dealt with in any way by the committee. So on the day of deliberation we discussed the last 50 percent of this very long report and deliberated on it. It was a shocking experience. I hope I never have to go through one like it again in this House. 
But the really tragic thing about this is that we still do not have a proper climate change policy. The one we have is about to be changed and it is to be replaced by something that will do absolutely nothing to reduce New Zealand’s emissions at all. It became clear only on the last day of deliberation that the Government was totally committed to an intensity-based approach to reallocations which means that the more that emitters increase their pollution the more free credits they will get. That is the worst thing we can do with regard to climate change policy and that is what is about to come to the House next week.